Palin’s Homecoming
By Monica Davey
Hundreds greeted Gov. Sarah Palin upon her return to Alaska on Wednesday night. (Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times)
FAIRBANKS, Alaska — The last time people in this state saw her in person, Sarah Palin was just their governor.
What a difference two weeks can deliver.
As an airplane carrying Governor Palin, now Senator John McCain’s running mate, touched down in her home state on Wednesday night, it was greeted by hundreds of residents waving signs and chanting her name as confetti spilled over them inside a nearby hangar.
“This is beautiful,” Ms. Palin told the crowd, after she and her husband, Todd, who have been campaigning for days, reunited with her infant son, Trig, and two of her daughters on a tarmac. She told members of her staff whom she spotted in the crowd that she could not wait to give them a hug. “Thank you for holding down the fort,” she said, “and thank you for carrying the water.”
Ms. Palin gave her own constituents a slight variation on the speech she has offered along the campaign trail in the lower 48; some of her stories of Alaska are already known to people here, and she seemed to offer a nod to that. She noted a state-owned luxury jet that she had sold on eBay when she took over as governor, an often repeated story — then glanced self consciously outside.
“I say that hopefully not sounding hypocritical as you watched me walk off that,” she said, pointing a finger at her new campaign plane, now painted with the words “McCain Palin” in blue and parked right outside.
The locals here, crammed into the hangar, some in fold-up chairs, did not seem to mind the new plane in the least.
“She’s a beautiful, good, decent woman with a wonderful family — just look at them,” said Inge Griffin, 76, who said she had lived in Alaska for 55 years and considers herself an unshakable advocate of the governor. Mrs. Griffin said she was less certain of how the rest of the nation has, so far, treated Governor Palin.
Then Mrs. Griffin wrinkled her nose in the direction of the cameras and the reporters who had followed Ms. Palin here. “There’s always something, you know?” she said. “But she’ll be just fine. I don’t worry about Sarah.”
Supporters cheered as the governor’s plane pulled up in Fairbanks. (Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times)
Ms. Palin told the crowd that she was spreading a message to the rest of the country, and that many were wondering, “What did we do up here in Alaska that has really allowed for a shaking up here?”
She spoke of energy policy, called for more drilling for oil and more alternative sources.
“Energy independence for our nation is going to start right here in Alaska with that natural gas pipeline,” she said, speaking of a pipeline she had pressed for. “And people all over the country, they’re hearing about it and they’re saying, ‘Thank you, Alaska, for allowing safe responsible development of your resources to help to secure our state, provide jobs here, but also for the betterment of our entire nation.’ They’re saying, ‘Thank you, Alaska.’ ”
She continued: “Today, we’re spending nearly $700 billion on imported resources, we’re spending that money to some regimes who do not like America and we should be developing here, allowing the resources development to be tapped responsibly, safely, ethically here, producing it right at home.”
Then she remembered her audience.
This was not Virginia, from earlier Wednesday. Or Ohio or Pennsylvania.
“I feel like I’m preaching to the choir cause you guys already know this,” she said.
“I promise that I will do my best to make Alaskans proud in the weeks to come,” she said at one point. “And I would ask you to help me then, let us work together. Let us elect John McCain, a great man who will be a great president because he’s a friend of Alaska.”
On Thursday, Ms. Palin is expected to attend a deployment ceremony here for her eldest son, Track, who is being sent to Iraq. “It’s going to be awesome to get to spend a couple of days here and just getting back in touch with all of you and the great land that we call Alaska that God has so richly blessed,” she said.
Then, on Saturday, it is off again, with the election less than two months away. |
