A valentine to evangelical base
Mother of 5 plays well with conservatives
DENVER - Sarah Palin, John McCain's pick for vice president, describes herself as "just your average hockey mom," a mother of five and volunteer basketball coach who came to politics through her hometown PTA in Wasilla, Alaska - population about 8,500.
But Palin, Alaska's first female governor who could become the first woman to serve as vice president, has a background that has been, in many ways, out of the ordinary for a politician on the national stage.
A standout high school athlete nicknamed "Sarah Barracuda," Palin, 44, worked in corporate communications and as a television sportscaster, describes her current occupation as governor and "commercial fisherman" and is a former beauty queen who was featured in a Vogue magazine spread last year.
A life member of the NRA and an avid sportswoman, she supports offshore drilling in Alaska and backs construction of a $40 billion natural gas pipeline through her state.
Though she won office pledging to smash the state's "old boy network," Palin is under investigation for dismissing the state's public safety director, allegedly after he resisted pressure to fire a state trooper - Palin's former brother-in-law, involved in a child custody battle with her sister.
And in her introductory remarks yesterday, Palin praised former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, a favorite target of staunch Republicans.
"She's somebody I've been watching since her name started floating" as a potential vice presidential candidate, said David Domke, a political science professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. "She is wildly popular in Alaska. She's pro-life and conservative. That plays well" with GOP conservatives. "She is a kind of valentine to the evangelical base of the party."
She is opposed to abortion except to save the life of the mother. When she learned that her infant son would be born with Down's Syndrome, she said she never considered ending the pregnancy. When Trig was born in April, she penned a note to loved ones in the voice of "Trig's creator, Your Heavenly Father," rejecting sympathy for her son.
According to an October 2006 profile in the Anchorage Daily News, Palin opposes stem cell research, physician-assisted suicide, and state health benefits for same-sex partners.
Earlier this year, she told the newspaper that schools should not fear teaching creationism alongside evolution. "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. . . . Healthy debate is so important and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both. And you know, I say this too as a daughter of a science teacher."
Born Sarah Heath, she is the third of four children of Chuck and Sally Heath, two popular schoolteachers who left Idaho for Alaska the year she was born. The family eventually settled in the small town of Wasilla, a tiny hamlet about 40 miles north of Anchorage.
A multiple-sport athlete whose father coached the cross-country team, Palin was team captain and star point guard for the Wasilla High Warriors, an underdog girls' basketball team that improbably won the Alaska state basketball championship her senior year, according to a 2006 biography by the Anchorage Daily News.
Raised in a religious household, her faith apparently emerged at a young age: a photo of her from a high school yearbook on the Wasilla High website carries a Biblical caption: "He is the light and the light is the life. SH" While in high school she headed her high school's Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
In college, Palin competed in the Miss Wasilla beauty pageant in 1984 while working toward the communications degree she received at the University of Idaho in 1987. She won her hometown's competition and was named Miss Congeniality in the statewide event.
After graduating from college, Palin began working in communications for various business and development concerns such as the Alaska Miners Association and the Alaska Development Council, according to her official governor's campaign biography.
A year after graduating from college, she eloped with Todd Palin, her high school sweetheart, and was married in a civil ceremony.
Palin was just 28 when her political star began its rapid ascent. Urged on by city activists, she ran for and won a seat on the Wasilla city council, in part to help promote economic development in the small valley town.
Four years later, she was elected Wasilla's mayor, knocking off three-term incumbent John Stein by promising tax cuts, spending reform, and a fresh face leading the city.
Palin largely delivered on her promises, according to the newspaper profile, but not without controversy. Her sweeping agenda and aggressive personnel changes angered some city leaders, who considered launching a campaign to recall her.
By the mid 1990s, Palin was among a select group of young Republicans that the state party groomed for higher office. In 2002 she ran for lieutenant governor and lost. But as a reward for her loyalty on the stump, Republican Governor Frank Murkowski chose her for the vacant chairmanship of the Alaska Oil and Natural Gas Conservation Commission. She quit in frustration 11 months later when her private complaints about an ethics scandal involving another commissioner appointed by the governor fell on deaf ears.
In 2006, after the scandal erupted and the political establishment shifted, Palin decided to run for governor, fueled in part by her image as a reformer. After leading in the polls for most of the race, Palin swept to victory with 51 percent of the vote.
Domke, of the University of Washington, said although Palin "is absolutely unknown to anyone but a political junkie" in the lower 48 states, her profile fills the bill for McCain in some areas. As a working mother of five - whose oldest child, Track, 19, is in Army boot camp and headed to Iraq - Palin could help attract middle-class moms. Her other children, besides her infant son, are Bristol, 18, Willow, 14, and Piper, 7.
Her youth could be a double-edged sword for McCain, given his age - he turned 72 yesterday. Her age and lack of national experience are potential drawbacks.
"She's younger and she brings experience," Domke said, adding that her strong Christian values are "a sign to evangelicals: I want you, I need you." 