Palin appointed friends and donors to key posts in Alaska, records show
100-plus jobs went to campaign donors or their relatives, sometimes without apparent regard to qualifications. Several donors got state-subsidized loans for business ventures of dubious public value.
By Charles Piller
October 24, 2008
Reporting from Anchorage -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, plucked from relative obscurity in part for her reform credentials, has been eager to tout them in her vice presidential campaign.
"I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau when I stood up to the special interests and the lobbyists and the big oil companies and the good old boys," Palin told the Republican National Convention in her acceptance speech. She said that as a new governor she "shook things up, and in short order we put the government of our state back on the side of the people."
* More than 100 appointments to state posts -- nearly 1 in 4 -- went to campaign contributors or their relatives, sometimes without apparent regard to qualifications.
* Palin filled 16 state offices with appointees from families that donated $2,000 to $5,600 and were among her top political patrons.
* Several of Palin's leading campaign donors received state-subsidized industrial development loans of up to $3.6 million for business ventures of questionable public value.
* Palin picked a donor to replace the public safety commissioner she fired. But the new top cop had to resign days later under an ethics cloud. And Palin drew a formal ethics complaint still pending against her and several aides for allegedly helping another donor and fundraiser land a state job.
Most new governors install friends and supporters in state jobs. But Alaska historians say some of Palin's appointees were less qualified than those of her Republican and Democratic predecessors.
University of Alaska historian Steve Haycox said Palin has been a reformer. But he said she has a penchant for placing supporters, many of them ill-prepared, in high posts. He called it "cronyism" far beyond what previous governors have done and a contradiction of her high-minded philosophy.
Terrence Cole, an Alaska political historian, said Palin had in some cases shown "a disrespect for experience."
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DAR
And McCain keeps on digging:
"I think she's the most qualified of anyone recently who has run for vice president to tell you the truth..."
TIME
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