About Sarah Palin

I was as dumbstruck as most Alaskans were when, on August 29, John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate. And like many Alaskans, I immediately became a source for non-Alaskans about who in heck this person was.

My opinion of her has changed over time.

November 7, 2006: “it’s a sad day in ak”

When she was elected as Alaska’s governor on November 7, 2006, I was pretty unhappy. Can’t say I knew a huge amount about her: chiefly that in the Republican primary she had defeated the nation’s most unpopular governor, Frank Murkowski (along with another Republican candidate), & that she had extremely conservative religious views that translated into extremely conservative social views about abortion, equal rights for LGBTQI folks, etc. Her Democratic opponent, Tony Knowles, was a known quantity — I’d followed his career for years as Anchorage mayor & a two-term governor whose achievements I quite respected, in spite of a couple of issues I’d had with him in the past. But the choice was pretty clear for me. Unfortunately, in a “red” state like Alaska, the lesser-known quantity prevailed. As one of my Flickr contacts wrote, “it’s a sad day in ak.”