Sarah Palin Seen as GOP Rising Star
by FOXNews.com
Friday, August 29, 2008
Sarah Palin, John McCain’s vice presidential pick, became the first female governor of Alaska in 2006, as well as its youngest.
A 44-year-old mother of five, her anti-abortion stance is certain to appeal to evangelicals, while her views on the threats of climate change mirror McCain’s.
“Palin is becoming a star in the conservative movement, a fiscal conservative in a state that is looking like a boondoggle for pork-barrel spending,” Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway has said. “She’s young, vibrant, fresh and now, a new mother of five. She should be in the top tier. If the Republican Party wants to wrestle itself free from the perception that it is royalist and not open to putting new talent on the bench, this would be the real opportunity.”
Democrats will point out that she has no foreign policy credentials or experience, but her presence adds youth to a McCain ticket and her gender could help sway women, especially the “security moms” who helped President Bush win re-election in 2004, to vote GOP.
Born in Sandpoint, Idaho, on Feb. 11, 1964, Palin moved with her family at the age of three months to Wasilla, Alaska. She returned to her birth state to attend the University of Idaho, where she studied journalism and graduated in 1987 with a bachelor’s degree.
Palin is the mother of five children — Bristol, 17; Willow, 13; Piper, 7; Track, 18; and Trig, who was born in April with Down syndrome.
The governor is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and a strong anti-abortion advocate. “We’ve both been very vocal about being pro-life,” she said of herself and her husband, Todd.
Palin grew up in Wasilla, just outside of Anchorage, played on Wasilla’s state champion girls’ basketball team in 1982, wore the crown of Miss Wasilla in 1984 and competed in the Miss Alaska contest.
She began her professional career as a television sports reporter, but after she married she helped run her husband’s family’s commercial fishing business. Other professional endeavors included the ownership of a snow machine, watercraft and all-terrain-vehicle business.
She ran for Wasilla City Council in 1992, winning her seat by opposing tax increases. Four years later, at age 32, she defeated a three-term incumbent to become mayor of Wasilla.
Palin conflicted with the city’s staff and administrators who had stood by her predecessor, leading opponents to call her “Sarah Barracuda,” reviving a nickname she earned on the basketball court for her fierce and adversarial style.
At the end of her second term, party leaders encouraged her to enter the 2002 race for lieutenant governor. Palin, running against veteran legislators with far more experience, finished second in the Republican primary by fewer than 2,000 votes, making a name for herself in statewide politics.
Frank Murkowski, elected governor in 2002, suffered politically from his decision to appoint his daughter as his Senate successor and for purchasing a state jet for his travel. A Republican, Murkowski also faced criticism that the natural gas pipeline deal that he had negotiated was a sweetheart deal with oil producers.
In 2006 Palin ran on ethics reform and trounced Murkowski in the GOP primary. She easily beat her Democratic opponent, former Gov. Tony Knowles, in the general election.
When she took office, she promised to reduce government spending, advance plans for a 1,715-mile natural gas pipeline and increase government accountability and transparency.
In her first year as governor of Alaska, Palin raised taxes on the oil industry, pushed through ethics legislation amid a burgeoning corruption investigation of Alaska lawmakers, bucked her party’s old guard and ordered her administration to seek fewer congressional earmarks after Alaska’s “bridge to nowhere” became a national symbol of pork-barrel spending.
Her popularity soared above 80 percent when she enacted an ethics bill and shelved pork-barrel projects by fellow Republicans.
Palin is currently the subject of a legislative probe, expected to be completed in November, of the firing of a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with Palin’s younger sister. |
