Going Rogue: An American Life (20 page)

Going Rogue

“What if a mom came in and said she didn’t like a book near the children’s section?” I asked. “What’s the common policy on selecting new titles?”

This was one question among many I asked as I tried to get to know her a little better and smooth the way after a rocky start. The next thing I knew, a
Frontiersman
reporter wrote a srory suggesting thar I was on the road to banning books. The librarian didn’t come out and correct the story, so I confronted her about it.

“Oh, that reporter took what I said out of context,” she said.

“Urn … can you correct it, then?”

“Sure. I’ll try.”

She didn·t. Not long after the story came out, there was an advisory Friends of the Library meeting that I was scheduled to attend. The head of the group was Nick Carney’s wife. I walked in and found the participants all wearing black armbands.
Oh, no,
I thought,
I wonder who died?

Then I realized it was in protest of me.

And here I was expecting coffee and cake.

Even though I never sought to ban any books, this incident was falsified years later during the presidential campaign. Odd, because some of the books I had supposedly banned had not even been written yet.

But in the end, remembering thar we all teach our kids that life is too short to hold a grudge, when Nick was home recovering ftom knee surgery, I knocked on his door. He hobbled to it in pain. It was “Good Neighbor Day in Wasilla.” I brought him a pretty white Peace Lily.

At times I felt like the mayor of Peyton Place. In spite of thar, I loved my job and I loved my town-I’ve always been so proud

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of the Valley. I couldn’t wait to push forward with more of my campaign ptomises. I cut taxes-lots of them. I eliminated small business inventory taxes, I got rid of personal property taxes, I gave the boot to burdensome things like business license renewal fees, and I cut the real property tax mil levy every year I was in office. I worked to pass these cuts with a new group of consci
entious, conservative council members who worked with me to
develop the city’s infrastructure. We had our share of debates, but all of us ultimately shared the same vision for Wasilla. In the mid-1990s, many of the city’s main roads were still made of dirt. Even the runway at the municipal airport was gravel. I knew businesses-and thus jobs-wouldn’t locate in Wasilla if the tools weren’t there for the private sector to grow and thrive. So, in an effort to attract businesses, we built and paved roads, and extended water and sewer lines. Within a few years, established mom-and-pops were gtowing, new ones sprang up, and stores like Fred Meyer, a Wal-Mart Superstore, and other national chains opened their doors in our city.

In 2002, we put a city bond measure before the voters that would fund construction of a multiuse sports center. Voters approved it and the half-cent sales tax to pay for it, and we broke ground on this project, which for decades had only been a dream fat Valley residents. The arena was named after our good friend Curtis Menard, Jr. The year before, Curtis Jr. was piloting family members back and forth between a Cook Inlet sport-fishing ,site when his small plane went down, and our dear friend was killed at age thirty-six. The community felt honored to name the arena after such an enthusiastic and generous soul.

As a result of our common sense conservative efforts, Wasilla
became a booming, bustling town-the fastest-growing area in the state, and an independent financial auditor (Mikunda, Cottrell & Co.) reported that Wasilla was “the envy of other Alaskan cities.”

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Going Rogue

Unfortunately, things hadn’t gone as well on the police chief front. I thought maybe he’d come around and work wirh me on rhe budger. Bur the issues multiplied, and he forced my hand. So I fired him.

This gets at my approach to management. I have a bullerin board filled with coffee-srained, dog-eared quores racked up along with family photos rhat has followed me from office ro office since 1992. One of my favorite quores comes from author and former foorball

Lou Holrz, on how ro build your team: “Motivation is simple. You eliminare those who are not motivated.” Admittedly, I didn’t know the protocol for firing rhe chief-of course, no one else did either because we had had only one chief in our entire history. Bur I was well within my aurhority to fire him-his posirion was an at-will political appointment. Still, he sued. He claimed sexual discriminarion. He said in rhe suit that I musr have been intimidated by him because he was a big powerful male and I was a woman, and he couldn’t help that, so it was “wrongful rermination.”

I told our city atrorney, “Give me a break. I’ve been living in a

‘man’s world’ all my life-when I hunt, when I’m on a commercial fishing boat, when I was reporring sports from men’s locker rooms.” I was no stranger to these bastions of masculinity.
It
took almost three years to defend against that lawsuit, but in the end a judge agreed with me.

When I ran

reelection, John Stein again challenged me for

the job.
In
one debate, Stein referred to me as a “cheerleader” and a “Spice Girl.”

A cheerleader?
I thought.
Come on, don’t insult cheerleaders like
that.
I was just a jock and I couldn’t hold a candle to rheir pep and
coordination.

“At least get ir right;’ I laughed when it was my turn to respond. “Call me ‘Sporry Spice’!”

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I thought the whole thing was hilarious because a TV station was covering the debate and I knew that his sexist remark would play to my advantage. (As Napoleon said, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”) A young female reporter, brand new to Alaska, caught Stein’s “Spice Girl” comment.

“I can’t believe what that candidate just said about you!” she rold me, appalled and sympathetic.

I shook my head in a “can you believe whar we women have ro put up with?” way and milked it for all it was worth. “I know, I know,” I said. “But you just have ro rise above all that and plow through! Look, we have ro work twice as hard ro prove we’re half as capable as men think they are.”

Then I gave her a wink and whispered the old familiar punchline, “Thankfully, it’s not thar difficult.” I won the election with about 75 percent of the vote in a threeway race. In my second tetm, I had the honor of setving my peers from around the state as president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors. In that position, I led dozens of other mayors in dealing with statewide issues, such as municipal revenue sharing and advocating for local control of government. I loved being able to help other communities, and it allowed me ro expand my contacts around the state.

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So often in life, the first hint of tragedy artives with a phone call. Early in the morning of September 11, 2001, our police department called me at home to tell me ro turn on the news. Thousands of miles away, at the epicentet of our country’s financial markets, the World Ttade Center atrocity unfolded before our eyes. Surreal reports continued: The Pentagon had been hit. A plane had crashed in a Pennsylvania field. For the first time in hisrory, the Federal Aviation Administration had ordered every plane out of the sky.

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Like all Americans, Alaskans wondered where the terrorists would strike next. The terrorists had struck at our military and financial center, and had meant to hit another seat of power in Washington. Officials thought the Trans-Alaska Pipeline could be on the list of possible targets. In Anchorage, the Air Force scrambled fighter jets, while FAA air traffic controllers frantically tried to make contact with at least one foreign jet still in the air out of communication with towers. In Wasilla, I monitored the early-morning events from my office as we prepared the Valley’s public safety building as an emergency center. Later I gathered with area residents at the Wasilla Presbyterian Church to pray for the thousands of victims.

My parents would travel from Wasilla to New York in the aftermath of 9/11 to work near the World Trade Center. Their temporary job with the USDA Wildlife Services involved keeping predators and pests away as detectives searched through evidence and remains transported to the nearby Fresh Kills landfill.

By the time I was thirty-eight, my second term was winding down and I was about to be term-limited out of office. Meanwhile, several people approached me saying they hoped 1’d stay in public service. Not politicos, just ordinary people. As president of the Conference of Mayors, I saw so needs around the state, places where I felt I could help. But I had no interest in running for the state legislature. I did nor think I would do well in a place where you had to scratch disagreeable backs in order to secure a nameplate in the caucus.

About that time, candidates started lining up for the lieutenant governor’s tace, the bottom half of the ticket led by the popular and powetful U.S. Senator Frank Murkowski, who was coming home to run for governor.

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Alaska was just coming off eight years of a Democrat governor, Tony Knowles. Knowles was quite liberal-he was later considered by President Barack Obama for a cabinet position-but also very much supported by Big Oil. Polls showed Alaskans were ready for a change. Many looked at Murkowski’s candidacy as a welcome-home to a public servant who had represented us in D.C. for more than twO decades and was now returning to serve us more personally.

Like most Alaskans, I viewed Murkowski as a respected elder statesman, a bigwig pol on the national level. By then, he’d served twenty-two years in Washington, where he’d chaired powerful committees, like the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and helped usher Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) legislation thtough to President Bill Clinton’s desk-hefOre Clinton vetoed it. Murkowski was our junior senator; the senior was Ted Stevens, who served for four decades in the Senate and even chaired the coveted Appropriations Committee. Alaska’s only representative, Don Young, has served for over three decades, chairing influential committees like Transportation. This created what was arguably the most powerful congressional delegation in the nation, and they did bring home the bacon: more federal money per capita than any other state. I would eventually argue with them against the notion that Alaskans should be known as “takers;’ when we were finally becoming able to contribute more
to our nation instead.