John McCain Selects Alaska Governor Sarah Palin As VPresidential Running Mate

Sarah Palin - 2008 Republican Vice President candidate

ARLINGTON, VA -- U.S. Senator John McCain today announced that he has selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate and to serve as his vice president.

Governor Palin is a tough executive who has demonstrated during her time in office that she is ready to be president. She has brought Republicans and Democrats together within her Administration and has a record of delivering on the change and reform that we need in Washington.

Governor Palin has challenged the influence of the big oil companies while fighting for the development of new energy resources. She leads a state that matters to every one of us -- Alaska has significant energy resources and she has been a leader in the fight to make America energy independent.

In Alaska, Governor Palin challenged a corrupt system and passed a landmark ethics reform bill. She has actually used her veto and cut budgetary spending. She put a stop to the "bridge to nowhere" that would have cost taxpayers $400 million dollars.

As the head of Alaska's National Guard and as the mother of a soldier herself, Governor Palin understands what it takes to lead our nation and she understands the importance of supporting our troops.

Governor Palin has the record of reform and bipartisanship that others can only speak of. Her experience in shaking up the status quo is exactly what is needed in Washington today.

Early life and education

Palin was born Sarah Louise Heath in Sandpoint, Idaho, the daughter and third of four children of Sarah Heath (nee Sheeran), a school secretary, and Charles R. Heath, a science teacher and track coach. Her family moved to Alaska when she was an infant. As a child, she would sometimes go moose hunting with her father before school, and the family regularly ran 5K and 10K races.

Palin attended Wasilla High School in Wasilla, Alaska, where she was the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter at the school and the point guard and captain of the school's basketball team. She helped the team win the Alaska small-school basketball championship in 1982, hitting a critical free throw in the last seconds of the game, despite having an ankle stress fracture at the time. She earned the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" because of her intense play and was the leader of team prayer before games.

In 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla beauty contest, then finished second in the Miss Alaska pageant, at which she won a college scholarship. In the Wasilla pageant, she played the flute and won "Miss Congeniality".

Palin attended Hawaii Pacific College in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1982 for a semester, where she majored in Business Administration, and transferred in 1983 to North Idaho College. In 1987, Palin received a Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho, where she also minored in political science.

In 1988, she worked briefly as a sports reporter for KTUU-TV in Anchorage, Alaska, and also helped out in her husband’s family commercial fishing business.

Early political career

Alaska Independence Party

Sarah Palin was a member of the Alaska Independence Party, which has as its main goal a vote to determine whether or not Alaska should secede from the United States. Palin and her husband were members in 1994, even attending the 1994 statewide convention in Wasilla. Palin also sent a videotaped message to the party's 2008 convention.

City council and mayorship

Palin began her political career in 1992 when she ran for Wasilla, Alaska city council, supporting a controversial new sales tax and advocating "a safer, more progressive Wasilla". She won and served two terms on the council from 1992 to 1996.

In 1996, she challenged and defeated incumbent John Stein for the non-partisan office of mayor, criticizing wasteful spending and high taxes. In October, 1996, she asked the police chief, librarian, public works director, and finance director to resign, and instituted a policy requiring department heads to get her approval before talking to reporters; an editorial in a local paper, the Frontiersman, criticized the policy as "a gag order." The librarian kept the job, but in January 1997, Palin fired the police chief, citing a failure to support her administration. According to the Daily Sitka Sentinel (Sitka Daily Sentinel, "Wasilla Librarian Keeps Job," Feb. 3, 1997), Palin said in a letter that she wanted a change because she believed the two did not fully support her administration, and refused to detail her complaint … "saying only that 'You know in your heart when someone is supportive of you.'".

In response, a group of 60 residents calling themselves Concerned Citizens for Wasilla discussed attempting a recall campaign against Palin, but decided against it. The fired police chief sued Palin, saying he had been fired because he supported Palin's opponent. The court dismissed the suit, finding that Palin had the right to fire city employees even for political reasons.

Palin fulfilled campaign promises to reduce the salary of the mayor, and to reduce property taxes by 40 percent. She increased the city sales tax to pay for construction of an indoor ice rink and sports complex. At this time, state Republican leaders began grooming her for higher office. She ran for re-election as mayor against Stein in 1999, winning by a 50% margin. Palin was also elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors.

In 2002, when term limits prevented Palin from running for a third term as mayor, her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, ran for the office but lost the election to Dianne Keller.

2002 run for Lieutenant Governor

In 2002, Palin made an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor, coming in second to Loren Leman in a five-way race in the Republican primary. After Frank Murkowski resigned from his long-held U.S. Senate seat in mid-term to become governor, he considered appointing Palin to his Senate seat but instead chose his daughter, Alaska state representative Lisa Murkowski.

Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commissioner

Governor Murkowski appointed Palin to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, where she chaired the Commission from 2003 to 2004, and also served as Ethics Supervisor. Palin resigned in January 2004 in protest over what she called the "lack of ethics" of fellow Republican members.

After resigning, Palin filed formal complaints against the state Republican Party's chairman, Randy Ruedrich, and former Alaska Attorney General Gregg Renkes. She accused Ruedrich, one of her fellow commissioners, of doing work for the party on public time and working closely with a company he was supposed to be regulating. Ruedrich and Renkes both resigned and Ruedrich paid a record $12,000 fine.

From 2003 to June 2005, Palin served as one of three directors of "Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.," a 527 group that was designed to serve as a political boot camp for Republican women in Alaska.

Governor of Alaska

In 2006, running on a clean-government platform, Palin defeated then-Governor Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Her running mate was State Senator Sean Parnell. Ted Stevens made a last-moment endorsement as Stevens and Palin filmed a TV commercial together for Palin's gubernatorial campaign.

In August, she declared that education, public safety, and transportation would be the three cornerstones of her administration. Despite spending less than her Democratic opponent, she won the gubernatorial election in November, defeating former Governor Tony Knowles 48.3 percent to 40.9 percent.

Palin became Alaska's first woman governor and, at 42, the youngest in Alaskan history. She is the first Alaskan governor born after Alaska achieved U.S. statehood and the first governor not inaugurated in Juneau. She chose to have the ceremony held in Fairbanks. She took office on December 4, 2006.

She has challenged the state Republican establishment. For example, she endorsed Parnell's bid to unseat the state's longtime at-large U.S. Congressman, Don Young. Palin also publicly challenged Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the federal investigation into his financial dealings. Shortly after Stevens was indicted on corruption charges, Palin removed a 2006 campaign ad in which she appeared with Stevens from her gubernatorial campaign Web site. Not long after taking office, she auctioned the governor's state jet on eBay.

A poll published by Hays Research on July 28, 2008, showed Palin's approval rating at 80 percent, while another Ivan Moore poll showed it at 76 percent, a drop which the pollsters attributed to the controversial firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. A subsequent Rasmussen Reports poll from July 31, 2008 showed 35 percent of Alaskans rated her performance as excellent, 29 percent good, 22 percent fair, and 14 percent poor.

In March 2008, Palin produced a video welcoming the convention of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party to Fairbanks.

Palin obtained her first passport in 2007 and visited members of the Alaska National Guard stationed in Kuwait. Her spokeswoman Maria Comella noted that Palin has also visited Germany and Ireland.