How Sarah Palin Mastered Politics

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Being mayor was, in the beginning, as contentious as campaigning for the job. Palin ended up dismissing almost all the city department heads who had been loyal to Stein, including a few who had been instrumental in getting her into politics to begin with. Irl Stambaugh, the police chief, filed a lawsuit for wrongful termination, alleging that Palin fired him in part at the behest of the National Rifle Association because he had opposed a concealed-gun law that the NRA supported. He lost the suit. The animosity spawned some talk of a recall attempt, but eventually Palin's opponents in the city council opted for a more conciliatory route.

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Palin saw a larger future and presided over Wasilla's rapid expansion. Churches proliferated as well. "We like to call this the Bible Belt of Alaska," says Cheryl Metiva, executive director of the local chamber of commerce. Stein says that as mayor, Palin was as much about promoting conservative values as about promoting growth. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Emmons, couldn't be reached for comment. St. George, however, points out that Palin couldn't have seen everything through a religious lens; like all smart pols, she knows how to appeal to a broad constituency. She did, after all, resist calls to restrict operating hours for the bars in town.

To the Statehouse
When palin, who went on to win re-election by a landslide, left office in 2002 because of term limits, her husband's stepmother Faye Palin, who was pro-choice and registered as unaffiliated, ran for mayor. She did not, however, get Sarah's endorsement. Several longtime politicians in the valley say they think abortion was the reason Sarah didn't supporting Faye. A former city-council member recalls that Faye's was a heated race too, mainly because of right-to-life issues: "People were writing BABY KILLER on Faye's campaign signs just a few days before the election." Faye lost the race to the candidate Sarah had backed, Dianne Keller, who is still mayor of Wasilla. (Faye told the New York Daily News that she liked listening to Barack Obama speak and wasn't sure who would get her vote in November.)

Palin ran for lieutenant governor in 2002 and lost. After that, Republican governor Frank Murkowski gave her a plum assignment on the state energy commission. She made what is perhaps the defining move of her career when she quit in protest over Republican corruption on the board. It was, most people agree, an authentic gesture. But it was also great political theater because by then, the hottest issue in Alaska wasn't gay marriage or even abortion. It was corruption and cronyism. In ethics reform, she had found the new political identity she needed to make it to the next level.

Andrew Halcro, a noted Palin critic who ran against her as an independent in the 2006 gubernatorial race, says she knew instinctively the issues were changing. Halcro recalls a debate in October 2006 in which she withstood repeated questioning about her opposition to abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Exasperated, Palin asked the moderator if all the same questions would be asked of her opponents. Abortion was detracting from her new message: cleaning up the capital.

Palin's wasn't always a straight path to reformer in chief. McCain lauds her opposition to pork, but she hired a lobbying firm to lure millions in federal funding to Wasilla while she was mayor, and she served as a major fund raiser for Ted Stevens, the patron saint of the "bridge to nowhere" (which she supported before she didn't support it). Still, Palin has sloughed off the old days and completed a difficult task: restoring a modicum of trust in Juneau. Her approval ratings register in the 80s. Promising in her Inaugural Address to protect the state like a "nanook defending her cub," she has continued to play down social issues as governor. When a parental-consent law was struck down by Alaska's highest court in 2007, Palin called the decision "outrageous" but refused demands from conservatives to introduce antiabortion legislation in a session that was supposed to be about a natural gas pipeline. "In all the years I've known Sarah and her parents, we never talked about right to life or any of that," says St. George. "She doesn't let those issues get in the way of getting things done for the community." Her political journey from banner-waving GOP social conservative to maverick reformer may be good timing, but that happens to be a talent all successful politicians possess. It's what former journalist Bill McAllister, who now works for Palin's press staff, used to call "Sarah-dipity" — that uncanny gift of knowing exactly what voters are looking for at a particular moment.

Small Town, Big Trouble
The question is whether her political skills will be enough to withstand the scrutiny she, her family and her past are being subjected to. On a Tuesday night at Tailgaters in Wasilla, everyone is drinking and engaged in a heated debate: Did the governor eat some of Mike Wooten's cow moose? You've probably heard about Wooten — Palin stands accused of sacking the state's top cop because he wouldn't fire Wooten, a state trooper who is in a messy custody battle with Palin's younger sister. Palin's staff and husband assembled a dossier of misbehavior by Wooten, which they tried to feed to his bosses. Among the charges: he shot a moose without a permit a few years back.

Some of the people at the bar are not Palin fans. They are explaining to me that Wooten may have shot that moose but that the Palins knew about it and Chuck Heath divvied up the meat for the family, including Palin. It may sound ridiculous, but this tale is a national issue now — and it goes to the heart of whether local resentments will come back to haunt her. The town that McCain's campaign had hoped would be a manly Mayberry backdrop for its candidate has instead turned into a suq of intrigue and innuendo. I hadn't been here two days before I started getting anonymous tipster e-mails. Someone woke me up with a knock on my hotel-room door, then said little more than, Let's get in my truck. He thought someone was removing documents from city hall, so we went. That rumor turned out to be false, but there will be plenty of other rumors to come.

Palin's got a thousand good friends in this town. But she also has a few enemies and a few problems. Her talent and moxie have taken her rapidly from parish mayor to governor, but at some point burning through the history books will be incompatible with her impulse, as described by friends, to remain a private person. Her daughter's pregnancy is beyond her control, but the fact that she did not inform McCain's team about it until a day before he offered her the job has chagrined even her Republican backers. Her story, while a powerful narrative for some women, may have been rushed into circulation by Team McCain before it had been fully scoured for weak spots.

Palin's rise and overnight renown form one of the great political arcs of the new century. Is she ready for the tests and attacks that come with that? She's already proved she can play tough, but the stakes just got a lot higher. She started out in the Elite Six. She is now a member of the Elite Four. And there is no irony in the name.