The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin (38 page)

Four days later attorney general Talis Colberg, who had tried to quash the subpoenas, resigned. “He just explained that it is a tough environment right now,” Sarah said. No wonder Todd was happy to be back on his snowmobile for the 2009 Iron Dog race.

Alaskans learned on February 17 that Sarah would have to pay income tax on the thousands of dollars she’d taken in per diem expenses while living in Wasilla. A spokeswoman for her formerly open and transparent administration said, “The amount of taxes owed is a private matter.”

Two days later Sarah announced that she finally intended to do something to help Natives in the Lower Yukon region of western Alaska, many of whom—hit by a perfect storm of high fuel prices, a poor fish harvest, and an extended spell of subzero temperatures—were finding it impossible to feed their families.

The villagers’ plight had come to statewide attention in January through a letter sent by Nick Tucker of Emmonak to various Alaskan media sites. For a month, Sarah tried to ignore the emergency. Her small-government vision apparently did not allow for state aid to people who were on the verge of freezing or starving to death. Only when she arranged for help from a private source—in this case, Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical Christian organization directed by Reverend Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham—did she involve herself.

Sarah and Graham had been courting one another since she was first elected governor. Both in 2007 and 2008 (when he was joined
by Mary Glazier on the dais), Graham spoke at Sarah’s Governor’s Prayer Breakfast, an annual event staged by a group whose website says it believes that “God directs the affairs of Man and is the ultimate authority over human events.”

Especially with television cameras rolling (as she demonstrated again in 2010, when she accompanied Graham on a brief but well-publicized drop-in on Haiti), Sarah was apparently quite comfortable in the presence of a preacher who in 2001 had described Islam as “a very evil and wicked religion.”

Accompanied by the ever-faithful Sean Parnell and a Samaritan’s Purse television crew, Sarah and Graham and right-wing Anchorage evangelical minister Jerry Prevo flew to the Alaskan villages of Russian Mission and Marshall on February 20. Sarah handed out chocolate chip cookies, while Graham provided more substantial fare, accompanied by religious pamphlets.

Seeking to avoid what she feared might be a confrontation with Nick Tucker, Sarah and her entourage gave Emmonak a wide berth. The industrious Tucker, however, hitched a ride on a bush plane and flew the 125 miles to Russian Mission in order to talk to Sarah in person.

Her combination of condescension, evasiveness, platitudes, and non sequiturs made for one of the most awkward meetings with a member of the voting public that Sarah had ever had. It was captured on handheld video and later, with accompanying transcript, made available by Sarah’s least favorite Alaskan bloggers, including Mudflats, Progressive Alaska, and Immoral Minority.

Despite being offered a chocolate chip cookie, Tucker—who had told Sarah, “I don’t do politics. I come from the heart and the sorrow of our people”—was offended by Sarah’s words and attitude. In a follow-up letter to rural newspapers, he said, “I am outraged … I felt like Governor Palin treated Emmonak with most disregard and disrespect by not coming here where it all started … Here, I had a
person whom I voted for and who turns around and stabs us … Is it not embarrassing enough to have to cry out, let alone be put down by our state leadership? I think all rural Alaska deserves an apology and never to be treated like this again … I am an open man, but I feel insulted myself and on behalf of our rural Native villages.”

A week later Sarah settled one of the ethics complaints against her by agreeing to reimburse the state $6,800 for nine trips her children took with her in 2007 and 2008. Sarah being Sarah, however, she would not admit she’d done anything wrong. In a written statement she said, “This is a big state and I am obligated to … keep Alaskans informed and meet with them as much as I can … At the same time, I am blessed to have a large and loving family, and the discharge of my duties should not prevent me from spending time with them.” The next day, she said she’d also repay the state for the cost of bringing her three daughters to the starts of the 2007 and 2008 Iron Dogs to watch their father.

In mid-March she angered Alaskans anew by rejecting almost $300 million in federal stimulus funds that had been set aside for the state, including $170 million for education, a move that critics said was designed to enhance her standing among conservatives nationally at Alaska’s expense.

A few days later she said she intended to bolster her personal finances by creating a fund through which the public would be able to help pay the legal fees she incurred while defending herself against the growing number of ethics complaints against her. Of ten already filed, six had been dismissed, one was settled, and three were pending. She said she owed her Anchorage lawyers more than $500,000. In a written response to questions put to her by the
Daily News
, Sarah said, “With the political blood sport some are playing today, only the independently wealthy or those willing to spend their income on legal fees … can serve.”

AGIA was getting nowhere and achieving nothing but increased
indebtedness for Alaska. In conjunction with the price of oil, natural gas prices had plunged almost 50 percent since Sarah had charmed the legislature into approving her proposal to give TransCanada $500 million of Alaskan taxpayers’ money for nothing more than a hope and a prayer that the company might one day think about building a pipeline.

On March 21, Paul Jenkins predicted in the
Anchorage Daily News
that AGIA would become “a train wreck of monumental proportions.” Going a step further, he asked whether Sarah actually wanted a gas line. “If the dragons were slain,” he wrote, “wouldn’t she then have to be governor, with all the grinding minutiae that entails? What would she use to fuel the populism she hopes will catapult her into national office? No war, no enemies, no glory and no whipping boys is a poor recipe for her style of us-against-them populism.”

On the same day, “her-against-us” protesters staged yet another demonstration in Anchorage, this time decrying Sarah’s rejection of the federal stimulus funds they felt Alaska needed. The protest took place outside the city’s public library, as legislators met inside to hear from constituents who objected to Sarah’s refusal to accept the nearly $300 million that the Obama administration was offering to the state.

One protestor held a sign that read simply,
MAMA GRIZZLY, YOU FORGOT YOUR CUBS
. Inside the building, to raucous shouts and applause, an Anchorage special education teacher said, “Our governor has chosen to pander to her political pipe dream …”

In the midst of this chaos, Sarah took time for a long talk on the phone with Rick Joyner, a Third Wave proselytizer and founder of MorningStar Ministries, of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Two years earlier, Joyner, who was closely linked to a militant dominionist movement called Joel’s Army, had prophesied the imminent coming of the kingdom of God. “At first, it may seem like totalinarianism [
sic
],” he said, describing “a point of necessary control while people are learning.”

Joel’s Army, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has described as “an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian ‘dominion’ on non-believers,” was led by Todd Bentley, founder of Lakeland Revival, a charismatic Christian church based in Florida.

Bentley has defined the mission of Joel’s Army: “To aggressively take ground for the kingdom of God under the authority of Jesus Christ, the Dread Champion … The trumpet is sounding, calling on-fire revolutionary believers to enlist in Joel’s Army … Many are now ready to be mobilized.”

Bentley was a protégé of Rick Joyner, who described him as “a man of exceptional theological depth” and who praised his “impartation of faith, power and fire.” Assembly of God pastor Kalnins used Joyner’s writings in his Master’s Commission program and led students on a pilgrimage to Joyner’s church in Charlotte. During the 2008 presidential campaign, MorningStar’s “head of prophecy,” Steve Thompson, headlined a conference at the Wasilla Assembly of God.

In a video released on March 25, 2009, Joyner did not say whether he and Sarah had discussed the mobilization of Joel’s Army during their extended conversation. He did say, “Democrats are extremely threatened by her, and I believe rightly so. I believe there is a spiritual authority and a calling on Governor Palin that is extraordinary … I believe she has a national calling on her life … When I first saw her on television, I felt right away, ‘I am listening to the President of the United States.’ … I want the Lord’s leadership … We can’t allow the media to win with Sarah Palin.”

BUT NOT EVEN prayer warriors could prevent the filing in late March 2009 of yet another ethics complaint, this one accusing Sarah of using her office for personal profit by appearing at the start of the Iron Dog the year before wearing clothes that bore the logo of the company that sponsored Todd.

This one, filed by blogger Linda Kellen Biegle, pushed Sarah even further over whatever edge she’d been clinging to. Sarah’s prepared response asked, “Are Alaskans outraged, or at least tired of this yet?” The statement said, “Another frivolous ethics charge … This would be hilarious if it weren’t so expensive for the state to process these accusations and for me to defend against these bogus harassments.”

Sarah did not address the question raised by the complaint: How much had Todd’s Iron Dog sponsor, Arctic Cat, paid Sarah to appear at the start of the race sporting the company logo? And if they hadn’t paid her directly, to what financial extent had they sponsored Todd, with the understanding that, when the right time came, Sarah would be a walking, talking example of product placement?

In 2007, Arctic Cat had paid Todd $7,500 in return for his using one of their machines in the Iron Dog. How much more was it worth to the company in 2008 to have Sarah, as governor, parade around in Arctic Cat gear? Neither Sarah nor the company would disclose the amount.

What was later recognized as Sarah’s parting slap to Alaska’s face came on March 26, when she nominated her former lawyer, Wayne Anthony Ross, to succeed Colberg as state attorney general. The
Daily News
described Ross as “a gun rights advocate who blazes around town in a red Hummer with the personalized tag
WAR
.”

A member of the board of the National Rifle Association, Ross had helped to found the antiabortion group Alaska Right to Life and had served as honorary cochairman of Sarah’s gubernatorial campaign. He was well known for his opposition to “rural preference,” a policy that gave Alaskans who practiced a subsistence lifestyle greater hunting rights than those granted to people who, like Chuck Heath, hunted for sport.

The Alaska Federation of Natives was quick to oppose the nomination. The organization’s cochairman said, “It almost looked like she was rubbing our face in Anthony Ross’s appointment. Like rubbing our faces on the ground, saying, ‘Here, take this.’ ”

The legislature opened confirmation hearings for Ross on April 8. He was confronted immediately with a 1993 letter to the state bar association in which he called homosexuals “degenerates.”

During the third day of hearings, Ross was asked about his allegedly having said in a 1991 talk to an Anchorage group called Dads Against Discrimination, “If a guy can’t rape his wife, who’s he gonna rape? There wouldn’t be an issue with domestic violence if women would learn to keep their mouth shut.” Ross heatedly denied having made the remarks, adding, “Anybody said that to me, we’d have a little confrontation because that’s a bunch of crap.”

Under further questioning about his use of words such as
immoral, degenerates
, and
perversion
to describe homosexuals, Ross said, “I hate lima beans. I never liked lima beans. But if I was hired to represent the United Vegetable growers … would I tell you if I disliked lima beans? No, because my job is to represent the United Vegetable Growers.”

Meanwhile, as the hearings continued, Sarah publicly feuded with Levi Johnston. “We’re disappointed that Levi and his family, in a quest for fame, attention and fortune, are engaging in flat out lies, gross exaggeration, and even distortion,” Sarah’s chief spokesperson, Meg Stapleton, said.

Dan Fagan wrote, “Imagine that. Someone in a quest for fame, attention and fortune, engaging in flat out lies, gross exaggeration, and even distortion. I wonder if Stapleton knows anyone else like that.”

On April 13, at the start of the final week of the 2009 legislative session, Sarah’s once-steadfast allies in the Democratic Party broke with her publicly, issuing a statement that said, “She is putting her national political ambitions ahead of the needs of Alaska.”

It was not a fresh complaint. During the 2008 session, legislators had taken to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” buttons to highlight her frequent absences from Juneau and her disengagement even when she was there.

“Where is Sarah Palin?” state party chairwoman Patti Higgins
asked now. “She is going to be halfway across the country, she’s at a right-to-life fundraiser … We need a full-time governor.” Her chief of staff responded, “We did not anticipate that the governor’s political opponents would want their hands held in the final hours of the session.”

Sarah herself was at an antiabortion banquet in Evansville, Indiana, where, the
Evansville Courier and Press
said, she “was besieged … by people urging her to run for president in 2012.” The story quoted a security guard as saying, “Some people would just shout it out, and you’d see others just asking her. I heard it two or three times a minute … She’d just smile and wave. She was very gracious. Never once did I see her say or do anything that made her look less than sincere, like rolling her eyes when no one was looking.”

A political scientist at the University of Southern Indiana called Sarah’s appearance “the first major event of the 2012 presidential campaign.”