Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (38 page)

In short order, as he often did in appointments that interest him, Todd became involved. He wanted to make certain that Kopp was no Monegan when it came to Trooper Wooten. I assured him this was a person who would not buck the governor's agenda on any issue. After much discussion, I wrote,
“I've spent countless hours discussing the Spitzers, Osborns, and Wootens of the world with Chuck. I'm confident he's on board.”
There seemed little need to discuss any additional qualifications.

Two days later, we had Chuck Kopp in Anchorage interviewing with Acting Chief of Staff Mike Nizich, a man who was looking to remove the
Acting
from his title. The road to becoming permanent was to avoid Mike Tibbles's tendency to respond slowly to Sarah's demands, no matter how knee-jerk reactionary they might have been. As such, we both met with Kopp. Nizich did most of the talking, laying out concerns with department hiring, concerns with the $92 million “Taj Mahal” crime lab proposal that Walt was pushing, requests for additional funding, and what Nizich characterized as Monegan's disconnect from the public face of the department. Representing what I believed to be the deeper concerns, I reiterated that there were civil servants risking their lives, but some troopers seemed “to get away with murder” and allowed to keep their jobs. “The cloak of confidentiality,” I explained, referencing Todd's opinion that there was a conspiracy to protect bad apples, “is not good for the department.”

Kopp understood and acknowledged that weeding out troublemakers was a top priority.

In a display of decisiveness foreign to his predecessor, Nizich left the interview room and immediately phoned the governor. “We have our man,” he declared.

Sarah wasted no time in double-checking with me. I agreed that the interview had gone well and observed that Nizich need only conduct what I assumed was standard due diligence. What I didn't realize was that the bee in Sarah's bonnet had a timetable that would not permit such time wasting. The next day, Thursday, Nizich informed Kopp that in four days he'd be named DPS Commissioner. On Friday, July 11, Sarah ordered Nizich to drop the bomb on Monegan and inform him that his services were no longer required. Offered a demotion to executive director of the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, he declined. The next morning, Monegan emailed all the other cabinet level commissioners, informing them of his removal from office. Sarah, who had wanted to wait until the following Monday to announce both Monegan's removal and Kopp's appointment, was hopping mad. This unilateral announcement just showed “Walt's true colors,” she fumed.

What was intended as a family outing to the wind-carved, salmon-rich Whiskey Gulch on the Kenai Peninsula became squandered “kid and daddy time.” Word was leaking about the pending change at the Department of Public Safety. Instead of spending uninterrupted hours with my long-neglected kids as planned, two cell phones and a buzzing BlackBerry stole my attention. Coordinating messages with Nizich, Kopp, and Sharon Leighow made irrelevant the Cook Inlet vistas, which brought to mind a luminous Thomas Kinkade painting, with blooming lupine, bald eagles feasting on salmon, steep beaches, and rolling bluffs of the lower peninsula. Already running a day late due to the craziness at the office, my brother Stevie had secured camp before the kids and I arrived. Friday night he asked me, “Dude, why did you even come if you were going to talk on the phone the whole freakin' time?” It was an excellent question with only bad answers.

Saturday morning my six-year-old daughter hid my BlackBerry. When I frantically begged her to tell me where, she reprimanded, “Daddy! This is a BlackBerry-free zone.” My son said he'd wanted to throw the
thing in the fire. In my gut I knew I wasn't being a good father, but Sarah wanted this done now, and what Sarah wanted, Sarah got.

The press release announcing the changes at DPS was drafted that day, July 12, and sent internally at 4:25 p.m., about the same time that I first received Chuck Kopp's updated resume. No interview of superiors or coworkers, no review of personnel files, and not even an updated resume had been reviewed ahead of his appointment. Sean Parnell received his own heads-up in a nine-word email from Sarah the next day:
“We're replacing Walt with Chuck Kopp. . . . It's all good.”
Due diligence did not fit into Sarah's schedule. Walter Monegan, union leader John Cyr, and those at DPS who had not jumped through enough hoops to suit the governor had to be punished instantly for their
unflippin' believable conduct
, and Sarah needed to appear organized and ready for a seamless transition. Barring a political disaster, Trooper Mike Wooten would hopefully suffer just deserts at the hands of a newly appointed DPS Commissioner Kopp. As Sarah told her lieutenant governor, “It's all good.”

Except that it wasn't. Monday, the announcements became official, and Kopp spent the day fielding media questions. Traveling home from my disastrous family weekend, I phoned to ask how day one went. Suddenly the conversation took an unfortunate turn. Kopp mentioned casually that he'd been tagged with a sexual harassment complaint in the past. Sarah and Parnell, he insisted, knew the details, having been informed when he worked on the governor-elect's transition team, a revelation that Sarah hadn't mentioned. With a ground-swell of support for Monegan, questions were being raised about his dismissal, thus making Kopp a target. Potentially, this seemed like a bull's-eye pinned to his back. Did Sarah, Parnell, or Nizich really know? Kopp explained that the “situation” had been investigated, and he was exonerated. I hoped the “situation” was also long forgotten.

Between a lack of sleep mixed with a new dose of dread, I considered other potential traps waiting to be sprung. Sarah rarely thought through decisions and never listened to dissenting opinion, so there was no use lamenting the lack of planning and speed with which this appointment took place. As always, we'd scramble if/when things became messy. In the meantime, Sarah had not so much as spoken to
her new DPS commissioner, and I worried that a reporter might ask Kopp, “When did the governor interview you?” Um, never.

That Monday night, I wrote the governor:
“Wondering if you had a quick minute to call Chuck and congratulate him . . . He could then respond, ‘yes we spoke this morning actually' If the question came up.”

The next morning, Sarah responded:
“Called him. Great convo . . . I'm calling kenai to thank them for releasing him! :)”

In the meantime, Todd continued to wage his bad-cop battle. He suggested to Ivy Frye that she email complaints against Monegan and Cyr directly to troopers as a means of rallying support, not to mention “to piss them off.”
“The rank and file,”
he suggested,
“need to hear the rest of the story. The PSEA continues to protect bad cops.”
In conclusion, he suggested that Ivy delete a handful of troopers from their mass message, including Mike Wooten.

Sarah didn't enjoy the second-guessing that was going on in the media, but she was at peace with her decision. That lasted until Tuesday afternoon, Kopp's second day on the job, spokesperson Sharon Leighow informed the governor that the media had gotten wind of a sexual harassment complaint filed against Commissioner Kopp in 2005 while he was the Kenai Chief of Police. Kris, in a panic, told Sarah that reporters were asking if she knew of the allegation during the transition.

Sarah naturally denied knowing anything of the sort. Ironically, information surfaced later suggesting that it was Walt Monegan who delivered the news in early 2007 when considering Kopp for an appointment within his own department. Later, when the
Anchorage Daily News
confirmed that Kopp's accuser had emailed Sarah prior to the appointment, we took another PR thrashing. To make matters worse, it was discovered that several additional emails from this complaint were also sent to her attention.

Sarah, characteristically, suggested that others were at fault for not forwarding emails to her. She subsequently ordered Leighow to explain to the paper that she was innocent of ignoring warnings. She never even saw the emails; yet, she lamented, the
Daily News
wrote as if she'd purposefully ignored the
“accuser's offer to provide me information.”
People needed to know that Sarah was the victim here.

Commissioner Kopp held a press conference. He sought to explain that the situation was not as it seemed. My personal opinion holds that Chuck Kopp is a decent man, and I believe there were important details supporting Chuck that the media disregarded in the case. But my opinion did not matter. The PR worsened as the anger over Monegan's dismissal grew—especially at DPS, where loyalty to him was strong. When criticism for the pick grew to ridicule, Sarah went from claiming publicly in a press release, “There is no substance to the complaint filed three years ago and Commissioner Kopp continues to have my
full support,
” to cut and run. On Friday, July 22, 2008, Chuck Kopp resigned after less than two weeks on the job. Unlike Monegan, he received a severance of $10,000. Naturally, that led to speculation this was hush money. Sarah explained that since he'd been asked to leave a paying job, compensation was the fair thing to do. (I heard from a source close to the situation that Kopp was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement ahead of the payment.)

While Kopp needed to be more forthright with issues, regardless of whether they'd already been raised, Sarah's abandonment of him and lack of foresight to have her team explore political land-mine questions before his appointment was brutal to watch.

Much later in 2011, Chuck was recognized by the Supreme Court for his years of contributions to the Alaska Judicial Council, where he faithfully served prior to his twelve-day appointment as commissioner.

Throughout all this, beginning back on July 9, we faced another interpersonal avalanche. Sherry Whitstine, aka the blogger Syrin from Wasilla, was jabbing Sarah with her sharp stick by suggesting that the governor had engaged in an extramarital affair with Todd's best friend back in 2005—a story later rehashed by the
National Enquirer
. When Whitstine's message appeared on the
Daily News
's online message board, Sarah had to react.
“OK dokay—enough is enough. I am calling ADN.”
That the governor of any state would personally respond to a rumor, especially by directly phoning the state's largest newspaper, struck many of us as inappropriate, as well as unwise. Staffers begged her to not dignify an online message board, but with Sarah, there is no emotional off button. She sent a second email, suggesting that being governor was almost too much of a burden:
“Guys, I may
be pretty wimpy about this family stuff, but I feel like I'm at the breaking point with the hurtful gossip about my family that Sherry and others get away with. Bear with me. I hate this part of the job and many days I feel like it's not worth it.”
Suddenly we had to contend with seemingly too much: there was the car seat charge, the alleged affair, Monegan's unpopular dismissal, and dealing with Kopp's PR disaster, followed by his resignation.

But the pain Andrew Halcro was about to inflict on the administration would bury all these other matters.

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