The Lower 48 may be mystified by VP choice Palin, but Alaska gets it
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s selection as John McCain’s running mate Friday mystified many in the Lower 48. Even in imitation of a day of cable intelligence overlade, more after what is stated may surprise what the inexperienced politician from a distant state could bring to the ticket.
The McCain camp played up Palin’s maverick vouchers. She became regulator after defeating an incumbent Republican whose administration was beset by ethical problems.
In office, she continued to speak out about a growing Alaska political scandal that for the most part hit Republicans, and took on the powerful oil industry.
Palin, 44, now is facing questions about her activities. The Alaska Legislature has named a special counsel to investigate whether she abused her berth by seeking to have her sister’s ex-husband fired as a state trooper.
But in Alaska, friends and foes of Palin recite McCain must have seen what they’ve known for the past few years: Palin has a preternatural ability to connect with voters and make them feel she cares.
Think Bill Clinton — but some anti-abortion, snowmobile-riding, moose-hunting, mother-of-five Bill Clinton.
“There’s even-handed those the masses who you meet in life and in politics in which place immediately you are just drawn to them and want to be around them and you be able to feel that genuineness from her,” said Steve Menard, a lifelong Palin family friend and city councilman in Wasilla, the thorp where she got her start.
“That’s the sort of intoxicates Alaskans,” he said. “She can narrate to our struggles and our own lives.”
A popular leader
Palin’s ability to have relation by voters led her from Wasilla, an Anchorage suburb of 7,000 roughed out of a valley north of the city, to the governor’s race in 2006.
She beat incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in the primary and former Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles in the general election.
In function, Palin fought with the Alaska oil companies and Republican lawmakers through the whole extent of construction of a natural-gas pipeline, pushing through her plan.
