The McCain campaign wants us to believe that Sarah Palin is a maverick reformer who took on the old boy network and cleaned up corrupt politics in the state of Alaska.  A little investigation, however, proves that Palin is mired knee deep in the very corruption she is supposed to have eradicated.

 

 State documents show that Palin used city computers to manage an unsuccessful campaign for Lieutenant Governor in 2002.  Palin billed taxpayers for mailings, phone calls, printed literature and even her secretary’s services.  She used her city hall office and fax number on her political campaign registration form, and even used her city computer to send several emails to the state’s Republican Party chairman, Randy Reudrich, to complain about endorsements she did not receive.

 

 The action that got her labeled a reformer was actually an act of ethical malfeasance itself. While acting as chairwoman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, Palin reported chairman Reudrich to Governor Frank Murkowski’s office, accusing him, ironically, of an ethics breach for conducting work for the GOP on state time.  To obtain the necessary evidence for her claim, Palin hacked into Reudrich’s state computer, which might be seen as an ethical or criminal breach in itself.

 

 Palin resigned from the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in 2004 in protest over what she called corrupt practices. Reudrich eventually paid a $12,000 fine and Sarah Palin was labeled a reformer.

 

In July 2006, Paul Jenkins, an editor for the conservative AlaskanVoice of the Times, confronted Palin about her own apparent ethical breaches in 2002. Her response was to insist, tersely and without explanation, that her situation was different than Reudrich’s.  When he asked how using city computers and phones for campaign business were any different than Reudrich using a state computer for GOP business, Palin just insisted the two were “…simply not the same.”

 

The following day Palin’s campaign leaked a story insisting the Alaska media was attempting to smear Palin’s reputation. “When her goody-two-shoes act starts to crumble…” wrote Jenkins “…folks may see her for the rank politician she is, and not necessarily a good one at that.”

 

I think we may soon see her act crumble and will find the real Sarah Palin is not as pretty, sweet or kind as the sugar coated version we have all been force fed from the beginning.  This, and other reports from the Alaska media who know her best, show that Sarah Palin is driven by ravenous ambition.  It seems she will use any means to satiate that hunger no matter how unethical.

 

 

 

Sources: Palin’s Reformer Myth, Jason Leopold, Sept. 3, 2008, TPM, Palin As Reformer?  Not Quite…., Kate Klonick and Zachary Roth, September 3, 2008,