Sarah Palin
Palin speaking at the 2012 CPAC in Washington, D.C.
9th Governor of Alaska
In office December 4, 2006 – July 26, 2009
Lieutenant	Sean Parnell
Preceded by	Frank Murkowski
Succeeded by	Sean Parnell
Chairperson of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission
In office February 19, 2003 – January 23, 2004
Governor	Frank Murkowski
Preceded by	Camille Oechsli Taylor[1]
Succeeded by	John K. Norman[1]
Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska
In office October 14, 1996 – October 14, 2002
Preceded by	John Stein
Succeeded by	Dianne M. Keller
Member of the Wasilla City Council from Seat E
In office October 19, 1992 – October 14, 1996
Preceded by	Dorothy Smith
Succeeded by	Colleen Cottle
Personal details
Born	Sarah Louise Heath (1964-02-11) February 11, 1964 (age 48)[2] Sandpoint, Idaho, U.S.
Nationality	American
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Todd Palin (m. August 29, 1988)
Children	Track (b. 1989) Bristol (b. 1990) Willow (b. 1994) Piper (b. 2001) Trig (b. 2008)[3]
Residence	Wasilla, Alaska
Alma mater	University of Idaho - (B.S., 1987)[4]
Occupation	Local news sportscaster Commercial fisherman Politician Author Political commentator[5]
Religion	Non-denominational Christian[6][7]
Signature

	This article is part of a series about Sarah Palin	Sarah Palin
McCain–Palin campaign, 2008 Governorship of Alaska, 2006–2009 Early political career of Sarah Palin, 1992–2005 Political positions · Electoral history Public image · Saturday Night Live parodies Resignation of Sarah Palin Going Rogue: An American Life Sarah Palin's Alaska

Sarah Louise Palin ⁱ/ˈpeɪlɨn/ (née Heath; born February 11, 1964) is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice presidency. Her book Going Rogue has sold more than two million copies. Since January 2010, she has provided political commentary for Fox News, and hosted a television show, Sarah Palin's Alaska. Five million viewers tuned in for the first episode, a record for The Learning Channel.

She was elected to Wasilla City Council in 1992 and became mayor of Wasilla in 1996. In 2003, after an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor, she was appointed Chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, responsible for overseeing the state's oil and gas fields for safety and efficiency. The youngest person and first woman to be elected Governor of Alaska, Palin held the office from December 2006 until her resignation in July 2009. She has since endorsed and campaigned for the Tea Party movement, as well as several candidates in the 2010 midterm elections. From the time of her Vice Presidential nomination in 2008, Palin was considered a potential candidate for the 2012 presidential election until she announced in October 2011 that she would not run.

Early life and family[link]

Palin was born in Sandpoint, Idaho. She is the third of four children (three daughters, one son) born to Charles R. "Chuck" Heath, a science teacher and track and field coach, and Sarah "Sally" (née Sheeran), a school secretary. Palin's siblings are Chuck Jr., Heather, and Molly.^{[8][9][10][11][12]} Palin is of English, Irish, and German ancestry.^[13]

When Palin was a few months old, the family moved to Skagway, Alaska,^[14] where her father received his teaching job.^[15] They relocated to Eagle River in 1969, and finally settled to Wasilla in 1972.^[16][17]

Palin played flute in the junior high band, then attended Wasilla High School where she was the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes,^[7] and a member of the girls' basketball and cross country running teams.^[18] During her senior year, she was co-captain and point guard of the basketball team that won the 1982 Alaska state championship, earning the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" for her competitive streak.^[19][20][21]

College[link]

After graduating from high school, Palin enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.^[22] Shortly after arriving in Hawaii, Palin transferred to Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu for a semester in the fall of 1982, and then to North Idaho College, a community college in Coeur d'Alene, for the spring and fall semesters of 1983.^[23] (In June 2008, the Alumni Association of NIC gave her its Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award.)^[23][24]

In 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla beauty pageant.^[25][26] She finished third in the Miss Alaska pageant,^[27][28] playing flute in the talent portion of the contest,^[29] and receiving both the Miss Congeniality award and a college scholarship.^[19]

She attended the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho, in late 1984 and early 1985, and Matanuska-Susitna College in Alaska in late 1985. Palin returned to the University of Idaho in the spring of 1986, and received her bachelor's degree in communications with an emphasis in journalism in 1987.^{[23][30][31][32]}

Early career and marriage[link]

After graduation, she worked as a sportscaster for KTUU-TV and KTVA-TV in Anchorage,^[33][34] and as a sports reporter for the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman,^[35][36] fulfilling an early ambition.^[37]

On August 29, 1988, she eloped at age 24 with her high school sweetheart, Todd Palin. Following the birth of their first child, she helped in her husband's commercial fishing business.^[38]

Early political career[link]

City council[link]

Palin was elected to the Wasilla City Council in 1992 winning 530 votes to 310.^[39][40] Throughout her tenure on the city council and the rest of her political career, Palin has been a Republican since registering in 1982.^[41]

Mayor of Wasilla[link]

Concerned that revenue from a new Wasilla sales tax would not be spent wisely,^[42] Palin ran for mayor of Wasilla in 1996, defeating incumbent mayor John Stein^[43] 651 to 440 votes.^[44] Her biographer described her campaign as targeting wasteful spending and high taxes;^[19] her opponent, Stein, said that Palin introduced abortion, gun rights, and term limits as campaign issues.^[45] The election was nonpartisan, though the state Republican Party ran advertisements for Palin.^[45] Palin ran for re-election against Stein in 1999 and won, 909 votes to 292.^[46] In 2002, she completed the second of the two consecutive three-year terms allowed by the city charter.^[47] She was elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors^[48] in 1999.^[49]

First term[link]

Palin had a contretemps with the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, a local newspaper, and became involved in personnel challenges and "a thwarted attempt to pack the City Council" during her first year in office.^[50] Using income generated by a 2% sales tax that had been approved by Wasilla voters in October 1992,^[51] Palin cut property taxes by 75% and eliminated personal property and business inventory taxes.^[43][52] Using municipal bonds, she made improvements to the roads and sewers, and increased funding to the Police Department.^[45] She also oversaw new bike paths and procured funding for storm-water treatment to protect freshwater resources.^[43] At the same time, she shrank the local museum's budget and deterred talk of a new library and city hall.^[43]

Soon after taking office in October 1996, Palin eliminated the position of museum director^[53] and asked for updated resumes and resignation letters from "city department heads who had been loyal to Stein,"^[54] including the police chief, public works director, finance director, and librarian.^[55] Palin stated this request was to find out their intentions and whether they supported her.^[55] She temporarily required department heads to get her approval before talking to reporters, saying that they first needed to become acquainted with her administration's policies.^[55] She created the position of city administrator,^[45] and reduced her own $68,000 salary by 10%, although by mid-1998 this was reversed by the city council.^[56]

In October 1996, Palin asked library director Mary Ellen Emmons if she would object to the removal of a book from the library if people were picketing to have the book removed.^[57] Emmons responded that she would, and others as well.^[57] Palin explained that she not been proposing censorship but had been discussing many issues with her staff that were "both rhetorical and realistic in nature."^[57] No attempt was made to remove books from the library during Palin's tenure as mayor.^[58]

Palin said she fired Police Chief Irl Stambaugh because he did not fully support her efforts to govern the city.^[59] Stambaugh filed a lawsuit alleging wrongful termination and violation of his free speech rights.^[60] The judge dismissed Stambaugh's lawsuit, holding that the police chief served at the discretion of the mayor, and could be terminated for nearly any reason, even a political one,^[61][62] and ordered Stambaugh to pay Palin's legal fees.^[61]

Wasilla City Hall

Location of Wasilla, Alaska

Second term[link]

During her second term as mayor, Palin proposed and promoted the construction of a municipal sports center to be financed by a 0.5%^[45] sales tax increase and $14.7  million bond issue.^[63] Voters approved the measure by a 20 vote margin and the Wasilla Multi-Use Sports Complex (later named the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center) was built on time and under budget. However, the city spent an additional $1.3 million because of an eminent domain lawsuit caused by the failure to obtain clear title to the property before beginning construction.^[63] The city's long-term debt grew from about $1 million to $25 million due to $15 million for the sports complex, $5.5 million for street projects, and $3 million for water improvement projects. The Wall Street Journal characterized the project as a "financial mess."^[63] A city council member defended the spending increases as being caused by the city's growth during that time.^[64]

Palin also joined with nearby communities in hiring the Anchorage-based lobbying firm of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh to lobby for federal funds. The firm secured nearly $8 million in earmarks for the Wasilla city government,^[65] including $500,000 for a youth shelter, $1.9 million for a transportation hub, and $900,000 for sewer repairs.^[66]

In 2008, Wasilla's current mayor credited Palin's 75 percent property tax cuts and infrastructure improvements with bringing "big-box stores" and 50,000 shoppers per day to Wasilla.^[39]

State-level politics[link]

In 2002, Palin ran for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, coming in second to Loren Leman in a five-way Republican primary.^[67] Following her defeat, she campaigned throughout the state for the nominated Republican governor-lieutenant governor ticket of Frank Murkowski and Leman.^[68] Murkowski and Leman won, Murkowski resigned from his long-held U.S. Senate seat in December 2002 to assume the governorship. Palin was said to be on the "short list" of possible appointees to Murkowski's U.S. Senate seat,^[68] but Murkowski ultimately appointed his daughter, State Representative Lisa Murkowski, as his successor in the Senate.^[69]

Governor Murkowski offered other jobs to Palin, and in February 2003, she accepted an appointment to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which oversees Alaska's oil and gas fields for safety and efficiency.^[68] While she had little background in the area, she said she wanted to learn more about the oil industry, and was named chair of the commission and ethics supervisor.^[1][68][70] By November 2003 she was filing non-public ethics complaints with the state attorney general and the governor against a fellow commission member, Randy Ruedrich, a former petroleum engineer and at the time the chair of the state Republican Party.^[68] He was forced to resign in November 2003.^[68] Palin resigned in January 2004 and put her protests against Ruedrich's "lack of ethics" into the public arena^[19][68] by filing a public complaint against Ruedrich,^[71] who was then fined $12,000. She also joined with Democratic legislator Eric Croft^[72] in complaining that Gregg Renkes, then the attorney general of Alaska,^[73] had a financial conflict of interest in negotiating a coal exporting trade agreement.^[74][75] Renkes also resigned his post.^[19][70]

From 2003 to June 2005, Palin served as one of three directors of "Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.," a 527 group designed to provide political training for Republican women in Alaska.^[76] In 2004, Palin told the Anchorage Daily News that she had decided not to run for the U.S. Senate that year against the Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski because her teenage son opposed it. Palin said, "How could I be the team mom if I was a U.S. Senator?"^[77]

Governor of Alaska[link]

Palin visits soldiers of the Alaska National Guard, July 24, 2007.

In 2006, running on a clean-government platform, Palin defeated incumbent Governor Frank Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary.^[78][79] Her running mate was Sean Parnell, who since leaving the state senate in 2001 had worked as a corporate lobbyist.^{[citation needed]}

In the November election, Palin was outspent but victorious, defeating former Democratic governor Tony Knowles by a margin of 48.3% to 40.9%.^[19] She became Alaska's first female governor, and, at the age of 42, the youngest governor in Alaskan history, the state's first governor to have been born after Alaska achieved U.S. statehood, and the first not to be inaugurated in Juneau (she chose to have the ceremony held in Fairbanks instead). She took office on December 4, 2006, and for most of her term was very popular with Alaska voters. Polls taken in 2007 showed her with 93% and 89% popularity among all voters,^[80] which led some media outlets to call her "the most popular governor in America."^[72][80] A poll taken in late September 2008 after Palin was named to the national Republican ticket showed her popularity in Alaska at 68%.^[81] A poll taken in May 2009 showed Palin's popularity among Alaskans was at 54% positive and 41.6% negative.^[82]

Palin declared that top priorities of her administration would be resource development, education and workforce development, public health and safety, and transportation and infrastructure development. She had championed ethics reform throughout her election campaign. Her first legislative action after taking office was to push for a bipartisan ethics reform bill. She signed the resulting legislation in July 2007, calling it a "first step", and declaring that she remained determined to clean up Alaska politics.^[83]

Palin frequently broke with the Alaskan Republican establishment.^[84][85] For example, she endorsed Parnell's bid to unseat the state's longtime at-large U.S. Representative, Don Young,^[86] and she publicly challenged then-U.S. Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the federal investigation into his financial dealings. Shortly before his July 2008 indictment, she held a joint news conference with Stevens, described by The Washington Post as intended to "make clear she had not abandoned him politically."^[76]

Palin promoted the development of oil and natural-gas resources in Alaska, including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Proposals to drill for oil in ANWR have occasioned national debate.^[87]

In 2006, Palin obtained a passport^[88] and in 2007 traveled for the first time outside of North America on a trip to Kuwait. There she visited the Khabari Alawazem Crossing at the Kuwait–Iraq border and met with members of the Alaska National Guard at several bases.^[89] On her return journey she visited injured soldiers in Germany.^[90]

Budget, spending, and federal funds[link]

Palin in Germany, July 2007

In June 2007, Palin signed a record $6.6 billion operating budget into law.^[91] At the same time, she used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the capital budget in state history. The $237 million in cuts represented over 300 local projects, and reduced the capital budget to $1.6 billion.^[92]

In 2008, Palin vetoed $286 million, cutting or reducing funding for 350 projects from the FY09 capital budget.^[93]

Palin followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet, a purchase made by the Murkowski administration for $2.7 million in 2005 against the wishes of the legislature.^[94] In August 2007, the jet was listed on eBay, but the sale fell through, and the plane later sold for $2.1 million through a private brokerage firm.^[95]

Gubernatorial expenditures[link]

Palin lived in Juneau during the legislative session and lived in Wasilla and worked out of offices in Anchorage the rest of the year. Since the office in Anchorage is 565 miles from Juneau, while she worked there, state officials said she was permitted to claim a $58 per diem travel allowance, which she took (a total of $16,951), and to reimbursement for hotels, which she did not, choosing instead to drive about 50 miles to her home in Wasilla.^[96] She also chose not to use the former governor's private chef.^[97] Republicans and Democrats have criticized Palin for taking the per diem and $43,490 in travel expenses for the times her family accompanied her on state business.^[98][99] In response, Palin's staffers said that these practices were in line with state policy, that her gubernatorial expenses are 80% below those of Murkowski, her predecessor,^[98] and that "many of the hundreds of invitations Palin receives include requests for her to bring her family, placing the definition of 'state business' with the party extending the invitation."^[96] In February 2009, the State of Alaska, reversing a policy that had treated the payments as legitimate business expenses under the Internal Revenue Code, decided that per diems paid to state employees for stays in their own homes will be treated as taxable income and will be included in employees' gross income on their W-2 forms.^[100] Palin herself had ordered the review of the tax policy.^[101]

In December 2008, an Alaska state commission recommended increasing the Governor's annual salary from $125,000 to $150,000. Palin stated that she would not accept the pay raise.^[102] In response, the commission dropped the recommendation.^[103]

Federal funding[link]

In her State of the State address on January 17, 2008, Palin declared that the people of Alaska "can and must continue to develop our economy, because we cannot and must not rely so heavily on federal government [funding]."^[104] Alaska's federal congressional representatives cut back on pork-barrel project requests during Palin's time as governor; despite this, in 2008 Alaska was still the largest per-capita recipient of federal earmarks, requesting nearly $750 million in special federal spending over a period of two years.^[105]

While there is no state sales tax or income tax in Alaska, royalty revenues from the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field (consisting mostly of state-owned lands) have funded large state budgets since 1980, with the exact amounts largely dependent upon the prevailing price of petroleum. As a result, state revenues doubled to $10 billion in 2008. For the 2009 budget, Palin gave a list of 31 proposed federal earmarks or requests for funding, totaling $197 million, to Alaska's senior U.S. Senator Ted Stevens.^[106][107] Palin has stated that her decreasing support for federal funding was a source of friction between her and the state's congressional delegation; Palin requested less in federal funding each year than her predecessor Frank Murkowski requested in his last year.^[108]

Bridge to Nowhere[link]

In 2005, before Palin was elected governor, Congress passed an omnibus spending bill that contained a $442-million earmark for constructing two Alaska bridges. The Gravina Island Bridge, intended to provide a link between the Ketchikan airport on Gravina Island and the city of Ketchikan at a cost of $233 million in Federal grant money, received nationwide attention as a symbol of pork-barrel spending. As the island only has a population of 50, the bridge became known as the "Bridge to Nowhere." The public furor led to Congress removing the earmarks, but retaining the allotted funds to Alaska as part of its general transportation fund.^[109]

Palin holding a t-shirt while visiting Ketchikan during her Gubernatorial campaign in 2006; the ZIP code for the area is 99901.

In 2006, Palin ran for governor with a "build-the-bridge" plank in her platform,^[110] saying she would "not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project ... into something that's so negative."^[111] Palin criticized the use of the word "nowhere" as insulting to local residents^[110][112] and urged speedy work on building the infrastructure "while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."^[112]

As governor, Palin canceled the Gravina Island Bridge in September 2007, saying that Congress had "little interest in spending any more money" due to "inaccurate portrayals of the projects."^[113] Alaska did not return the $442 million in federal transportation funds.^[114]

In 2008, as a vice-presidential candidate, Palin characterized her position as having told Congress "thanks, but no thanks, on that bridge to nowhere." A number of Ketchikan residents said that the claim was false and a betrayal of Palin's previous support for their community.^[114] Some critics said that her statement was misleading, as she had expressed support for the spending project and kept the federal money after the project was canceled.^[115] Palin was criticized for allowing construction of a 3-mile access road, built with $25 million in federal transportation funds set aside as part of the original bridge project, to continue. A spokesman for Alaska's Department of Transportation said that it was within Palin's power to cancel the road project, but noted that the state was still considering cheaper designs to complete the bridge project, and that in any case, the road would open up the surrounding lands for development.^[116][117]

Gas pipeline[link]

In August 2008, Palin signed a bill authorizing the State of Alaska to award TransCanada Pipelines — the sole bidder to meet the state's requirements — a license to build and operate a pipeline to transport natural gas from the Alaska North Slope to the continental United States through Canada.^[118] The governor also pledged $500 million in seed money to support the project.^[119] It is estimated that the project will cost $26 billion.^[118] Newsweek described the project as "the principal achievement of Sarah Palin's term as Alaska's governor."^[120] The pipeline faces legal challenges from Canadian First Nations.^[120]

Predator control[link]