Going Rogue: An American Life (59 page)

Going Rogue

being “a victim” of the governor’s office. He told the
Anchorage
Daily News,
“For the record, no one ever said fire [the trooper}. Not the governor. Not Todd. Not any of the other staff.” The press even printed his statement the day after I was announced as the VP candidate.

We later learned that our old friend Andy Halcro had helped create the story on his blog, a smalltown site that was cited as an authoritative source by local

later, astonishingly, by

national media too

to sift fact from fiction. Halcro’s false report

would ultimately blossom into the “scandal” known as Troopetgate, or, as people who knew the facts called it, ‘Tasergate.” Any governor has a right to pick the right team members the right positions at the right time, for the good of the team. Mohegan was a political, at-will, exempt appointee. Any governor, any mayor, any can

any cabinet member at will.

First, the press got it wrong when they reported that I

“fired” Monegan. We

transferring him. But he

turned

that down and left without discussion except to say he understood my decision. My chief of staff and I didn’t see a need to publicly get into all the reasons

it, especially since it was a

personnel matter. Reporters kept asking, though, so t explained that Walt had been leaving state trooper positions vacant and hadn’t been recruiting for them. It was unacceptable to keep them funded and on

books if we didn’t need them. Plus, we had

other budget issues that he was not helping to resolve. Overall, the job had seemed overwhelming for him and he just hadn’t been getting it done.

What Monegan
was
getting done, apparently, was the bidding of union leadership. With union prompting, Monegan quickly changed his story, making a follow-up announcement that suggested that his reassignment had been “unfair.” He also had the audacity to claim to a credulous reporter that during all time
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SARAH

PALIN

we worked rogerher, I had deigned ro meer wirh him only four rimes in the year and a half he served.

My staff and I just about fell out of the Atwood Building over that one. “Then who the heck was that you traveled around the state with all those days, and had in our offices for all those meetings, cabinet meetings, receptions, and all the other events for the last seventeen months?” Mike Nizich joked with me. “If that wasn’t Walt, we need the FBI on this stolen identity case, pronro!”

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In the months following the AGIA vote, I was glad 1’d trained for marathons. 1’m superstitious about cutting any corners when I jog; believing the few extra steps can make a difference in a long race. The race for a natural gas pipeline had spanned more years than there are miles in a marathon, but with AGIA now law, we felt the finish line was finally in sight, and our DNR and revenue commissioners worked around the clock on the application process. We wouldn’t cut any corners. freemarket principles drew five applications from around the world, plus another entirely new competing gasline proposed by BP and ConocoPhillips in lieu of working through AGIA. The applicants’ response to the new, open bidding process was proof positive that competition works. Now it was up to the commissioners ro vet the applications and recommend the one licensee they felt would best maximize the benefits for Alaskans. As the commissioners worked hard on their end, I accepted opportunities to speak with reporters nationwide about oil and gas-even if they didn’t want to hear it. We were bombarded with interview requests, including, believe it or not, a
Vogue
magazine profile of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius
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Going Rogue

and me in a fashion shoot. Mine, of course, was rhe Last Fronrier rheme, complere wirh our Piper Super Cub airplane as the backdrop, Bunny Boors in some of rhe shots, and a rhick winter jacker hiding my pregnanr belly. Since fashion trends weren’r my top inrerest, I kept bringing the
Vogue
writer’s questions back to national security and energy independence, That made it tough for her, as she was doing her best to write for readers who cared about the latest Fifth Avenue styles and probably wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of Sorels. She finally had to stop me and nicely say she’d heard enough about energy. I just .couldn’t pivot from hydropower to high fashion, so the interview wasn’t that great for her readers, I’m sure.

The competitive bidding process we created with AGIA unlocked the Big Three oil companies’ development monopoly and threw open Alaska’s doors to true competition and free enterprise. Suddenly, even other nations were bidding on the multibilliondollar project. We had anticipared Canadian interest but were surptised to receive a proposal from China, The bid, by Sinopec, bothered me. There was little doubt that the company could muster the manpower, technology, and funding necessary to do the job, but this proposal skated on the razor’s edge between the free market and national sovereignty. An energy-thirsty Communist nation controlling Alaska’s natural gas reserves was not in the best interests of the state or our coUntty. It turned out Sinopec’s application was incomplete anyway, and the commissioners rejected it for that reason. Early in 2008, the DNR and revenue commissioners finally announced their AGIA recommendation: the Calgary-based pipeline building giant TtansCanada-Alaska, a firm that had not only met evety single enforceable requirement of AGIA but exceeded them. We ecstatic.
I
was ecstatic:

thete would be hundreds of steps yet to take, but we could almost envision the tape draped aCross the finish line,

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SARAH

PALIN

We handed over rhe license recommendarion ro rhe legislarure to consider during a special legislative session that summer. We knew

success hinged on communicating with Alaskans,

so we consrantly gave our consrituents information, competing with the well-financed ad campaigns hawking rhe competing BP/ConocoPhillips idea to someday build their own gasline, an idea that had attracred the interest of the Russian energy firm Gazprom. The summer of 2008 was also about reeducating lawmakers who had just voted “Yes” on AGIA months before, but now, feeling the heat from Big Oil again, were suddenly feigning shock over the plan to build the gasline project.

We jumped in and did what we do best-town hall meetings, op-eds, weekly gasline briefings, TV and radio interviews. If tea parties had been in vogue back then, I would have thrown the first one to get people involved and energized in their government’s decisions. We even hired a communications firm to get us access to a few editorial boards (who no doubt thought, “Great. An op-ed from Sarah Palin … who’s that?”). I wrote op-eds every week, and we sent them to any publication that would spare a few column inches for our message. Our messaging began making progress happen fast. The gasline team and I hit all the local and major media players who were talking about America’s energy challenges that summer and intetested in a substantive debate, including Neil Cavuto, Maria Bartitomo, and Glenn Beck. Twice I joined CNBC’s Larry Kudlow. I like his energy-even the yelling-and I was clearly in sync with his mantra of “Drill!

Drill! Drill!”

With all these folks, I discussed issues such as congressional opposition to drilling in the ANWR; my meetings with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, members of Congress, and White House officials; and the national security issues involved in building the gasline. I hit the same topics in detail with reporters
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