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Sarah Palin to visit Boston

E-mail|Link|Comments () February 3, 2010 05:30 PM

Dina Rudick/Globe Staff

Palin speaking at the Republican National Convention in September 2008.

By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin plans to visit Boston in April to speak at a Tea Party movement rally, she said today in a newspaper opinion piece.

Palin revealed that she would travel to Boston, a Democratic stronghold, in an op-ed piece in USA Today in which she laid out her reasons for attending the Tea Party convention this week in Nashville and said she planned other Tea Party appearances.

"This weekend, it's Nashville, but in March, I'll head to Searchlight, Nev., for the kickoff rally at the Tea Party Express III. In April, I'll be in Boston for a Tea Party gathering there. Across the country, tea-partiers will be sharing our vision for America's future, a vision that promotes common sense solutions to out-of-control spending and an out-of-touch political establishment," she said in the piece.

The former Alaska governor was Senator John McCain's running mate in 2008. Despite her election loss and the questions raised about her qualifications to be president, she still has a devoted following among some conservatives.

Mark Williams, a spokesman for the Tea Party Express group, which is planning an April 14 event in Boston, said Palin would be the headliner of the event. He said he wasn't sure if the venue had been decided on yet.

He said he hoped that Republican Scott Brown, who last month won a special election for the US Senate in Massachusetts, would also attend. "I think we've probably reached out to him," he said.

He said the group had no qualms about staging an event in one of the nation's most liberal states.

"It's a working stiff state that's neither blue nor red," he said.

Massachusetts may be liberal, but it wasn't liberal enough to lift Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley over Brown, who got strong support from independents. And the national political scene has been rocked by Brown's victory in the race for the seat held for 47 years by the late Edward M. Kennedy.