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In Cambodia, there is an old saying, if the husband is a one stared
general, the wife and his children are 5-stared general. It looks John
McCain is looking to bring Cambodian domus-cracy or domestic-cracy to
the US by tabbing his fellow Mav-erratic Pailin as his running mate.
Sarah Palin's husband, Todd, was a fixture at governor's office
Cheryl
Senter / Associated Press
‘FIRST GENTLEMAN’: Todd Palin
argues that he’s being singled out because his wife is Alaska’s first
female governor.
The
'first gentleman' also read official correspondence and went to closed
Cabinet meetings, records and an investigation indicate.
By
Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 12, 2008
Barely
two weeks after Sarah Palin had been sworn in as Alaska's governor, in
December 2006, then-Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan's executive
secretary got a confusing phone call from Palin's office: The first
gentleman would like to schedule a meeting with her boss.
"I was not familiar with the term 'first gentleman,' or didn't hear her
correctly, so I kept asking her, 'Who?' " the secretary, Cassandra
Byrne, testified recently. "And she eventually said, 'Todd Palin.' "
The appointment was fixed, and Monegan arrived in the governor's office
to find himself alone with the brawny, popular fisherman and snowmobile
champion, who was sitting at a 12-foot-long conference table,
surrounded by stacks of documents. One of the documents had the logo
and letterhead of Monegan's own Department of Public Safety.
The subject, it turned out, was Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten, who
had been involved in a messy divorce with the governor's sister. The
Palins, Todd made clear, wanted Wooten fired for a long record of
behavior they saw as inappropriate for a police officer.
"He kept using the term 'we.' 'We went to go talk to, we, we.' And so I
assumed it was he and Sarah, of course," Monegan testified.
The meeting "made me a little uncomfortable," he said. "We're having it
in the governor's office, and he's not the governor. I think he was
trying to use state trappings to handle a personal issue."
Todd Palin would become a familiar voice for the Palin administration.
Independent legislative investigator Stephen Branchflower's report on
Monegan's subsequent firing -- in part, the investigation found,
because he wouldn't fire Wooten -- contains an exhaustive record of
Todd Palin's frequent and intimate presence in the day-to-day workings
of his wife's administration.
Testimony compiled as part of the inquiry, and The Times' own review of
e-mail logs from the administration, show that Todd Palin was a fixture
in the governor's office, spending about half of his time there. He
attended Cabinet meetings that are supposed to be closed to the public,
and was copied on a wide variety of high-level government
correspondence on issues such as contract negotiations with the police
officers union, Alaska Native issues and the privatization of a dairy
near the Palins' hometown of Wasilla.
A campaign issue
The presence of the governor's husband at Cabinet sessions and in
meetings over the state budget has become an issue in Palin's campaign
as the Republican vice presidential nominee, raising the question of
whether Todd Palin would become the kind of activist spouse that
Hillary Clinton proved to be during the first years of her husband's
administration.
"It's almost as if he's behaving as a lobbyist," said Andree McLeod, an
Anchorage activist who has sued to obtain the full text of government
e-mails sent to the governor's husband. On Friday, she won a temporary
restraining order requiring the Palin administration to preserve copies
of messages sent under the governor's private e-mail address.
"Here he is involved in a lot of high-level meetings, and he's really
involved in a lot of policy. He's involved with mining interests; he's
involved with Native corporations," McLeod said. "I'm very curious as
to who he's representing."
But Todd Palin last week defended his role in the administration,
arguing in written testimony to the Branchflower inquiry that he was
being singled out for scrutiny because he is married to the state's
first female governor.
"I have heard criticism that I am too involved with my wife's
administration. My wife and I are very close. We are each other's best
friend. I have helped her at every stage in her career the best I can,
and she has helped me," Palin wrote.
"Few complained when Nancy Murkowski helped [former Gov.] Frank
Murkowski. Frank Murkowski even issued a memo telling everyone his wife
was his closest advisor, and would travel wherever he went," Palin
said. "It is unfair to apply a double standard against my wife, just
because she is the state's first female governor."
But according to the legislative inquiry, the "first gentleman's"
influence was so pervasive that senior staff members began to be uneasy
about his constant phone calls about Wooten. Former legislative
director John Bitney, the report said, took several calls a day from
Todd Palin on his cellphone.
"Todd . . . would call me about once a day, sometimes two or three
times a day, just on a myriad of things" -- very often about Wooten --
Bitney testified.
"You were kind of caught in the middle here?" Branchflower asked him.
"Yeah, but I didn't want to tell him I wasn't going to do anything . .
. I didn't think that was appropriate, but I didn't want to tell Todd
that."
An unofficial regular
Cheryl
Senter / Associated Press
‘FIRST GENTLEMAN’: Todd Palin
argues that he’s being singled out because his wife is Alaska’s first
female governor.
Sarah Palin's husband, Todd, was a fixture at
governor's office
October 12 2008
Bitney
ended up losing his job. No reason was given at the time, but Bitney
believes it was connected to the fact that he had an affair with, and
later married, the wife of a close friend of the Palins'.
A variety of top-level administration officials told Branchflower that
Palin was a frequent presence in the governor's office, but many have
said he was often there to help baby-sit the couple's youngest child.
But Atty. Gen. Talis J. Colberg, during his interview with
Branchflower, was unable to explain the presence of the governor's
husband at Cabinet meetings.
"If someone said that they have seen him at more than one or two
Cabinet meetings, would that give you pause?" Branchflower asked.
"That would give me pause, but it's possible," Colberg responded.
"Are Cabinet meetings open to the public?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"Is Todd Palin a state employee, to your knowledge?"
"No."
"Do you know why he was allowed to remain there?"
"No."
Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said the
answer to his involvement was simple: Palin often asked her husband,
who was at home with the children, to print out government e-mails so
she could read them at home at night.
"Todd has played an appropriate and similar role to that played by the
spouses of dozens of governors throughout the country," Griffin said.
Todd Palin received copies of e-mails dealing with a bill on parental
consent for abortion; a radio talk-show host "hammering" a political
opponent of the governor; discussions about the police union, which was
involved in contentious contract negotiations with the state;
invitations to legislators for bill signings; and a wide variety of
e-mails about Andrew Halcro, a longtime irritant to the Palin
administration who ran unsuccessfully against Palin for governor in
2006.
Todd Palin also got a copy of the celebratory e-mail that circulated
through the governor's office about talk-show host Rush Limbaugh. The
new Alaska governor, Limbaugh had declared, was "a babe."
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Times staff writer Tom Hamburger in Washington contributed to this
report.
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