Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (57 page)

The importance and timing of this initial selection became evident when we learned on Friday, November 2, 2007, that the current court decided by a 3-to-2 vote to hold unconstitutional Alaska's 1997 Parental Consent Act—which requires teenage girls to notify their parents before seeking an abortion. With our right-to-life convictions, the decision shocked and disappointed all of us, nobody more so than Sarah.

She was fired up when she called during her commute to Anchorage and said, “Frank, do you realize that when Track dislocated his shoulder, they wouldn't even give him a glass of water until I arrived at the hospital and gave permission? Yet they'll allow a young girl to receive a major operation like abortion on grounds of privacy? This is outrageous.” We worked with Sharon to draft a strong press announcement that was met by cheers across Alaska's pro-life community.

Not long after this decision, the Judicial Council sent Sarah four names for her consideration; she selected a solid Catholic in Fairbanks attorney Daniel E. Winfree. This process of nomination and selection was without controversy and would have been a pleasantly smooth footnote to our normally tumultuous administration if not for a confluence of events over the next two years.

The intrigue blossomed with a legal conference in Sarah-sister Molly McCann's child custody battle (
McCann v. Wooten
). These proceedings represented to Todd the endgame in the drama to destroy Palin ex-brother-in-law Trooper Mike Wooten. At the end of the case, Molly McCann ended up with custody of the children. The presiding judge for the Third Judicial District Superior Court, Morgan Christen, although not the assigned judge in the case, conducted a conference between the parties that resulted in a settlement.

Todd phoned me from the courthouse. “The judge,” he said, “raked Mike over the coals, said his financials were bullshit.”

“Wow,” I said. “How'd it happen?”

Todd was joyously breathless, living a moment he'd been praying to see happen for over two years. “Wooten just threw his shit together half-assed and got his ass called on the carpet by the judge.” This was and still is the most excited I've ever heard Todd Palin.

Interestingly, Judge Morgan Christen was one of the three candidates recently nominated by the Judicial Council that Sarah passed over in favor of Winfree. When I told Todd this, he reiterated his great pleasure with Christen. “She's amazing, Frank. She kicked his teeth in. It was beautiful.” Todd seemed to believe that Christen had won the day for Molly McCann.

Contrary to Todd's impression, a spokesperson for the Alaska Court System said that Christen was never the assigned judge in the Wooten custody case, didn't make any rulings in favor of either party, and played a “very limited role.” Furthermore, when the parties had a dispute following the settlement and asked Christen to resolve it, Christen assigned the case to another judge as she had applied for the supreme court position and had a conflict. As she'd done before with the prior opening, Morgan Christen applied for the position. This time, the Judicial Council sent over only two names: Judge
Christen and Judge Eric Smith of the Palmer Superior Court. As director of boards and commissions, I looked into the backgrounds of the candidates and worked with Sarah on evaluating their strengths and weaknesses. Even with glowing credentials, Christen was potentially toxic politically since the Palins believed she was responsible for Molly's victory and seemed inclined to reward her. More than anyone in the world, I knew the compulsive extremes to which Wooten had intruded on the Palin psyche and how tasty was their revenge. Not the most objective to begin with, what rationality the couple did possess would now be like a drop of water in a hot skillet.

From my perspective, there was another major obstacle to Judge Christen's nomination. With Sarah's outrage over the supreme court's earlier ruling against the Parental Notification Act, Christen's former board position on Planned Parenthood in the mid-1990s (a group currently opposed to the Parental Notification Legislation) made her appear antithetical to the administration's avowed position on this all-important issue.

With respect to this legislation in particular, Sarah had only just begun the fight in 2007 with the Supreme Court's ruling and was calling on the legislature to take up the issue in the spring and summer of 2009. When arch foe Senator Hollis French was being obstructionist, she wrote,
“
[
We
]
need to rally
[
the
]
troops and demand that Hollis French gets thumped on this and the vote is allowed to take place. This is the 3rd year we've tried to get this passed! Ridiculous.”
She admonished the churches to take up the fight:
“The churches need to hustle on support of this, the days are ticking by! Where's their grassroots support?”

Greg Schmidt of the Alaska Family Council Board, a Christian profamily, antiabortion group, sent out a notice to its members in March, applauding Sarah's dedication: “Every Alaskan who values constitutional rights owes a debt of gratitude to Governor Palin for her call to allow a vote on parental rights, specifically consent for an adolescent girl to obtain an abortion. Governor Palin recently made a public call for a parental involvement initiative should the Legislature once again fail to act on this critical issue.”

While the Alaska Family Council Board was praising the governor for her stance on parental rights, they simultaneously lobbied against
appointing Judge Christen to the supreme court and pushed for Sarah “to select the more conservative Eric Smith for the Alaska Supreme Court. Judge Smith will be more inclined to adhere to our Constitutions' original intent and to turn back the tide of activism that has run rampant on our Court in the past.”

Once the two names became public, Todd visited me in my Anchorage office. “So, Morgan Christen's up for Supreme Court . . .”

“Yeah,” I answered.

“She's pretty good, eh?” Todd did not attempt to hide his enthusiasm.

“She's qualified, but Jim Minnery and the Family Council crowd will have a fit if she's selected. A lot of them support Sarah—”

“F*** Minnery! Guy needs to have his balls handed to him.” Todd's message was clear: he wanted to see Morgan Christen on the court, and if I thought there was any way the Minnery crowd was going to change his opinion, I could forget about it. The pain in my head instantly spread to my gut. Todd was in that “The game these guys play, something needs to change” mode that signaled Walt Monegan's imminent dismissal in July 2008.

A few days later, while in Juneau, I spoke by phone to the governor. I pleaded my case.

“Governor, you finally have clear grounds to send the list back to the Judicial Council and ask for more suitable candidates. They sent you only two nominees, one of which had a role in Mike and Molly's case.”

Sarah paused, and I could almost hear the whirring of her thoughts. After several seconds, she said, “Wow! And how did you find out about Christen and Molly and Mike? Is it publicly available?”

In a typically confounding answer, there was no “You might be right, Frank.” Or, “This could be an ethical mess.” Instead, it was right back to
Will I be caught?

I confessed, “Todd told me about Wooten's financial mess, the whole story.”
Good Lord
, I thought,
I'm right back in Troopergate, about to get my butt kicked because of Todd Palin
. “Sarah, honestly,
I don't know if this stuff is available online, but I've gotta believe someone's gonna dig it up. This is potentially a reverse Troopergate.”

A week before the appointment, Sarah called me to her office to once again discuss the situation. She seemed unconcerned about the potential for scandal or the potential uproar from her religious base. “Frank, keep this between us, but I personally think it'd be really cool if we could appoint Morgan. Wouldn't it?”

The word
no
went through my head as I repeated my concerns about Todd's preference. Sarah frowned and didn't want to hear negatives. Our conversation was brief.

Alaska Family Council president Jim Minnery continued to voice his grave concerns about this appointment. He asked, “Is there a chance Governor Palin would actually choose Christen?” He seemed as shocked by the possibility as he was dismayed.

“Jim,” I said, unable to hide the truth, “yeah, there is a chance. And it could come soon. Don't know what you can do, but whatever it is, I'd advise you don't waste any time.”

Minnery wrote a piece and sent it out to the thousands of people on his group's mailing list, asking them to respectfully contact the governor's office and plead for her to not select Judge Christen. He instructed those who did so to additionally thank the governor for all her other great works.

When I advised Jim Minnery to act quickly, I didn't have the heart to tell him his efforts had virtually no chance. Being on Todd Palin's needs-to-have-his-balls-handed-to-him list meant his voice was like a tree in a deserted forest, not qualifying as sound. On March 4, 2009, Governor Palin chose forty-seven-year-old Judge Morgan Christen to fill the vacancy on the Alaska Supreme Court. Sarah wrote, “I have every confidence that Judge Christen has the experience, intellect, wisdom, and character to be an outstanding Supreme Court Justice.”

Before she could relish how “cool” this nomination was, Sarah received large amounts of critical mail over the selection, much of it from members of Minnery's Family Council. While Minnery wasn't pleased, he took the time to explain to the media he was not upset
with Palin, and blamed the Judicial Council for sending only two candidates, neither of which was particularly attractive to his group.

The day after the appointment, Sarah cared nothing for the after-the-fact support. She was angry and wrote about the harm Minnery was causing her with the pro-life base:

She continued, venting that he did not have all the facts and we needed to get our version out. Twenty-seven minutes later, she added,
“Dear God, we gotta do something. I don't know. I am clobbered left and right!!! Help!!!”

The next day, Sarah, for what seemed the millionth time, managed to paint herself as the victim with familiar
evildoers in the media
unfairly attacking:

Ironically, Sarah latched onto Minnery's comment that the Judicial Board tied her hands with their nominations:
“the AK Judicial Council sent up two names, I'm bound by law to pick from what they send me (until our lawmakers change that law and require more choices to be considered!).”

From Sarah's
new
point of view, she and Todd never wanted Judge
Christen. Todd's effusive praise and Sarah saying it would be “really cool” never happened. I wondered if I was living a scene in the movie
Groundhog Day
, where I wake up and Troopergate-like denials began all over again.

While Morgan Christen was a highly qualified candidate, I wondered whether she, as a recent candidate for the supreme court and someone who likely knew she'd put her name back in the running in a year, should have considered recusing herself from any part of the McCann-Wooten case. There is no question in my mind that Todd Palin became her champion because of his misperception of her role in that case. In my mind, this is the complete inverse of Trooper-gate, with Sarah and Todd trying to hand out a plum job rather than taking one away, as they did to Walt Monegan. In my mind, this was an action worthy of being included in Einstein's definition of
insane
.