A former beauty queen who has been dubbed “America’s Hottest Governor,” Sarah Palin has nevertheless demonstrated during a meteoric political career that she is more than just a pretty face.
The 44-year-old mother of five sent shockwaves through the US presidential election campaign on Friday when she was named Republican candidate John McCain’s running mate.
Alaska’s first woman governor, Palin is a conservative opponent of abortion who hunts regularly and casts herself as an anti-corruption crusader, positions which have helped win her approval ratings of 80 percent.
She has only led the vast, oil-producing northwestern state since December 2006, when she became the youngest person ever to hold Alaska’s governorship.
Now she has become the second woman ever to run on a major-party White House ticket, and in announcing his pick McCain highlighted Palin’s conservative credentials and experience in rooting out graft in Alaska.
“She stands up for what’s right and she doesn’t let anyone tell her to sit down,” McCain told a rally in Ohio on Friday.
Palin grew up in the town of Wasilla, Alaska — population 6,700 — leading her high school basketball team, winning the local beauty pageant and then placing second in the Miss Alaska contest. A popular car bumper sticker in Alaska reads: “Coldest state, Hottest Governor.”
Palin studied journalism at the University of Idaho and then worked in Anchorage as a television sports reporter before moving into politics, returning to Wasilla in 1992 to serve on the city council. Later she successfully challenged the incumbent-mayor and held office from 1996 to 2002.
Palin soon moved on to bigger game: Republicans entrenched in state office. After she first lost a run for the lieutenant governorship, she helped expose shady deals linked to the state Republican party’s top bosses and finally ousted Republican incumbent Frank Murkowski for the governorship in 2006.
On taking office she immediately began a drive focusing on legislative ethics, driving through a reform bill within six months of her election win.
Palin has juggled her job as state chief with being a parent, and regularly picked up her daughter Piper from the school bus when it stopped near the state capitol building last year.
She continues to commute daily from her hometown of Wasilla to the governor’s office, where a large sign over her suite reads: “Time to make a difference.”
A digital clock nearby counts down the days, hours, minutes and seconds remaining in her term, which ends in December 2010.
But Palin’s career has not been all plain sailing.
She is under investigation by the Alaska Legislature for possible abuse of power concerning the dismissal of the head of the Department of Public Safety, Walt Monegan, last month.
Internet reports alleged that Monegan had been dismissed because he refused to fire a state trooper who was the ex-husband of Palin’s sister. Palin has consistently denied that she put pressure on Monegan to fire the trooper involved, describing the allegations as “outrageous” and “false.”
But it emerged on Aug. 13 that there had been more than 20 calls, e-mails and other communications from Palin’s office to employees at Monegan’s Department of Public Safety.
“It’s embarrassing for me to disclose at this time a conversation has occurred, again unbeknownst to me,” Palin told a news conference.
So far Palin has not been questioned by the prosecutor heading the ongoing probe.
She is married to Todd Palin, 43, a former commercial fisherman who now works in Alaska’s oil fields and who is a champion snowmobile racer.
A member of the National Rifle Association, she is a staunch defender of gun ownership and promotes development of the oil and gas reserves in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge against protests of environmentalists.
She is also an ardent “pro-life” campaigner who gave birth in April to a boy after earlier testing had led to a diagnosis that he had Downs Syndrome.
She also has a son in the US army scheduled to be deployed to Iraq on Sept. 11, she said on Friday.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of