Going Rogue: An American Life (21 page)

Meanwhile, family life swirled. Todd was building a new house fot us on Lake Lucille, and we had to pack up and sell the one we were living in on Wasilla Lake. He was still fulltime on the Slope, plus commercial fishing. He and his parmer had recently sold our business, Valley Polaris; we were both busy shuttling around three kids with a full slate of homework and sporrs; and we’d just had our fourth baby. I was also coaching youth basket
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Going Rogue

ball, helping with hockey, and counting down to the big lton Dog snowmachine race. This meant that Todd, when he wasn’t on the Slope, would be in full ttaining mode, cutting hundteds of miles into the snow in the middle of wintet nights and working on his machines in between. And I was still the mayor-working fulltime for the fastest-growing city in Alaska.

Still, the lieutenant governor’s spot seemed like a good next step for me. It was an administrative position where I could put my executive experience to good use.

During that time, I was reading Willow a book called
The
Flyaway

The metaphor of this book worked its way into my

spiritual life and my whole way of thinking. I wrote a contemplative prayer in my journal that summer that I recently came across. I had written: “Let me not become disconnected from You, Lord. Like that red kite, let there be a connecting string between You and me, so that I can fly high and safe as You’ve created all people to do. With that stting, I will go where You want me to go. I’ll be what You want me to be. Thank You fot Your grace:’

Somehow I knew that God was working onsomething significant in our smalltown life, and I felt myself seeking something ahead. Still, I prayed to be content with what I had, even if that meant thar my political career would end in Wasilla City Hall. I didn’t have a campaign organization, and I certainly didn’t have any extra time, but I decided to give it a shot. There were about half a dozen in the race, most with state-level experience, statewide name recognition, and strong finances. One of my opponents was a fOrmer Speaker of the Alaska House, and we were both working parents with a political background and deep Alaska roots. During the campaign, however, she emphasized that I lacked something the ftont-runners had: state-levellegislarive experience.

“The one big difference,” the Speaker told reporters, “is that if, Heaven forbid, something were to happen to Murkowski, I’m

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prepared ro step in and run the state government. I don’t think
Sarah

I couldn’t have disagreed more. For one thing, my opponents had no executive experience. And I didn’t think legislative experience constituted any greater preparation, particularly in a state legislature where the trading of favors seemed to run through the ventilation system as a substitute for air.

I told reporters what I still believe roday: government experience doesn’t necessarily count for much. A friend and campaign volunteer, Karen Rhoades, summed it up in a letter to the editor pointing out that all of my opponents agreed it was “time for change.” Yet among them, they’d accumulated decades of government service during which to. enact change, but they hadn’t done so.

My other opponents included a couple of state senarors. It seemed as if they viewed the post as a brief sropover on the way ro the Juneau mansion. While campaigning, I emphasized the fact that I was running for
lieutenant
governor, not governor. If I were elected, I joked, Frank Murkowski wouldn’t need a food taster. The campaign was also my first opportunity to introduce my fiscal philosophy ro all Alaskans.
In
national politics, some feel that Big Business is always opposed to the Little Guy. Some people seem ro think a profit motive is inherently greedy and evil, and that what’s good for business is bad for people. (That’s what Karl Marx thoughr too.) But theories like that pretty much get run over on Main Street. Big Business starts as small business. Both are built by regular people using their skills, gifts, and resources ro turn their passions into products or services, supplying demands and creating jobs in rhe process-like Todd’s family, with its roots in the Alaska fishing industry. I had put a freemarket, pragmatic philosophy ro work in Wasilla, implementing conservative fiscal policies

Going Rogue

conducive to economic growth, and I got to explain this as I campaigned fot lieutenant governor. Having advocated for local control across the state as president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors, I added that principle to my campaign platform. I had great respect for the need for state government to preserve locally enacted policies. Likewise, I believed that national leaders have a responsibility to respect the Tenth Amendment and keep their hands off the states. It’s the old Jeffersonian view that the affairs of the citizens are best lefr in their own hands. So when I discussed economic policy, I wasn’t shy about calling myself a hardcore fiscal conservative. Some folks liked what rhey heard, and I picked up a couple of endorsements here and there and won some opinion polls. But I wasn’t part of any political machine, or the Juneau good 01’ boys club, so I was definitely seen as the outsider.

I used this statewide platform to tell voters about my vision for Alaska: responsible resource development, less intrusive government, and respect for equality. Those were the GOP’s keys to unlocking the state’s future and moving beyond political entrenchment and stagnancy after eight years under a liberal Democrat. Though I hated to admit it, part of what made the lieurenant governor’s campaign tough is that a statewide race is expensive, and I was uncomfortable asking people funds. In my journal

rhat season I wrote, “Unlike some other candidates, I can’t just be-bop all over the state raising money.”

“The front-runner’s doing a heck of a job out there,” I wrote. “I just don’t want to have any regrets. I don’t want anyone associated with my campaign to have any regrets.”

But as the months wore on, it appeared that regrers were definitely going to be on the menu. While the other candidates’ war

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chests ballooned to six figures, I managed to scrape togetber only about $40,000. My heart just wasn’t in soliciting donations.

“I’m going one step forward and two steps back,” I wrote in my journal.

this is my laughable attempt at running?”

Of course, I realized the problem: My campaign theme was

“New Energy;’ but, unfortunately, I did not run an energetic campaign. I had always burned with purpose, but this rime I was stretched so thin that there was just no room for another log on the fire. My energies remained in my fulltime job as mayor and in raising my family.

There were times when I thought,
You know what I could really
use? A wife.

I wish I would have listened to my mother when she warned me that as a working mom I would have to make tough choices. She never said that one couldn’t “have ir all;’ bur ir was becoming clear that maybe one couldn’t have everything at once. With tiny children at home and Todd on the Slope, some things would have to be put on the back burner for a while.

Looking back, I should have known that without that fire in my belly, it would be a futile effort. I didn’t take to heart the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: “Set yourself earnestly to discover what you are made to do, and then give yourself passionately to the doing ofit.” I wasn’t living my own creed in that 2002

race: Do it right, or don’t do it at all.

But even with my lackluster campaigning, I continued to win a few opinion polls that conventional wisdom said I shouldn’t have won. It was an indicator that people were eager for change at the state level.

Local campaigns were heating up too. Two months before the lieutenant governor election, Todd and I had a bit of a blowout
concerning one of those campaigns.

Todd had turned on the local news to hear about the Wasilla

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