Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (53 page)

In the smallest of pushes on the soft tissue of Sarah's Juneau housing embarrassment, a neighbor living near the governor's mansion—Chip Thoma, a man Sarah had never met—on Thursday, April 23, phoned the state leasing and facilities manager complaining that tour busses driving by the governor's mansion were causing congestion on the severely cramped streets and pollution. He suggested that with Sarah's popularity after the vice presidential campaign, everyone wanted to see where she lived. In response, he posted signs along the tour routes that read Stop Local Tours, and requested that the state consider re-painting the mansion from white to a darker color so that it might be less conspicuous.

A half hour after this request was forwarded to Sarah, she began the process of overreaction. She wrote us:

Later that night, this went from “kinda funny” to less so. Sarah contacted Ivy and me at half past nine:
“Do they want the mansion moved to wasilla?! Happy to do it if they push hard enough!”
About an
hour later, she had the idea to use Thoma's request as a means to demonstrate how unfair she was being treated:
“u can spread it to help shed light on the can't win/insanity.”

By the next day, Sarah had hatched a brilliant plan to escalate the issue; Piper would sell lemonade to the tourists.
“Yes. And piper's lemonade stand to really drive the neighbors crazy. It'll blend in with the trampoline that they may feel generates too much “noise” (ie kids' laughter!). What a crew we live in the midst of down there.”

Sarah had suddenly upped the ante by suggesting there were complaints about children laughing and playing. When asked by her spokesperson, “You are kidding—someone complained about too much laughter?!?” Sarah hedged. She admitted this was hyperbolic but seemed an obvious conclusion (emphasis mine):

On the following Tuesday, she felt giddy that she'd been able to use Piper to goad her newest enemy:
“Piper made $43 at her lemonade stand here yesterday and is donating it to the March of Dimes charity walk on Saturday. She says the next time she's not going to advertise it ‘For Charity.' I don't blame her.”

Despite mother and daughter lamenting their pledge to donate the money to charity, the PR would prove brilliant. Sarah requested that Sharon Leighow contact media ASAP. Sharon, in a courageous bout of common sense, suggested that a wiser route would be to ignore the neighbor's complaints and not make it a story. Sarah hated the idea:

“I say we do a pre-emptive presser on the Chip thoma/neighbors issue. The ‘stop tours' signs are such a strange thing . . . Illustrates we're darned if we do, darned if we don't.”

If Sharon wasn't enthusiastic, others were. Sarah moved on:
“Ivy—pls get this out bc it shows what a kangaroo court this is that we're trying to serve in.”

In another brainstorm, we decided to push this story to the broader media focusing on Sarah's made-up speculation that Thoma was protesting children at play and lemonade stands. The real reason for all of this time spent on building a case to embarrass and, if possible, destroy one man's reputation was made clear a half day later:

So, with nothing against Chip per se, Sarah decided
“I know that I know . . . that (this tourist controversy is) a good issue for us . . . so ivy pls get it out there.”
With that encouragement, we went into discredit-Chip overdrive. A few minutes later, Ivy let us know, “I got pics and an awesome story getting ready to go out for the news cycle.”

Later that night, Meg Stapleton, now the spokesperson for Sarah-PAC (Sarah's Political Action Committee), wrote that she'd gone to Sean Cockerham at the
Anchorage Daily News
with an innocent, funny heads-up; he might just want to investigate and write a human interest story about a cute little lemonade stand and an ogre living next door:

Meg didn't want to get involved in “state stuff” but did anyway.

After supplying talking points to the
Conservatives4Palin
blog contributor Joey Russo wrote an article entitled: “Juneau Resident Attempts to Close Down Piper Palin's Lemonade Stand.” While a fabrication, we managed to have published a nasty spin on what started out as bus congestion and pollution and turn this into Sarah's Juneau crucifixion. In the article, Russo claimed that “one Chip Thoma is the man behind a movement to close [the lemonade stand] down” and that his reasons for doing so included being “sick and tired” of the Palins . . . It seems that Mr. Thoma doesn't enjoy the Palin children very much.” He suggested that any man who opposed little girls and lemonade stands needed “to grow up.”

When Sarah read Russo's article, she wrote,
“This is hilarious! And pip's planning the stand again for the next sunny day.”
This time, Sarah proudly let us know,
“(Piper) made $44 for March of Dimes at the last one. This time she says she's keeping the $. Very cool.”

Stories spread widely across conservative blogs, where writers referred to Thoma as “sick,” “unhinged,” “a drunk,” “drug-addicted,” and “in need of therapy.” Sarah feared, however, that because Sharon Leighow originally opposed attacking Thoma, we might have missed an opportunity to maximize this public relations coup:

When the online version of the newspaper
Juneau Empire
did publish a story that dealt with the congestion and narrow roads, Sarah became angry.
“I wish
[
Sharon Leighhow
]
would have listened to me and been proactive . . . I KNEW a reporter was going to cover this and we'd lose the spin opportunity . . . Our folks pulled back and didn't do what I asked them to do with getting the story out there first (it's front pg Empire, but spun wrong).”

Three days later, when another conservative writer picked up on our
spin
for the story, Sarah's mood improved. Warner Todd Huston from
NewsBusters.org
wrote a scathing article focusing on Thoma's mythical attack on Piper: “Palin Haters Livid at Juneau Tourism, Outraged Over Little Piper's Lemonade Stand.” In the meantime, Sarah had instructed us to continue leaking pictures, emails, and encouragement to Sean Cockerham at the
Anchorage Daily News
in the hope that he'd bite and agree to write about this outrage. In a coup of sorts, the newsman took the bait with an article on May 8, 2009, “Bus Traffic at Governor's Mansion Irks Activist.” Cockerham quoted a written statement from Sarah that elicited whoops of joy when we read it: “I wanted to offer him to hide Piper's trampoline further in a corner of the yard . . . if it's a matter of not giving anyone anything to look at so they'll go away then I'd ask Piper to not giggle so loudly on her buoy swing or bicycle in the yard.” She also managed to get in print a jab at her critics: “We've been slammed if we're not here enough, but now the table's turned and the message is we're creating chaos because we're here too often.”

Thoma was quoted as saying, “She is obviously coming after me, and I've never met her before.” Our reaction to that line—aside from smiling at the man's misery—was, “You betcha we're coming after you.”

For the days we wasted on discrediting Thoma, we cared about little else and nothing about him; critics ceased being human beings worthy of sympathy once we attacked. By the time we finished with our politics of destruction, he surely regretted ever mentioning the
governor's name. He learned firsthand why so few people were willing to speak out against Sarah Palin. The costs were enormous. At Sarah's direction, we had managed to construct a story with almost no basis in fact that painted her and daughter Piper as victims. In what I can only now describe as a shameful waste, this is what we did more than anything else in all our years together, go after those we disagreed with or simply didn't like. Alaska deserved better of us. We deserved better of ourselves.

In ending his article, the unwitting Cockerham gave us the biggest laugh we'd had in months when he quoted Sarah as saying that she loved Juneau and liked to see it shown off to visitors. “It's beautiful here,” she said. Then, as if believing it possible in a city she believed was hell on earth, she concluded by suggesting, “Enjoy!”

Next up? David Letterman, charges of plagiarism, and one last big-time dodge-the-bullet crisis.

All this and less than six months back as prodigal governor.

34
 

A Twenty-Ring Circus

L
ate in Sarah's run for governor against Tony Knowles, Dino Rossi—the Republican candidate for Washington State governor—participated in one of our much-needed fund-raisers at the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage. If Rossi expected any long-running loyalty in return for his efforts, however, he would join a long line of former allies who found Sarah's passion a shifting wind. When he sought the Washington GOP Senate nomination in 2010, Sarah endorsed his rival. This was a pattern that was about to repeat itself with a much more notable political personality.