Sarah Palin
Who is Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Heath Palin (born February 11, 1964) is the governor of Alaska and the Republican vice-presidential nominee in the 2008 United States presidential election.
Sarah Palin's Political Career
She was a member of the Wasilla, Alaska, city council from 1992 to 1996 and mayor from 1996 to 2002. After an unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor of Alaska in 2002, she chaired the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from 2003 to 2004. She was elected governor of Alaska in November 2006 by defeating the incumbent governor in the Republican primary and a former two-term Democratic governor in the general election. She is the youngest person to have been elected to the position, and Alaska's first female governor. On August 29, 2008, Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain announced he had chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate. She was nominated at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Palin is the first woman and the first Alaskan to run on the Republican Party's presidential ticket.
History of Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin was elected twice to the city council of Wasilla, in 1992 and 1995. Palin says she entered politics because she was concerned that revenue from a new Wasilla sales tax would not be spent wisely. She ran for Wasilla city council in 1992, at age 28, against John Hartrick, a local telephone company worker, on a promise to bring "my progressive, competitive attitude" to the government. She won 530 votes to John Hartrick’s 310. On the council, she successfully opposed a measure to curtail the hours at Wasilla's bars by two hours, which surprised Hartrick because she was then a member of a church that advocated abstinence from alcohol. After serving on the city council for three years, she ran for reelection against R’nita Rogers in 1995, winning 413 votes to Rogers' 185. Palin did not complete her second term on the city council because she ran for mayor in 1996. Throughout her tenure on the city council and the rest of her career, Palin has been a registered Republican.Mayor of Wasilla
Sarah Palin served two terms (1996 –2002) as mayor of Wasilla. At the conclusion of Palin's tenure as mayor in 2002, the town had about 6,300 residents, and it is now the fifth-largest population center in the state. In 1996, Palin defeated three-term incumbent mayor John Stein, on a platform targeting wasteful spending and high taxes, and Stein says that she introduced abortion, gun rights, and term limits as campaign issues. Although the election was a nonpartisan blanket primary, the state Republican Party ran advertisements on her behalf.Governor of Alaska
In 2006, running on a clean-government platform, Palin defeated incumbent Governor Frank Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Her running mate was State Senator Sean Parnell. Despite being outspent by her Democratic opponent, she won the gubernatorial election in November, defeating former governor Tony
Knowles 48.3% to 40.9%. Palin became Alaska's first female governor and at 42, the youngest governor in Alaskan history. She is the state's first governor to have been born after Alaska achieved U.S. statehood, and the first not to be inaugurated in Juneau; she chose to have the ceremony held in Fairbanks instead. She took office on December 4, 2006 and has been very popular with Alaska voters. Polls taken in 2007 early in her term showed her with a 93% and 89% popularity among all voters. A poll taken in September 2008 shows her popularity at 68%. Palin declared that top priorities of her administration would be resource development, education and workforce development, public health and safety, and transportation and infrastructure development.