Going Rogue: An American Life (114 page)

$500,000 legal bill if she didn’t do anything wrong?” and “If she has a legal defense fund, doesn’t that mean she must have done something?”

The truth is that the obstructionists figured out a way to flict a heavy personal financial toll on their opponents at no cost to themselves.
In
Alaska, the governor and tbe executive staff have to hite attorneys at their own expense to defend themselves against ethics charges, no matter how frivolous, malicious, or ill conceived an ethics complaint may be. The state attorney general cannot provide representation under the law because these types of complaints are considered “personal” even though they arise from government service. The liberal mentality is that if a charge doesn’t stick, personal bankruptcy has to eventually. While some in Alaska have recommended changing this, legislators have yet to do so. There isn’t really a sense of urgency for them because the legislative branch is protected; if you uttet a word about a legis• 373

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lative ethics complaint, it’s automatically dismissed. My biggest concern is that the prospect of personal financial ruin through the abuse of our ethics process is going to discourage good people from working in state government.

In
response to the ethics attacks against me, my friend Kristan Cole led supporters in setting up a legal defense fund to help defray my attorney costs. But my opponents began twisting even that. Despite the fact that Kristan made sure the fund was vetted by East Coast attorneys who were in the business of setting up such funds for politicians on both sides of the aisle, I was charged with yet another violation for having the fund at all, and for paying bills out of it-even though the fund is not mine and I have not drawn a dime from it.

Financial hardship is painful but bearable. Loss of reputation I can take. But I could not and cannot tolerate watching Alaska suffer. One by one, each ethics complaint against me was tossed out. But a new one quickly sprouted to take its place. I knew it wouldn’t stop and the ongoing cost to our system plagued me. My loyal staff who had accomplished so much with me in our years in office were beseiged.

No one could paralyze my administration before, and I wouldn’t have been told to sit down and shut up, but these frivolous and expensive complaints were effectively doing what no one else could. I knew I could just hunker down and finish out a final, lame-duck year in office-but
I’m
not wired for that.

At some point, you have to say “Enough.” You have to pick your battle. Pick your hilltop. And hold the position ofyour own choosing. My state was being shaken by one partisan earthquake after another. Every time we found steady ground,

avalanche

of FOIAs, ethics complaints, and lawsuits crashed down. My team had been targeted for destruction because of who the team leader was. I began to think it was time to pass the ball. And,

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many months of consideration and prayer, a phone call from the other side of the world helped me clarify it all at last. 7

“This isn’t good, Mom;’ Track told me from a desert outpost 6,000 miles away. “I just saw another dumbass ‘expert’ on TV

telling the world who he thinks we are.”

A year earlier if Track had said that to me 1 would have argued with him and said, “Come on, it’s not that bad.” But for the first time, he sounded tired, and 1 could tell he wasn’t in the mood to be lectured. This time, 1 heard him out.

“I know you, Mom. You want to protect us. You want to say,

‘Screw this, 1 won’t put my family rhrough rhis.’ ” Track did know me. “But are you going to let those idiots run you off? You can’t
tap out!”

He talked

watching his sister be humiliated on national

television as her former boyfriend went on his fact-free kiss-andtell media tour. Track knew the kid. was making things up. When he. started giving example after

of all he had

watched and read, 1,interrupted. “Those are political potshors, son,” 1 reminded him, thinking of my recent trip to the medical facility in Landstuhl. “The shots that really hurt are felt by people losing their livelihoods, losing a loved one in battle-” He interrupted me. “That’s my point, Mom!” Then he hushed his voice because there were always fellow soldiers around. “Don’t let the jerks get you down!” His view was that you don’t quit. You don’t violate your contract. There is pain, you push through it, you stick it out.

Then he brought it home: “No dishonorable discharge. You only leave if it’s honorable-that means you move up to something more worthy.”

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Then it was my turn. I asked him if he thought protecting Trig and his sisters was “more worthy.” I asked if fighting through the bull so that I could reveal truth and fight for what is right for our state and out country was “more worthy.” I asked if breaking free of the bureaucratic shackles that were now paralyzing our state was “worthy:’

I finally said out loud what I knew I had to do.

“I’m not a quitter, Track,” I finished. ‘Tm going to fight. And that’s rhe point:’

By the end, of the conversation Track understood more. He knew this was one of the most important decisions I would ever make, and he also knew that I knew what I was talking about.

“I hear you, Mom,” he finally said. “I’m praying fat you:’

“Fast about it for a day,” I said.

“Eat nothing for a whole day? Holy crap!”

“Okay, forget fasting food,” I conceded. “Fast from cussing fat a day, then:’

“Hell, no, Impossible over here. Next?”

He agreed to give up chew fat a day. That was a big darn deal.

I remembered again the advice of my deat friend Curtis: “In politics, you’re either eating well or sleeping well:’ Was I sleeping well knowing that I was incapable of setving my srate effectivelythat I had become an obstacle to progress because I was the target of our-of-control obstructionists? No. I wasn’t sleeping well at all. A politician is supposed to be a public servant, but in our current understanding, a politician would have just gone with the flow, collected the paycheck, padded the and finished

the term as a lame duck. But that’s not what a public servant

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