Palin backs Gingrich, leaves door open for herself

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin threw her weight behind Newt Gingrich as Republican presidential nominee on Tuesday -- but coyly left open the door for her own White House run if need be.

The controversial former 2008 vice-presidential nominee said she voted for Gingrich in Alaska's poll to choose a Republican candidate, one of 10 states to cast ballots on so-called "Super Tuesday."

"I will tell you who I voted for tonight... the cheerful one, it's Newt Gingrich," she told Fox News, referring to the one-word description the former House Speaker gave of himself at a debate last week.

"I have appreciated what he has stood for, stood boldly for," she said. "He has been the underdog in many of these primary races and these caucuses and I've respected what he has stood for."

She was speaking as long-time frontrunner Mitt Romney edged out rival Rick Santorum as he tightened his grip on the 2012 Republican presidential nomination with a string of six Super Tuesday wins, including in Alaska, where CNN projected Romney winning with 33 percent of the vote.

But Gingrich won resoundingly in his home state of Georgia, giving him an outside chance of rebooting his bid if he can gain some momentum in a clutch of upcoming battles in the conservative Deep South.

Palin conceded that the race between Romney, Santorum, Gingrich and libertarian Ron Paul lacks excitement, but predicted it would heat up once Republicans choose a nominee -- and launched a swipe at Romney in that regard.

"There will be that zip-a-dee-doo-dah after the nominee is chosen. I guarantee there will be that enthusiasm," she said.

"But to be brutally honest -- and I say this with all due respect to governor Romney, who is obviously the frontrunner .. he's not garnering a lot of that enthusiasm right now."

Palin, a darling of the ultraconservative Tea Party movement but lampooned and vilified by the left, flirted for months last year with running for the Republican ticket, eventually deciding against it in October.

But with the Republican race showing no sign of being wrapped up anytime soon -- unusually for a party which traditionally chooses its candidate rapidly -- Palin admitted that there could still be a role for her.

Although it would be an unlikely scenario, Palin said she might consider throwing her hat into the ring if pressed.

She was asked specifically what she would do if the Republican party faced an open convention this August -- meaning none of the current candidates would have sewn up the nomination by then -- and someone asked her to stand.

"Anything is possible. I don't close any doors that perhaps would be open out there, so no, I wouldn't close that door. My plan is to be at that convention," she told CNN in her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska.

The Republican party's 2008 presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, picked Palin as his running mate before losing to Democrat Barack Obama.

She was ridiculed abroad, notably for foreign policy gaffes, but became a Tea Party leading light and media pundit, lashing out at big government and the "lamestream" media as she and her family basked in the celebrity spotlight.

In Anchorage on Tuesday night there seemed little enthusiasm for any of the frontrunners -- a trend noticed throughout the race, which has seen a succession of rivals leapfrogging into the lead over Romney, before fading.

Voter Andy Kriner said that he had switched allegiance in recent months: "I started with Herman Cain, then I went to Newt Gingrich, and now Romney is probably the guy who will get the nomination.

"He seems like a good guy. I'm not passionate about him, but I'm more passionate about him than I am (about) Obama."

Asked if any of the Republican candidates could win against the incumbent president, he said: "If I had to bet on it, I'd say it would be hard for anybody to beat Obama."

View the original article here

Relentless scrutiny pushed Palin to exasperation

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Just a few months after returning from the presidential campaign trail, a weary Sarah Palin shot off a 1 a.m. email to top colleagues in her office.

Buried in ethics complaints that she deemed frivolous, the Alaska governor was feeling increasingly detached from her family. She faced mounting legal bills that only exacerbated the financial turmoil related to her family's travel.

"I'm just beat down on this one. I am tired. The opponents have succeeded on the drive towards our personal bankruptcy, and have divided my family," she wrote.

She finished the overnight email with a sobering conclusion: "One has to be single, wealthy, or corrupt to function in this political system."

The relentless examination and subsequent exasperation lingered for months after Palin's stint as a vice presidential candidate in 2008, and thousands of documents released by the state this week indicate that it ultimately drove her to leave political office.

Emails show that Palin remained engaged as governor in the issues of her day job, pushing for a natural gas pipeline, preparing speeches for civic groups, coordinating with the state's chief lobbyist in Washington, D.C., and even helping arrange a reception for football players at the governor's mansion. She said it was invigorating to directly speak to protesters holding a derogatory sign.

The treasurer of Palin's political action committee, Tim Crawford, said Thursday: "We encourage everyone to read the emails. They show a governor hard at work for her state."

Linda Young, president of the National Women's Political Caucus, said she believed Palin and other women like Hillary Clinton are more scrutinized than their male counterparts. She said it was clear that people were particularly focused on trying to expose Palin's faults — a process made worse by what Young sees as a climate of combative politics.

"While I don't agree with many of her political beliefs, I do think that it would be a lot more appropriate if male and female candidates were treated alike," she said.

Young, who works to encourage women in politics, said politics can be difficult on families. But she said women can find a balance between maintaining their homes and offices at the same time.

The documents show Palin becoming increasingly distracted by the external issues tied to her newfound celebrity.

One of her political critics, trying to tout his own international experience in early 2009, parroted a "Saturday Night Live" line about Palin being able to see Russia from her house — a phrase that morphed from the governor's initial comment that Russia was visible from part of Alaska.

"Why does he suggest I said i could see russia from my house? I said u can see russia from Alaska, in trying to explain the proximity," she wrote to a staffer.

Palin then added in another email, "It's going to be a long two years..."

It turned out that Palin wouldn't last that long. She resigned six months later.

Alaska released some 24,000 pages of emails last year that focused on Palin's time before she joined the Republican ticket with presidential nominee John McCain. This week the state released some 34,820 pages. The request for records was to cover from October 2008 until Palin's resignation in July 2009, but the release also included emails from earlier in Palin's term, which the current governor's deputy chief of staff said were inadvertently omitted from last year's release.

In the weeks leading to her resignation announcement, Palin didn't tip off anyone about her plans, and she focused mainly on encouraging her communications staff to put news about the state on Twitter, approving tweets before they went out and making speeches.

Commissioners and the governor's staff were notified of a conference call July 3. The email said: "The Governor will be making an announcement at 11:00am. You are encouraged to call in to listen at 1-800-315-6338, code 0703." Palin announced that day that she intended to resign.

In an email at 11:42 a.m., she wrote: "I love you all - I truly do. This will be good. Thank you for your support!"

In her last few months of office, Palin was clearly irked by the ongoing media coverage she faced. She said the national media had set their sights on Alaska because of her position as governor, citing questions by a CBS reporter about an effort by some Prince William Sound fishermen to have the state forgive all or part of the outstanding loans the state had given them using their settlement funds from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill as collateral.

"This is bizarre. It's also an indication of nat'l media looking at anything to sensationalize (negatively) about Alaska right now ... unfortunately bc of who's in the Gov's chair," she wrote in a Jan. 26, 2009, email to aides.

A couple months later, she was upset that a magazine had found her during a charity event at a Juneau grocery store.

"Any idea how they knew to find me at Fred Meyer yesterday while I sold Girl scout cookies? The scout leaders wouldn't have told them," she wrote. A lawyer responded that she was probably being followed, but it was later discovered that Palin's planned appearance was included in an article in the Juneau Empire.

Palin was particularly irked by ethics complaints that she considered excessive and frivolous, and many of them were eventually dismissed. More than a dozen came in after she was named McCain's running mate in 2008 — including one accusing her of having a conflict of interest because of the brand of clothing she wore.

Palin has said the ethics complaints proved to be a distraction, and that was a major factor in her decision to resign during her first term. A complaint related to the family's travel and the subsequent internal inquiries were particularly problematic.

In a May 2009 email with then-Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, Palin showed frustration with scrutiny about her and her family's travel and the financial cost of ethics charges. Parnell invited Palin to a police memorial ceremony, but she was unable to attend because she was in Juneau.

"I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't. I'm condemned and scrutinized for not being here enough," she wrote.

The governor said she paid out of pocket to repay travel by her family, which was "based on bogus accusations that I traveled too much in the past," and said she paid back taxes for not being in the governor's mansion "enough" during renovations.

"This Juneau situation cost Todd and me about $35,000 recently. The double standard applied to me and my spouse keeps me from freely traveling as other govs did," she wrote.

Despite it all, Palin's aides remained fiercely loyal to her. Randy Ruaro sent an email in July 2009 simply entitled "Thank you."

"I have been asked several times in the last few years why I work so hard. It's very, very easy to work hard for someone when you respect and believe in them," he wrote.

There were relatively few emails during the campaign with McCain, in September-November 2008.

Sharon Leighow, a spokeswoman for Parnell, who's now the governor, said Palin's chief of staff communicated with her mainly by phone during that period. Palin's Anchorage office director, Kris Perry, also traveled with the governor during that time, serving as a conduit to the staff, Leighow said.

___

Becky Bohrer can be reached at https://twitter.com/bbohrer . Mike Baker reported from Olympia, Wash., and can be reached at https://twitter.com/MikeBakerAP .

View the original article here

Palin before resignation: 'I can't take it anymore'

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — In the final months before she resigned as Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin displayed growing frustration over deteriorating relationships with state lawmakers and outrage over ethics complaints that she felt frivolously targeted her and prompted her to write: "I can't take it anymore."

The details are included in more than 17,000 records released Thursday by state officials — nearly 3 1/2 years after citizens and news organizations, including The Associated Press, first requested Palin's emails. The emails, most from Palin's final 10 months in office, illustrate what Palin has said all along: The intense scrutiny of her family and work was a financial and emotional drain that forced her to step down as governor.

In a March 19, 2009, email to spokeswoman Sharon Leighow and aide Kris Perry, she complained that more than 150 freedom of information requests had cost the state more than $1 million, adding: "and who knows what all the bogus ethics charges have cost the state."

She expressed anger at having to pay for her own defense, with a bill that at that point totaled more than $500,000, saying her husband had to go back to work on the North Slope because of it.

"We've all had to pay for our OWN legal defense in this political bloodsport — it's horrendous — why do you think Todd is on the slope today?" Palin wrote. "I am paying to defend in my capacity as GOVERNOR — actions taken in my official position. This is unheard of anywhere else."

She added that she had been the target of "many frivolous suits and charges since the DAY I became VP candidate. I can't afford this job."

Palin expressed frustration with the media in an April 11, 2009, email: "If there were any other way I could speak to Alaskans without going through some of these reporters, I sure would." Palin currently works as a commentator for Fox News.

By the spring of 2009, the emails show, Palin was regularly butting heads with lawmakers of both parties over her absences from the Capitol. She asked her aides to tally how many days she was out of Alaska in 2008. The staff came up with 94 days, but 10 less if you count travel days when she was in the state part of the day, The absences included all of October and most of September while she was on the campaign trail as the GOP vice presidential candidate.

"It's unacceptable, and there must be push back on their attempts to lame duck this administration," Palin wrote to her top aides on April 9.

Citizens and news organizations, including the AP, first requested Palin's emails in September 2008, as part of her vetting as the Republican vice presidential nominee. The state released a batch of the emails last June, a lag of nearly three years that was attributed to the sheer volume of the records and the flood of requests stemming from Palin's tenure.

The 24,199 pages of emails that were released last year ended in September 2008, as she was campaigning with GOP presidential nominee John McCain. Thursday's release includes 17,736 records, or 34,820 pages, generally spanning from October 2008 until Palin's resignation as Alaska governor, in July 2009.

Tim Crawford, treasurer of Sarah Palin's political action committee, on Thursday encouraged everyone to read the emails. "They show a governor hard at work for her state," he said.

Several media organizations, including msnbc.com, said they were not informed of Thursday's release.

Leighow, now a spokeswoman for the current governor, Sean Parnell, said records in the governor's office indicated that msnbc.com did not request the second group of emails but she said a CD containing the documents was being sent to their offices because it contained emails inadvertently omitted from the first release.

Palin's frustration over a series of ethics complaints filed against her, one of the issues she cited when stepping down, emerges in an April 2009 email in which she commiserated over a story indicating another ethics complaint was to be filed: "Unflippinbelievable... I'm sending this because you can relate to the bullcrap continuation of the hell these people put the family through," she wrote to aides Ivy Frye and Frank Bailey.

Later that day, in an email to her husband and two top aides, on the issue, she said: "I can't take it anymore."

Earlier, after a Feb. 18, 2009, Washington Post story titled, "Back Home in Alaska, Palin finds cold comfort," was pointed out to her, she emailed her husband. "Would you pray for our strength. And for God to totally turn things around... Enough is enough. May we see victories and feel His hand of mercy and grace." He replies, "I did."

In a Sept. 26, 2007, email to Perry and her husband Todd, titled "Marital Problems," Palin writes: "So speaking of... If we, er, when we get a divorce, does that quell "conflict of interest" accusations about BP?" Her husband was a former BP employee on the North Slope.

View the original article here