JUNEAU, Alaska — In a few short years, Sarah Palin moved from small-town mayor with a taste for mooseburgers to the governor’s office and now — making history — to John McCain’s side as the first female running mate on a Republican presidential ticket.
She has more experience catching fish than dealing with foreign policy or national affairs. Talk about a rocketing ascent.
In turning to her, McCain picked an independent figure in his own mold, one who has taken on Alaska’s powerful oil industry and, at age 44, is three years younger than Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and a generation younger than McCain, 72.
Palin’s selection was a jaw-dropper, as McCain passed over many other better-known prospects, some of whom had been the subject of intense speculation.
Palin had been in the running- mate field but as a distinct long shot.
She brings a strong anti-abortion stance to the ticket and opposes same-sex marriage — constitutionally banned in Alaska before her time — but exercised a veto that essentially granted benefits to gay state employees and their partners.
“She knows where she comes from, and she knows who she works for,” McCain said in introducing her to an Ohio rally. “She stands up for what’s right, and she doesn’t let anyone tell her to sit down.”
He said, “She’s exactly who I need.”
Said Palin, “I didn’t get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not why the ship is built.”
Palin ran on ethics reform
Palin lives in Wasilla, a town of 6,500 about 30 miles north of Anchorage, with her husband, Todd, a blue-collar North Slope oil worker who won the 2007 Iron Dog, a 1,900-mile snowmobile race. He is part Yup’ik Eskimo. The two have spent summers fishing commercially for salmon, an enterprise that once left her with broken fingers aboard their boat.
Typically seen walking the Capitol halls in black or red power suits while reading text messages on BlackBerry screens in each hand, Palin made a recent appearance in fashion magazine Vogue.
“At first they had me in a bunch of furs,” she said. “Yeah, I have furs on my wall, but I don’t wear furs. I had to show them my bunny boots and my North Face clothing.”
Palin’s clean-hands reputation has come into question with an investigation recently launched by a legislative panel into whether she dismissed Alaska’s public-safety commissioner because he would not fire her former brother-in-law as a state trooper. Trooper Mike Wooten went through a messy divorce from Palin’s sister.
The governor denied orchestrating the dozens of telephone calls made by her husband and members of her administration to Wooten’s bosses. She says she welcomes the investigation: “Hold me accountable.”
Four months into her most recent pregnancy, Palin learned the child would have Down syndrome, and she said she never had any doubts about whether she would have the baby.
“We understand that every innocent life has wonderful potential,” Palin told AP earlier this year in describing what she and her husband had confronted. Trig, her fifth child, was born in April.
Alaska’s first female governor arrived at the Capitol in 2006 on an ethics-reform platform after defeating two former governors in the primary and general elections.
During her first year in office, Palin moved away from the powerful old guard of the state Republican Party and has refused to kowtow to the powerful oil industry, instead presiding over a tax increase on oil-company profits that now has the state’s treasury swelling.
But she is a proponent of petroleum development, in tune with McCain, although the two disagree on drilling in Alaska’s protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She favors drilling there; he opposes it.
Before becoming governor, her political experience consisted of terms as Wasilla’s mayor and a councilwoman and a stint as head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
