The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin

by Joe McGinniss

  “If it happened, which I doubt,” Stein says, “it was probably related to the domestic turmoil she was going through at the time. We were hearing a lot of scuttlebutt, and Todd was certainly notable by his absence. He and Brad Hanson broke up their snow machine business in Big Lake and we were hearing that was because Sarah was having an affair with Brad. She was apparently telling people, ‘I’m not sure Todd’s my man.’ And I do remember that her wedding ring was coming off and on a lot.”

  Sarah’s affair with Hanson, which was revealed nationally by the National Enquirer during the 2008 campaign, was apparently common knowledge in Wasilla. Hanson was a property developer and businessman whose parents were friends of Chuck and Sally Heath’s. He would go on to become a Palmer city councilman and coach of the Palmer High School hockey team.

  “It was known,” a friend of Todd’s told me in 2010. “For example, Todd knew that I knew. He was embarrassed. It wasn’t something he talked about a lot.”

  Both Sarah and Hanson have denied that they ever had an affair. People who claim to be aware of the affair—six months is a common estimate of its duration—believed that Sarah was using Hanson to show Todd that two could play the game she suspected he’d been playing for years in Dillingham.

  “Todd was basically spanked and put back in his box,” a friend of his says. “The marriage was never right before and it was never right after.”

  IT WAS NOT in Stein’s nature to fight dirty. “I didn’t want any part of any of that,” he told me. “In fact, when I heard that Sarah was afraid I’d get nasty, I actually called her and went to her house to assure her that if any information about her personal life came my way I would not use it in the campaign. That didn’t stop her, of course, but I stuck to my promise and I don’t regret it. No office is worth holding if you have to win it by spreading slime. I will tell you, though: right up to Election Day, they were really afraid.”

  Campaign manager Chase recalls no fear. Indeed, her biggest shock came from learning the extraordinary nature of Sarah’s ambition. “We were sitting at my kitchen table at about eleven o’clock one night, and I said, ‘Sarah, you’ll be governor in ten years.’ And she said, ‘I don’t want to be governor, I want to be president.’ ”

  She ran as if she truly believed she was God’s chosen candidate. “I’ll never forget a speech she gave to the chamber of commerce,” a Wasilla lawyer recalls. “She was so nervous her voice was quavering, but she said, ‘Anyone who thinks faith has no place in government has no place in government himself.’ I said, ‘Where in the hell did that come from?’ I’d never known her to be religious. But then it all started: guns and God and abortion-is-evil and all gays are perverts on one hand and man’s divine right to drink himself into roadkill until five AM on the other. Sarah was off to the races.”

  For at least ten years, since first learning about it at Mary Glazier’s prayer group and at the Assembly of God, Sarah had subscribed to an evangelical Christian ideology frequently referred to as dominionism. The goal of dominionists is to put Christian extremists into positions of political power in order to end America’s constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. Dominionists believe that America was founded as a specifically Christian republic and that Christians should control all levels of government.

  Although she’d been reluctant to discuss her beliefs with Laura Chase at the start of the campaign, before it was over, Sarah grew so open about her dominionist affiliations that she even bused in members of right-wing extremist Jerry Prevo’s Anchorage Baptist Temple to go door to door campaigning for her.

  And just as her father had used threats to try to get his way in his fight against the women on the school board, Sarah and her supporters did not shy from intimidation.

  “I was renting an apartment,” Carolyn Johnson, a former resident of Wasilla now living in Texas, recalls, “and I put a Stein sign in the window. My landlord told me to take it down. He had the vending machine account at the Wasilla Bar and he was told he’d lose it if anyone saw a Stein sign in his building. I said no. Then the threats started, late at night, always by phone. ‘Watch what you’re doing … it’s gonna get ugly … you’d better watch your back … it would be too bad if something happened to your daughter.’ My daughter was a small child at the time, and I was living alone with her. I took down the sign.”

  Although Stein was also a Republican, the party fervently supported Sarah. Republicans sponsored fund-raising dinners for her, and she appeared in newspaper ads and on television commercials alongside Republican state legislators.

  “I just don’t get the big full-court press that the Republicans are pushing,” Stein told the Frontiersman. “I find it pretty offensive in a local election.”

  He ran on the slogan “Protect the Progress” and emphasized his experience. He stressed that under his stewardship Wasilla had created a police force, had attracted new business, and, because of the 2 percent sales tax, now had not only a balanced budget but more than $3 million in reserves.

  Sarah stuck with the not particularly original slogan she had first doodled at a council meeting: “Time for a Change.”

  Given the intensity and acrimony of the campaign, one might have expected massive voter turnout, but on Election Day, October 1, 1996, fewer than one third of Wasilla’s eligible voters cast ballots.

  It would not be unreasonable to suppose that among the more motivated were those who favored keeping the bars open until 5:00 AM and/or those whose Pentecostal ministers told them that failure to vote for Sarah would invite perdition. Puritanical oldster John Stein had no such threats in his arsenal.

  In what the Anchorage Daily News called “an upset victory,” Sarah won 661 to 440.

  As vote totals were posted at the Mat-Su Borough offices in Palmer, she shouted, “We won! We won!” and jumped up and down. The next day, she told the Daily News that the lessons she’d learned playing basketball for Wasilla’s state championship team in 1982 had carried her to victory.

  “This really sounds hokey, but that was a turning point in my life,” she said. “We were supposed to be the underdogs big-time. You see firsthand anything is possible and learn it takes tenacity, hard work, and guts.”

  She gave no credit to either the Alaska Independence Party or Mary Glazier, or, for that matter, to God himself. To be fair, she didn’t credit the owners of the Mug-Shot or the Wasilla Sports Bar either.

  She was sworn in on October 14. Within hours, she launched what many Wasillans today remember as nothing short of a reign of terror.

  FIVE

  Thursday, May 27, 2010

  SARAH’S OLDER BROTHER, Chuckie Heath, who lives in Anchorage, tells The Daily Caller that because I am living next door, Sarah fears for the safety of her children. I make a cup of coffee and take it onto the deck to greet yet another brilliant spring day. By midafternoon, the temperature might even hit seventy. I realize I need to buy sunblock.

  The new fence is up, and I’m grateful for it. I feel not quite so exposed to prying eyes. Chuckie says my deck “looks right down into her kitchen and into the bedrooms and the upstairs, too.” He’s wrong on all three counts. Even before the new fence went up, no one sitting on my deck—or sitting anywhere inside my house—could see into any of the rooms next door.

  How did my living next door get to be about the safety of Sarah’s children? And why do the mainstream media, which treat every other utterance out of Sarah’s mouth as preposterous, deceitful, or meretricious, now accept her allegations about me as factual?

  A right-wing radio commentator broadcasts my e-mail address. I’m inundated with thousands of threats and pieces of hate mail. I create a new account and share it with everyone I need to stay in touch with, and delete all the messages from the old one unread. But it’s another sign of how a wink from Sarah gets the attack dogs slavering.

  Greta Van Susteren calls me “the Wasilla stalker.” Movie actresses on The View say I’m going through the Palins’ garbage. In Slate, Ch
ristopher Beam addresses the question of whether Palin could get a restraining order against me. The piece is headlined “The Stalker Next Door.” The threats continue to pile up. From Craigslist:

  The Woods are lovely,

  Dark and Deep.

  But I have promises to keep,

  and miles to go before I sleep.

  But the woods can also be very dangerous if you go around fucking with people. You never know when Wolves, a pack of Feral Dogs, a Bear or Moose might decide to kill you, then have a little snack. That goes triple for pesky writers. I wonder who will write the Murder Mystery when this guy turns up dead in the Woods? Best Seller!

  Mayor Rupright assures me that Wasilla police are keeping a round-the-clock watch on my house. I call Catherine Taylor and advise her to increase her fire insurance. At 10:30 PM a friend calls from the stop sign at the Best Western to say she’s about to drop off the television set I’m borrowing in order to watch the World Cup. I go down to unlock the chain. Her car approaches. Right behind it is a state police car that has apparently been sitting in the Best Western lot, alert to anyone heading in my direction.

  The wind dies down at dusk. At 1:00 AM—not quite total darkness even yet—there is the most extraordinary full moon shining on the lake from over the mountains, its light reflected brilliantly by the still waters. I bask in the moment. Just sitting here in this magical light and silence—except for the grebes, who squawk round the clock—makes me fall in love with Alaska all over again.

  Friday, May 28, 2010

  NORMALLY, FOR A news story to continue beyond the first twenty-four-hour cycle, something newly newsworthy must occur. A story pertaining to Sarah is the exception to this rule. It’s now been four days since she first took to Facebook, and absolutely nothing has happened. I’ve exchanged neither a word nor a glance with anyone across the fence. So by today, Friday, maybe things will start to calm down?

  Twenty minutes on my laptop kills that hope. In this Internet age, when anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can broadcast it to a worldwide audience within seconds, news-cycle projections become irrelevant.

  At some point we reached critical mass. Now the fission process has blown us into an alternate universe. Maintaining what I’d considered a prudent silence has led only to slander, and some highly specific and graphically expressed threats on my life, as well as threats against my family, even my grandchildren.

  So today I respond. I talk by phone to David Carr of the New York Times and to Dave Weigel at the Washington Post and in person to a Wall Street Journal reporter who’s been sent up from San Francisco. I also talk to a producer at the Today show to arrange a live interview from my deck at 3:45 AM next Tuesday.

  I’ve known David Carr for several years. Therefore, I listen when he warns me to get out. “What’s the upside compared to the downside,” he asks, “when the downside is you get killed?”

  He has a point. He continues: “Some of these people she’s inflaming are certifiable lunatics who’ve got guns. All it takes is one who thinks he’s proving his love for Sarah by blowing you away. I’m serious. Your life is in danger. Go somewhere else. You don’t need to be there to write your book.”

  “If I leave, she wins. And the crazies win.”

  “And they lose if you’re dead?”

  Carr is a savvy guy who has been around a few different blocks. He’s not a hysteric. I don’t like what he says, but I take it seriously. I resolve to think about it as soon as I get the chance.

  On the other hand, the cable guy comes to hook up my TV for World Cup viewing. Mayor Rupright stops by, just to check in. He’s still not worried. He says his cops have my back. A Wasilla Police Department sergeant calls to say that while I might not be aware of it, they are having regular patrols check on my house throughout the night. And I know the state police are involved.

  Screw it, I’m not going to leave. Caving in to bullies only emboldens them further. How far would I have to retreat? To the Best Western? To Anchorage? Back to Massachusetts? If I’m actually in danger, the only way to protect myself fully would be to abandon the book. Is that what America has come to? That someone who ran for national political office and who is known to be considering running for national office again can silence critics by instigating a campaign of threat and intimidation against them?

  My position is simple: if I actually do something intrusive, then you have the right to react. Wait for me to take a picture, or peer over the fence with binoculars, or pass along to the public something I heard while eavesdropping. Then you’ll have every right to be apoplectic. But as I told Todd, that’s not going to happen. So let’s proceed, as the Italians say, con calma.

  In the evening, I’m looking out my kitchen window, into my front yard. A car pulls up to the chain. Two women get out and walk around it. I step outside to ask them to leave.

  “Don’t shoot!” one of them yells and holds up a wooden sign that reads WELCOME. The other woman unfurls an Alaskan flag. “We come in peace,” she says.

  They are just two residents of Wasilla offended by the Palins’ behavior.

  “Real Alaskans don’t act that way,” one says. The other says, “Here’s a sign for you, and here’s an Alaskan flag you can fly from your deck. And I’ve got six different handguns in the cab of my truck. You can borrow any or all.”

  I thank them for the sign and flag but say I’ll pass on the guns. They leave me their phone numbers in case I change my mind. We all hug, and they leave. A sign, a flag, and your choice of six guns: it’s the Wasilla Welcome Wagon.

  Saturday, May 29, 2010

  NOT ONLY am I not leaving, I’m throwing a housewarming party. I put the WELCOME sign on the mantelpiece and hang the Alaskan flag and an American flag from the deck. I’ve got friends coming up from Anchorage and down from Talkeetna, an hour and a half to the north.

  In the Washington Post, Dave Weigel quotes me accurately: “Look, this is a pain in the ass for them. I understand that. If I were her, I’d be upset. I’d be annoyed. But I’d be an adult about it, and I would figure out, okay, how can we resolve this in a way that’s not going to make it into something that everybody gets obsessive about?”

  Sarah’s inability to do that has taught me something important about her: she has no sense of proportion, no ability to modulate her response. She’s over the top in all directions: rah-rah cheerleading for those whom she supports, spewing vitriolic condemnation of anyone who challenges her.

  This strikes me as a potentially dangerous character flaw in someone seeking a position of national leadership. If this is how she reacts, as a private citizen, to an unwelcome neighbor next door, what would she do as president if the Iranian government suddenly irked her?

  This is not an idle question. An unchecked emotional response could cost millions of lives. Such a notion becomes considerably less unthinkable when you consider that Palin herself has said that she believes us to be in the “end-times,” awaiting the rapturous return to earth of Jesus Christ, an event she has predicted will occur during her lifetime.

  Here’s something else: as I said to Weigel, “By being here, I’ve gotten an insight into her ability to incite hatred that before I only knew about in the abstract.” Isn’t it strange that the supporters of someone who so brassily proclaims her devotion to Jesus are so prone to expressions of hatred and violent threats, rather than tolerance and respect? I guess “Love thy neighbor” isn’t a precept they teach at the Wasilla Bible Church or Assembly of God.

  I DIDN’T SEE the ABC piece that resulted from the network’s early-morning wakeup call, but Alex Pareene did, and in Salon he calls it “the worst non-Fox coverage of the Sarah Palin/Joe McGinniss feud that I have seen so far.”

  He writes: “Reporter Neal Karlinsky quotes Palin calling McGinniss an ‘odd character’ without pointing out to his audience that McGinniss is a respected, longtime reporter, who has written about Palin and Alaska before.”

  Pareene also notes that “Karlinsky repeats
the weird and completely over-the-line accusation by Palin that McGinniss is spying on Piper’s bedroom,” and says, “In the most audacious and bizarre portion, Karlinsky harasses McGinniss at the house he is renting—an actual intrusion onto his private property—in the process of reporting a story on how creepy it is that this reporter is ‘violating’ Sarah Palin’s privacy. At no point does Karlinsky acknowledge the irony.”

  Like truth, I’m afraid, irony does not fare well in Palinland.

  KITTY FELDE of Southern California Public Radio posts a blog item called “Gentleman Joe McGinniss,” in which she writes, “I worked alongside Joe McGinniss for nine long months during the O. J. Simpson trial. It was an intense time, when reporters spent more time together than with their families. While Dominick Dunne and Joe Bosco loved the limelight, McGinniss was quiet, standing off to the side, but always watching and thinking—an intelligent guy with a wry sense of humor. I wouldn’t mind having him move in next door to me.”

  But the Internet never lets you feel good for long.

  The first comment in response to Felde’s piece reads, “Joe McGinniss is an idiot. I wish he lived next door to you, too. You two would get along splendidly.”

  The second reads, “Joe McGinniss is a STALKER! I wish he lived next door to you, too.”

  I sometimes wonder why anyone bothers to blog. Almost nothing anyone writes ever changes anyone else’s mind. Most people who read a blog already agree with the writer’s point of view. The others read so they can write quick, nasty comments in response. The whole blogosphere sometimes seems like one vast game of verbal paintball.

  MY PARTY is a great success. Tom Kluberton, who runs the Fireweed Station Inn in Talkeetna, brings burgers made from Herman the Ill-Tempered Yak.

  Most of Tom’s guests at Fireweed are climbers on their way to or from ascents of Denali guided by Alpine Ascents International. Todd Burleson, perhaps best known for the heroism he displayed on Mount Everest in 1996, recounted by Jon Krakauer in Into Thin Air, founded Alpine Ascents. In addition to guiding Denali ascents, Burleson, who has led eight Everest expeditions and who has himself climbed the Seven Summits twice, has been seeking to re-create the Himalayan trekking experience at Denali, complete with sherpas and yaks.