Sarah Palin: UNFIT

[amborin]

Anchorage Daily News (Alaska)

October 23, 2006 Monday

'Fresh face' launched Palin: RISING STAR: Wasilla mayor was groomed from an early political age.

BYLINE: Tom Kizzia Anchorage Daily News, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska

Oct. 23--WASILLA -- Sarah Palin's campaign for governor sounds a lot like her campaign for mayor of Wasilla 10 years ago, when she made her first big move in Alaska politics.

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Local voters warmed to Palin's ease in public and her disarming personal touch as much as to her conservative message.

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But her political opponents say there was another side to the charming candidate -- one captured by her nickname from those basketball years, "Sarah Barracuda." Supporters consider the name a testament to her aggressive play and ferocious defense.

But opponents said the name captured a predatory instinct that Palin could turn on friend as well as foe -- one they said occasionally revealed itself in the mayoral years to come.

During her first run for mayor, critics complained that Palin, at 32, was too young and inexperienced.

The Wasilla mayor was a full-time, $68,000-a-year job. They objected to a quiet campaign by some Palin supporters raising emotional issues like abortion and gun control, which had no apparent tie to municipal politics.

And they said that by posing for ads with the area's Republican legislators, who implied they could work better with her than her opponent, she was injecting divisive party politics into what was technically a nonpartisan race.

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BASKETBALL SUCCESS

"I know this sounds hokey, but basketball was a life-changing experience for me," Palin said recently on a rare night home in Wasilla, while her 5-year-old daughter, Piper, worked on homework at the kitchen counter. "It's all about setting a goal, about discipline, teamwork, and then success."

At a statewide chiropractors convention, Sarah Palin
had little specific to offer on the group's complicated legal and Medicaid questions.

WASILLA TAX CUTS

This year, an accomplishment mentioned perhaps most often by Palin's supporters is that she cut taxes as mayor of Wasilla. Ironically, she took her first steps into local politics with the intent of preserving a controversial new tax and expanding local government.

As it turned out, the new sales tax built the infrastructure that turned Wasilla into the Mat-Su area's commercial hub. Booming sales tax revenues also made possible Palin's other tax cuts after she became mayor in 1996.

To become mayor, however, Palin had to bump off three-term incumbent John Stein, who had ushered in the sales tax and police force. Three terms were enough, she said. He had lost touch with the community. It was time for a change. The voters agreed.

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Palin had priorities. She shrank the local museum's budget and deterred talk of a new library and city hall.

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After turning out the three-term incumbent, Palin brought in an outside attorney, with city funds, to advise on the transition. She asked for resignation letters from six top department heads, saying they'd signed a letter supporting their former boss.

She fired two of them -- the police chief and the museum director -- but within a year two others had quit. With the local newspaper, the Frontiersman, upset about the uproar, a citizens group started meeting to discuss a recall of the new mayor. The idea was eventually dropped.

Palin has cited her mayoral work as a central part of her qualification to serve as governor. But at the beginning of her term, asked by the local newspaper how she would run the city without experienced department heads, she made the job sound like no big deal: "It's not rocket science. It's $6 million and 53 employees."

Battling over appointments to vacant city council seats, Palin said at the time, "Some of the things I'm doing, it's obvious I'm not running for Miss Congeniality. I'm running the city."

LOCAL CRITICS

Palin's current opponents, Tony Knowles and Andrew Halcro, are saying her experience as mayor didn't prepare her sufficiently to be governor. Palin says Wasilla was a good rough-and-tumble training ground for a 32-year-old first-time mayor.

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Some of Palin's hiring as mayor proved almost as controversial as her firings.

She quickly hired a deputy administrator, reworking the city budget to find money for the $50,000-a-year position, which had been empty for several years. Critics said it showed she wasn't up to the job, but Palin defended it as necessary for the fast-growing city.

Critics also noted that the deputy, John Cramer, had been hired from the staff of Sen. Lyda Green, one of the local Republicans who had endorsed Palin in the race. They said it smacked of party patronage.

Similar complaints arose when Palin hired a public works director with no engineering background, Cindy Roberts, who had been a Commerce Department official in the administration for former Gov. Wally Hickel. The wife of longtime Hickel aide Malcolm Roberts, she lasted a year in the job. The city also replaced its longtime attorney with Republican Party attorney Ken Jacobus.

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A number of other disputes flared up and died down in the first year. The Frontiersman, which sparred with Palin frequently at first, accused her of rolling her eyes and making faces at city council meetings when she heard testimony she didn't like.

Many Palin opponents from her mayoral years, including Stein, who made a failed comeback bid in 1999, declined to speak for this story. One who spoke freely was her staunchest critic on the council, Nick Carney.

"The day-to-day was beyond her," he said, criticizing her hiring of Cramer and her treatment of the incumbent department heads. "It was the barracuda in her that came out, that 'Those guys were on the side of John Stein and I'm going to get rid of them.'

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CHOSEN ONE

Palin's rise came as the Valley's politics were changing sharply from Democratic to Republican.

An influx of conservative voters and the new district lines drawn with Hickel in the governor's office changed the local political scene. In 1994, three Republicans were elected to legislative seats in the area, defeating Democrats. None of them had any more experience than Palin brought to the mayor's race, said Tuckerman Babcock, the Republican official who redrew the lines for Hickel.

"They didn't see any contradiction to getting young people in office," Babcock said.

The national Republican Party was encouraging local party officials to groom a new generation of candidates, officials say.

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Party: Republican

Age: 42

Occupation: commercial fishing, volunteer coach/manager

Previous offices: Wasilla City Council, 1992-1996; Wasilla mayor, 1996-2002; Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, 2003-2004.

Education: University of Idaho, B.S. degree, Journalism, 1987

Spouse name: Todd Palin

Children: Track, Bristol, Willow and Piper

[izzie]

1. I do not know a thing about this lady yet but I do think that

being in govt. a long time has little to do with how good you are. It is the way one thinks I like to go on. I just hate the 'Iam always right' people and like the type that do a little thinking. They seem to be rare in govt. I am sure done with these same old families trying to get into the WH, and still think Congress split between two parties is best for us people but will give in to a one party congress to try and get our country back on track.

[TheKentuckian]

2. Here's what's important to know

she's as far right as any of those loons and believes in their ideas for government.

What else is it to know?

New package but the same tired and failed policies with an increased Falwell factor.
Even if she was qualified, she'd still be someone that is or should be utter unelectable.

[kwolf68]

3. Ding Ding

... If she had 100 years of government experience I wouldn't want this loon running our nation.

As you correctly state, McCain IS going with more of the same...more war, more appeasement for industry, less social power, more corporate power, more raping and pillaging, more religious quackery

Same shit, just wearing a dress.