Alaska's Palin Faces Probe

Star GOP Governor To Be Investigated For Abuse of Office

31 Jul 2008 // When Sarah Palin was elected governor as a Republican outsider in 2006, she didn't just take on an incumbent from her own party. She took on Alaska's Republican establishment.

Ms. Palin vowed to clean up a long-cozy political system that had been sullied by an FBI corruption investigation. She endeared herself to Alaskans by making good on her reform promises and showing homey touches, like driving herself to work.

Now, one of the bright new stars in the Republican Party has suddenly become tarnished. The state legislature this week voted to hire an independent investigator to see whether Ms. Palin abused her office by trying to get her former brother-in-law fired from his job as an Alaska state trooper.

"This is a governor who was almost impervious to error," says Hollis French, a Democratic state senator. "Now she could face impeachment, in a worst-case scenario."

The allegations against Ms. Palin are less serious than -- and entirely separate from -- those that have been leveled against a number of Alaska's most prominent politicians since 2006, when a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into influence peddling by oil-field contractor VECO Corp. came to light. Since then, five state legislators have been sentenced to prison or face prosecution on corruption charges. On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens was indicted on criminal charges related to the case. Mr. Stevens says he is innocent.

This is the first real chink in the armor of Alaska's first woman governor, whose popularity soared above 80% as she enacted an ethics bill and shelved pork-barrel projects by fellow Republicans.

Ms. Palin has shown similar boldness in going after Big Oil, whose money has long dominated the state and helped fund its Republican machine. In a snub to the oil majors, she has proposed TransCanada Corp., a Calgary energy company, be given the primary contract to lead the $30 billion job to build a natural-gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope.

Ms. Palin -- a 44-year-old former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (population 8,500), and winner of the Miss Wasilla pageant -- has gained national acclaim. The mother of five has been featured in a photo spread in Vogue. Some pundits have touted the antiabortion conservative as a potential running mate to Republican presidential contender John McCain. A spokesman for the Arizona senator said he admires Ms. Palin but is still reviewing running mates.

"People see her as the symbol of purity in an atmosphere of corruption," says Anchorage pollster Marc Hellenthal. "She is almost Saint Sarah."

A native of Idaho who grew up in Alaska hunting and fishing, Ms. Palin made an early stand on ethics. In 2004, she resigned as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission after Gov. Frank Murkowski appointed the chairman of the Alaska Republican Party to a seat on her commission while allowing him to keep his partisan post.

"Someone has to take a stand and change some things," Ms. Palin said in a June interview in her 17th-floor office in downtown Anchorage, whose decor includes a grizzly-bear skin.

When she ran against Mr. Murkowski in 2006, Ms. Palin says, she got a call from Ben Stevens, then president of the Republican-run Alaska Senate and son of Sen. Stevens. "He told me, 'You're not just running against Murkowski. You're running against me, my dad, the whole state Republican party,'" Ms. Palin said. Ben Stevens, who remains under the FBI investigation, didn't return calls for comment.

Ms. Palin, whose husband, Todd Palin, is employed as an oil-field worker and fisherman, set an earthier style in office than her predecessors. She sold the jet Mr. Murkowski used to get around Alaska, relying instead on commercial airlines, her family's Volkswagen Jetta or a state-issued black Suburban.

The controversy now surrounding Ms. Palin stems from a messy divorce between state trooper Mike Wooten and his wife, Molly McCann, who is Ms. Palin's younger sister.

In 2005, Ms. Palin alleged to Mr. Wooten's supervisors that he had threatened to harm her sister and father and had engaged in numerous instances of misconduct, including using a stun gun on his 10-year-old stepson, according to state documents. In one instance, she told state investigators, she overheard him on the telephone threatening her sister: "I'm gonna f- shoot your dad. He's gonna get a lead bullet."

Mr. Wooten told investigators he tested a Taser stun gun on the boy at his request but never threatened the Palins. An internal police investigation substantiated the stun-gun incident and some other charges but threw out most of the rest. Mr. Wooten was suspended for five days in 2006. Through a spokesman with the Public Safety Employees Association, he declined to comment.

On July 11 of this year, Ms. Palin fired Department of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. Mr. Monegan then complained that she and her husband had pressured him to fire Mr. Wooten. Ms. Palin, in a statement, denied that, saying she had removed the commissioner she had appointed 18 months earlier because she wanted "a new direction."

She said she will cooperate with the legislative probe, which is expected to be completed by November.