Editor’s note: Byron York’s recent article in National Review on Sarah Palin’s time as governor of Alaska became a campaign issue Tuesday when CNN’s Drew Griffin distorted its meaning in a high-profile interview with Palin. CNN’s problems aside, what was the story really about? And what did it say about Palin’s readiness for office? Now, for the first time, York’s article is available on the web.
Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it’s sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or — or, well, all of the above. Palin, the governor of Alaska, has faced more criticism than any vice-presidential candidate since 1988, when Democrats and the press tore into Dan Quayle. In fact, Palin may have it even worse than Quayle, since she’s taking flak not only from Democrats and the press but from some conservative opinion leaders as well.
After John McCain unexpectedly chose Palin as his running mate, reporters raced to Alaska to look into her family life, including her teenage daughter’s pregnancy; into her per diem expense requests; into her controversial firing of the state’s public-safety commissioner; into her husband’s role as informal adviser; into the gifts she received; and into much more. Those investigations have yielded hundreds of stories. But Palin’s time in the governor’s office hasn’t been all, or even mostly, family drama and minor controversy. She was also, lest we forget, the state’s chief executive. So, what did she do every day? How deeply involved was she in the workings of government? What were her priorities?
And also: Before Palin moved into the governor’s office, she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population 7,028. How did she adjust to a big new job? Was she up to it? What was her learning curve? Discovering how she made that transition could tell us how she might handle becoming vice president.
Yes, there are legitimate concerns about Palin’s lack of experience. Who wouldn’t, at the very least, wish that she had more time in the governor’s office on her résumé? But a look at Palin’s 20 months in power, along with interviews with people who worked with her, shows her to be a serious executive, a governor who picked important things to do and got them done — and who didn’t just stumble into an 80 percent job-approval rating.
THE PALIN PIPELINE
The top issue of the 2006 Alaska governor’s race was whether, and how, to build a pipeline to bring the estimated 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas under Alaska’s North Slope to market. Palin’s Republican predecessor, Frank Murkowski — a man who had spent nearly 22 years in the U.S. Senate before becoming governor — wanted to make a deal with three big oil companies, Exxon Mobil, BP, and Conoco Phillips.
A lot of critics, including Palin, thought Murkowski’s proposed deal gave too much to the companies. For one thing, it called for Alaska to relinquish its right to tax the pipeline, and instead agree to a series of payments from the oil companies — payments that would be locked in for as long as 45 years. In addition, the deal would have rewritten leases and other regulatory devices that the state normally controls. It was an unprecedented proposal, representing sweeping changes from the traditional way of doing business — and not to the state’s advantage.
Palin defeated Murkowski in the primary, and went on to win the governorship, on a platform of throwing out the old deal and starting fresh. Once in office, she was deeply involved in making that happen. “She had four principles she wanted to bring to the process,” says Joe Balash, who served as Palin’s special assistant for energy issues. “One, to have competition. Two, to have clear and objective measures of progress, because with a massive project like that it’s going to be years before any dirt turns. Three, there had to be a commitment to expansion [the pipeline would have to be big enough to handle more gas in the future]. And four, it had to be done without surrendering the state’s sovereignty.”
It was a big, and extraordinarily complex, task. There was no consensus on how it should be done. But Palin, by all accounts, assembled a first-rate group of people to come up with what eventually became a proposal to grant a license to the company TransCanada to build the pipeline. “I give her credit for hiring good people,” says Beth Kerttula, the Democratic minority leader in the Alaska house of representatives who worked with Palin on oil and gas issues and has lately emerged as one of Palin’s leading critics. “She had a strong team.”
There were times during the negotiations when it appeared Palin’s proposal would fall through, perhaps not even getting to a vote in the legislature. Associates say she was determined to prevent that. “She went literally from office to office asking that, regardless of how people intended to vote, that they permit a vote to take place,” Balash recalls. “If she hadn’t made those visits, it in all likelihood would never have come to a vote.”
And when she made those visits, she scored points with legislators of both parties. “On the issues where I worked with her, she listened, and in the long run, she even overrode her own team on things that House Democrats thought were important,” Kerttula recalls. Last summer, Palin’s strategy led to victory, when Alaska’s house and senate approved the TransCanada proposal.
Noting that Palin had also, in 2007, won a fight to raise taxes on the energy companies, the Anchorage Daily News reported that the pipeline deal “sealed the popular Republican governor’s second major victory in two years against not only her opponents in the Legislature but also major oil companies Palin sometimes has poked publicly.” Her approval rating soared.
RUFFLING A TON OF FEATHERS
Palin’s other top priority was an overhaul of the state’s ethics laws. It became something of a signature issue for her. In 2003, after she served as mayor of Wasilla and had run unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor, she was appointed to chair the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. While there, she became convinced that fellow commissioner Randy Ruedrich, the head of the Alaska Republican party, was conducting party business on the commission’s time. Palin filed an ethics complaint against Ruedrich, leading to a long and contentious investigation. In 2004, Ruedrich admitted guilt and agreed to pay a $12,000 fine, which was the largest such punishment ever in Alaska.
Palin’s actions associated her with ethics and reform in the minds of many Alaskans, and it paid off when she ran for governor. In addition to the Ruedrich matter, the state faced several other high-profile government-corruption cases, and it was not terribly unusual to find state lawmakers who had consulting contracts with companies that had business before the legislature. “As a candidate, she owned the ethics issue,” says John Bitney, who was Palin’s top adviser on ethics. “It was who she was. And it was pretty clear that there was a political groundswell to make changes.”
Once in office, Palin asked a prominent former legislator, Ethan Berkowitz, and a former U.S. attorney, Wev Shea, to write a position paper on ethics. The move did not endear her to Republicans in the legislature, because Berkowitz was a Democrat, and Shea was a vocal critic of Republicans (though a Republican himself). “She ruffled a ton of feathers,” says Paulette Simpson, a Palin ally who is president of the Alaska Federation of Republican Women. “That didn’t get her off on a good footing with Republicans.”
Her proposals included the electronic filing of campaign-finance reports, tougher conflict-of-interest laws, more restrictions on gifts from lobbyists, a more extensive ban on lobbying by just-departed officials, a ban on lobbying by spouses of legislators, and several other measures. Her plan was just one of several competing proposals in the legislature, and, according to Bitney, she showed a pragmatic desire to get the reforms done even if her bill was not the one that passed.
As it turned out, Palin’s bill did win approval, and the new ethics rules were signed into law, with bipartisan support, in July 2007. Democrats attributed some of her success to luck — “She came in at a time when basically the timing was right,” says Beth Kerttula — but the fact is the new, inexperienced governor had won another major victory.
KILLER SHRUBS AND ZAMBONI BLADES
There’s no doubt that energy and ethics have dominated Palin’s time as governor. But she has made her mark in other ways as well. One of her favorites — she has talked about it quite a bit since she began the race for vice president — is her decision, in May of this year, to veto $268 million in proposed spending, which she described as money for “things like dealing with killer shrubs and Zamboni blades that are not the state’s highest priority at the time.”
And then there was the time earlier this year when she fought to cut Alaska’s business-licensing fee from $100 to $50 a year. (It had risen from $25 to $100 during the Murkowski administration.) Frustrated by the legislature’s inaction, Palin went to Alaska’s department of commerce and got the e-mail addresses of 23,000 business owners in the state. She then sent them a message, saying the $100 fee “has caused a hardship for those who are helping grow our economy, especially people who operate home-based and part-time businesses.” Legislators were angry — some accused Palin of inappropriate lobbying — but she won the day, and the fee was cut.
Of course, there are lots of other issues that governors deal with — health care, social services, transportation, and others — and on some of them Palin has yet to make a significant mark. She is also facing a serious scandal, the so-called Troopergate affair, concerning her firing of public-safety commissioner Walt Monegan. The controversy stems from Palin’s allegedly pressuring Monegan to fire state trooper Mike Wooten, who had been involved in an ugly divorce from Palin’s sister and who had allegedly threatened members of Palin’s family. When Wooten wasn’t fired, Palin removed Monegan, which led to bipartisan calls for an investigation. (Palin told ABC news Monegan was dismissed for poor job performance.) The legislature began one over the summer, and a number of Palin’s allies and opponents say it would likely have been handled quickly and without any great controversy — until Palin was picked for the Republican ticket. Now it’s war, and Palin faces accusations of stonewalling.
Still, it’s fair to say that overall, Palin’s time in office, from her swearing-in until the moment John McCain picked her to be his running mate, has been a success. And from her handling of the issues she has tackled, it’s possible to see a pattern in the way she approaches governing.
First, she hires well. “There was a pretty good team of people assembled right away to come in and start with her big-picture principles and develop a process and legislation to carry that out,” says Joe Balash. “I would say that her management style is to give her staff, her cabinet, a pretty long leash, but with very high expectations — and she’s not afraid to tell you that you didn’t get it right.”
Second, she is involved with details on some big things, but not on everything. “When it comes to issues that she cares about, that she knows the public cares about, she’s got all kinds of time and prioritizes things in a big way,” says one insider who has worked with her and asked not to be named. “For the mundane tasks of government . . . say, regulations for the Kenai River, she instead looks for recommendations from her cabinet and the regulatory agencies, but she’s not going to get in and argue specific details.”
Third, she is dead set on fulfilling campaign promises. “There was this absolute expectation that if it was an issue that had been talked about during the campaign and there was a particular commitment that she had made, then we had to live up to it, no matter how difficult,” says Balash, “because her big thing was restoring the confidence of the public in state government.”
It should be noted that none of that makes Palin unerringly conservative. Yes, she calls herself a conservative, and she seems dedicated to reducing the size and cost of government when she can, but she’s also perfectly happy to raise taxes on a big, unpopular (oil) company, if that’s what voters want. Her conservatism comes with a substantial portion of populism.
Still, Palin’s record in office has quieted many of those who said she simply did not have the experience or ability to serve as governor. “She’s been in office for two years now and has been fairly successful,” says Gene Therriault, a Republican state senator and an ally of Palin’s, “which either belies the argument that she was not prepared or is an argument for the fact that she is a quick study.”