Sarah Louise Heath Palin (pronounced /ˈpeɪlɪn/; born February 11, 1964) is the current governor of Alaska, and is the presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee in the 2008 United States presidential election.

Palin served two terms on the Wasilla, Alaska, city council from 1992 to 1996, then won two terms as mayor of Wasilla from 1996 to 2002. After an unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor of Alaska in 2002, she chaired the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from 2003 to 2004 while also serving as Ethics Supervisor of the commission.

On December 2006, Palin was sworn in as the governor of Alaska, becoming the first woman and youngest person to hold the office. She defeated incumbent Republican governor Frank Murkowski in the Republican primary and former Democratic governor Tony Knowles in the general election.

On August 29, 2008, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain announced that he had chosen Palin as his running mate. She is expected to be formally nominated at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. She would be the second woman to run for vice president on a major-party ticket[6] and the first Republican to do so.

Early life and education
Palin was born Sarah Louise Heath in Sandpoint, Idaho, the third of four children of Sarah Heath (nee Sheeran), a school secretary, and Charles R. Heath, a science teacher and track coach. Her family moved to Alaska when she was an infant. As a child, she would sometimes go moose hunting with her father before school, and the family regularly ran 5K and 10K races.

Palin attended Wasilla High School in Wasilla, Alaska, where she was the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter at the school and the point guard and captain of the school’s basketball team. She helped the team win the Alaska small-school basketball championship in 1982, hitting a critical free throw in the last seconds of the game, despite having an ankle stress fracture at the time. She earned the nickname “Sarah Barracuda” because of her intense play and was the leader of team prayer before games.

In 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla beauty contest (according to most but not all sources, playing the flute and winning the “Miss Congeniality” award as well), then finished second in the Miss Alaska pageant, at which she won a college scholarship. Palin attended Hawaii Pacific College - now known as Hawaii Pacific University - in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1982 for a semester, where she majored in Business Administration, and transferred in 1983 to North Idaho College. In 1987, Palin received a Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho, where she also minored in political science.

In 1988, she worked briefly as a sports reporter for KTUU-TV in Anchorage, Alaska, and also helped out in her husband’s family commercial fishing business.

Early political career
Palin began her political career in 1992 when she ran for Wasilla city council, supporting a controversial new sales tax and advocating “a safer, more progressive Wasilla”. She won and served two terms on the council from 1992 to 1996.

According to officials of the Alaska Independence Party, Sarah Palin was a member in 1994. A portion of the party’s platform “challenges the legality of the Alaskan statehood vote … [under] international law” and calls for a referendum on whether Alaska should secede from the United States to become an independent nation, remain a state, or become a U.S. territory or commonwealth. Palin remained on good terms with the AIP, and would later give a “welcome” speech to the 2008 AIP Convention.

After registering as a Republican in 1996, Palin challenged and defeated incumbent John Stein for the non-partisan office of mayor, criticizing wasteful spending and high taxes. In October 1996, she asked the police chief, librarian, public works director, and finance director to resign, and instituted a policy requiring department heads to get her approval before talking to reporters. The librarian kept the job, despite a dispute over inquires by Palin on how to ban books including inappropriate language, but in January 1997, Palin fired the police chief, citing a failure to support her administration. Palin said in a letter that she wanted a change because she believed the two did not fully support her administration. A court dismissed a suit subsequently filed by the police chief, finding that Palin had the right to fire city employees even for political reasons.

As mayor, Palin reduced the mayoral salary, reduced property taxes by 40 percent, and increased the city sales tax to pay for a new indoor ice rink and sports complex. At this time, state Republican leaders began grooming her for higher office. She ran for re-election against Stein in 1999 and was returned to office, getting over three times as many votes as him. Palin was also elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors.

Palin undertook a lobby effort that, during her last four-year term as mayor, secured nearly $27 million in Congressional earmarked funds for Wasilla. The largest earmark was $15 million for a rail link between Wasilla and the ski resort community of Girdwood, home town of Senator Ted Stevens.

In 2002, term limits prevented Palin from running for a third term as mayor. Her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, ran for the office but lost the election to Dianne Keller.

Activities from 2002 to 2005
In 2002, Palin made an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor, coming in second to Loren Leman in a five-way race in the Republican primary.[34] After Frank Murkowski resigned from his long-held U.S. Senate seat in mid-term to become governor, he considered appointing Palin to replace him in the Senate, but instead chose his daughter, Alaska state representative Lisa Murkowski.

Governor Murkowski appointed Palin to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, where she chaired the Commission from 2003 to 2004, and also served as Ethics Supervisor. Palin resigned in January 2004 in protest over what she called the “lack of ethics” of fellow Republican members.

After resigning, Palin filed formal complaints against the state Republican Party’s chairman, Randy Ruedrich,[39] and former Alaska Attorney General Gregg Renkes. She accused Ruedrich, one of her fellow commissioners, of doing work for the party on public time and working closely with a company he was supposed to be regulating. Ruedrich and Renkes both resigned and Ruedrich paid a record $12,000 fine.

From 2003 to June 2005, Palin served as one of three directors of “Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.,” a 527 group that was designed to serve as a political boot camp for Republican women in Alaska.

Governor of Alaska
In 2006, running on a clean-government platform, Palin defeated then-Governor Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Her running mate was State Senator Sean Parnell. Senator Ted Stevens made a last-moment endorsement and filmed a TV commercial together with Palin for the gubernatorial campaign.

In August, she declared that education, public safety, and transportation would be the three cornerstones of her administration.[43] Despite spending less than her Democratic opponent, she won the gubernatorial election in November, defeating former Governor Tony Knowles 48.3 percent to 40.9 percent.

Palin became Alaska’s first woman governor and, at 42, the youngest in Alaskan history. She is the first Alaskan governor born after Alaska achieved U.S. statehood and the first governor not inaugurated in Juneau; she chose to have the ceremony held in Fairbanks instead. She took office on December 4, 2006.

She sometimes broke with the state Republican establishment. For example, she endorsed Parnell’s bid to unseat the state’s longtime at-large U.S. Congressman, Don Young. Palin also publicly challenged Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the ongoing federal investigation into his financial dealings. Shortly before his July 2008 indictment, she held a joint news conference with Stevens, described by The Washington Post as being held “to make clear she had not abandoned him politically.”

A poll published by Hays Research on July 28, 2008, showed Palin’s approval rating at 80 percent,] while another Ivan Moore poll showed it at 76 percent, a drop which the pollsters attributed to the controversial firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. A subsequent Rasmussen Reports poll from July 31, 2008 showed 35 percent of Alaskans rated her performance as excellent, 29 percent good, 22 percent fair, and 14 percent poor.

Energy and environment
Palin has strongly promoted oil and natural gas resource development in Alaska, including in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), where such development has been the subject of a national debate. She also helped pass a tax increase on oil company profits. Palin has followed through on plans to create a new sub-cabinet group of advisers to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions within Alaska. When asked about climate change after becoming Senator McCain’s presumptive running mate, she stated that it would “affect Alaska more than any other state”, but she added, “I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.”

Shortly after taking office, Palin rescinded 35 appointments made by Murkowski in the last hours of his administration, including that of his former chief of staff James “Jim” Clark to the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority. Clark later pleaded guilty to conspiring with a defunct oil-field-services company to channel money into Frank Murkowski’s re-election campaign.

In March 2007, Palin presented the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA) as the new legal vehicle for building a natural gas pipeline from the state’s North Slope. This negated a deal by the previous governor to grant the contract to a coalition including BP (her husband’s former employer). Only one legislator, Representative Ralph Samuels, voted against the measure, and in June, Palin signed it into law. On January 5, 2008, Palin announced that a Canadian company, TransCanada Corp., was the sole AGIA-compliant applicant. In August 2008, Palin signed a bill into law giving the state of Alaska authority to award TransCanada Pipelines $500 million in seed money and a license to build and operate the $26-billion pipeline to transport natural gas from the North Slope to the Lower 48 through Canada.

In response to high oil and gas prices, and the resulting state government budget surplus, Palin proposed giving Alaskans $100-a-month energy debit cards. She also proposed providing grants to electrical utilities so that they would reduce customers’ rates. She subsequently dropped the debit card proposal, and in its place she proposed to send Alaskans $1,200 directly, paid for from the windfall surplus the state is getting because of the high oil prices.

In May 2008, Palin objected to the decision of Dirk Kempthorne, the Republican United States Secretary of the Interior, to list polar bears as an endangered species. The State of Alaska filed a lawsuit to stop the listing amid fears that it would hurt oil and gas development in the bears’ habitat off Alaska’s northern and northwestern coasts. She said the move to list the bears was premature and was not the appropriate management tool for their welfare.

Budget
Shortly after becoming governor, Palin canceled a contract for the construction of an 11-mile (18 km) gravel road outside Juneau to a mine. This reversed a decision made in the closing days of the Murkowski Administration. She also followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet purchased (on a state government credit account) by the Murkowski administration. In August 2007, the jet was sold on eBay for $2.1 million.

In June 2007, Palin signed into law a $6.6 billion operating budget—the largest in Alaska’s history. At the same time, she used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the construction budget in state history. The $237 million in cuts represented over 300 local projects, and reduced the construction budget to nearly $1.6 billion.

In 2007, the Alaska Creamery Board recommended closing Matanuska Maid Dairy, an unprofitable state-owned business. Palin objected, citing concern for dairy farmers and a recent infusion of $600,000 in state money. Palin subsequently replaced the entire membership of the Board of Agriculture and Conservation. The new board reversed the decision to close the dairy. Later in 2007, the unprofitable business was put up for sale. No offers met the minimum bid of $3.35 million, and the dairy was closed. In August 2008, the Anchorage plant was purchased for $1.5 million, the new minimum bid. The purchaser plans to convert it into heated storage units.

National Guard
In July 2007, she visited a unit of the Alaska National Guard in Kuwait, also stopping in Germany to meet with wounded Alaskan soldiers there.

Bridge to Nowhere
In 2006, Ketchikan’s Gravina Island Bridge, known outside the state as the “Bridge to Nowhere”, became an issue in the gubernatorial campaign. Palin initially expressed support for the bridge and ran on a “build-the-bridge” platform but later decided to use the bridge funds for other projects because of rising cost estimates. Despite the bridge currently being on hold, the Palin administration allocated tens of millions of dollars of federal funds to begin construction of the Gravina island road meant to link to the bridge.

Palin made national news when she stopped work on the bridge. Reuters said the move was responsible for “earning her admirers from earmark critics and budget hawks from around the nation. The move also thrust her into the spotlight as a reform-minded newcomer.” In an article titled, “Bridge leads McCain to running mate Palin”, the Associated Press said canceling the bridge was “the first identifiable link connecting Palin and McCain,” soon followed by “whispers of Palin being an ideal GOP running mate”. The International Herald Tribune went so far as to write, in the lede to its story, “Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska owes her selection as Senator John McCain’s running mate in part to an irresistible slogan: the Bridge to Nowhere.”

In 2008, when introduced as McCain’s running mate, Palin told the crowd, “I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere” — a line that garnered big applause but upset political leaders in Ketchikan. Palin’s campaign coordinator in the city, Republican Mike Elerding, remarked, “She said ‘thanks but no thanks,’ but they kept the money.” Democratic Mayor Bob Weinstein also criticized Palin. “…When she found it was politically advantageous for her nationally, abruptly she starts using the very term [Bridge to nowhere] that she said was insulting.”

2008 vice-presidential campaign
On August 29, 2008, in Dayton, Ohio, Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, announced that he had chosen Palin as his running mate. Palin’s selection surprised many people because speculation centered on others such as Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, United States Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge.

McCain was reportedly concerned about reclaiming his image as a “maverick Republican” and wanted someone to shake up the ticket. With this in mind, he called Palin on August 24 to discuss the possibility of having her join him on the ticket.[94] Palin had been under consideration since a private meeting with McCain in a February National Governors Association meeting. Although this was the first time the two had met, Palin made a favorable impression on McCain. On August 27, Palin visited McCain’s vacation home near Sedona, Arizona, where she was offered the position of vice presidential candidate. Palin was the only prospective running mate who had a face-to-face interview with McCain to discuss joining the ticket.

Palin is the second U.S. woman to run on a major party ticket, after Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee of former vice-president Walter Mondale in 1984.

[96] Several quick revelations about Palin called into question how well she was vetted. The McCain-Palin campaign stated that John McCain was aware of one of them, her daughter’s pregancy, but that it did not affect his choice. Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama and his campaign staff declared the subject “off limits” in the coming campaign.

Political Positions
Abortion - In 2002, while running for lieutenant governor, Palin called herself as “pro-life as any candidate can be.” She opposes abortion for rape and incest victims, supporting it only in cases where the mother’s life is in danger, and suggested that requiring parental consent for abortions be added to Alaska’s constitution. Palin is a member of Feminists for Life.  A 2006 article in the Anchorage Daily News refers to Palin as supportive of contraception but does not go into detail on the subject.

ANWR drilling - Palin has strongly promoted oil and natural gas resource development in Alaska, including opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling.

Capital Punishment - Palin supports capital punishment for some crimes. She has stated that: “If the legislature passed a death penalty law, I would sign it. We have a right to know that someone who rapes and murders a child or kills an innocent person in a drive-by shooting will never be able to do that again.”

Creationism and Evolution - In a televised debate in 2006, Palin said she supported teaching both creationism and evolution in public schools. She clarified her position the next day, saying that if a debate of alternative views arose in class she would not prohibit its discussion. She added that she would not push the state Board of Education to add creation-based alternatives to the state’s required curriculum.

Global Warming - Palin does not believe that global warming is human-caused.

Guns - Palin, a long-time member of the National Rifle Association, strongly supports its interpretation of the Second Amendment as protecting individual rights to bear arms, including handguns. She also supports gun safety education for youth.

Marijuana - Palin opposes the re-legalization of marijuana in Alaska, stating concerns about the message re-legalization would send to her children. Palin has admitted smoking marijuana, which was legal under Alaskan state law although illegal under US law at the time.

Same-Sex Marriage - Palin opposes same-sex marriage and supported a non-binding referendum for a constitutional amendment to deny state health benefits to same-sex couples. Palin has stated that she supported the 1998 constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

Sex Education - Palin is a “firm supporter of abstinence-only education in schools” according to CNN in 2006.[108] When running for governor in 2006, Palin wrote, “Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support,” in response to a questionnaire by the Eagle Forum Alaska.

Terrorism and Iraq - Palin’s foreign policy positions were unclear at the time she was picked as McCain’s running mate. Shortly after she became governor in December 2006, the Alaska Business Monthly asked Palin for her views about troop escalations in Iraq. She replied “I’ve been so focused on state government, I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place…” She has said she supports President Bush’s idea of stopping terrorism “by taking the fight to the terrorists”. Palin has also tied the war to the quest for new energy supplies, saying, “We are a nation at war and in many [ways] the reasons for war are fights over energy sources, which is nonsensical when you consider that domestically we have the supplies ready to go.”

Wildlife conservation - Palin opposed federal listing of the polar bear as an endangered species on the grounds that the “population has dramatically increased over 30 years as a result of conservation,” and supported a controversial predator-control program involving aerial hunting of wolves to increase moose populations for hunters.

Palin is a self-described “hockey mom” and mother of five. She hunts, goes ice fishing, eats mooseburgers, rides snowmobiles, has run a marathon, and owns and pilots a floatplane.[117]

Palin obtained a passport in 2007 to visit with Alaskan National Guard soldiers in Kuwait and travel to Germany to meet with wounded soldiers.[118] Palin has also visited Ireland, a spokeswoman said.[119]

Religion
Palin was originally baptized as a Roman Catholic, but her parents switched to the Wasilla Assembly of God, a Pentecostal church, where she was rebaptized at age 12 or 13. When she is in the capital, she attends Juneau Christian Center, another Assemblies of God church. Her current home church in Wasilla is The Wasilla Bible Church, an independent congregation. Although initial reports described her as the first Pentecostal ever named to a major party’s presidential ticket, Palin describes herself as a non-denominational Christian. The National Catholic Reporter described her as a “post-denominational” Christian.

Family
Palin eloped with her high-school boyfriend, Todd Palin, on August 29, 1988, when she was 24 years old. According to her mother, the reason was simple: “It was a shock but she did it because she knew we couldn’t afford a big white wedding.” Their first son, Track, was born eight months after their wedding. Todd works for BP as an oil-field production operator and owns a commercial fishing business. He is a champion snowmobiler, who has won the 2,000-mile (3,200 km) “Iron Dog” race four times.The family lives in Wasilla.

The couple have five children: sons Track (19) and Trig (4 months) and daughters Bristol (17), Willow (14), and Piper (7) [ages as of September 2008]. Todd and Track Palin are registered to vote as independents (”undeclared”). Track Palin enlisted in the U.S. Army on September 11, 2007, subsequently joining an infantry brigade. Palin’s youngest child, Trig, has Down syndrome, diagnosed prenatally. Palin has said that she feels blessed that God chose them to raise a baby with Down Syndrome.

Palin’s announcement in March 2008 that she was seven months pregnant generated publicity and surprise, as did the circumstances of Trig’s birth. More than a month before the baby was due, she was in Texas to deliver the keynote address at a conference. At about 4:00 a.m. local time, she began leaking amniotic fluid. She remained in Texas to deliver the speech before taking the eight-hour flight back to Alaska. She landed in Anchorage at 10:30 p.m. and arrived at the Mat-Su Valley Regional Medical Center an hour later. She gave birth at 6:30 a.m. the next day after her physician induced labor. Palin returned to work three days later.

Palin announced on September 1, 2008, that Bristol is five months pregnant and intends to keep the baby and marry the father of her child, 17-year old Levi Johnston. The two are seniors at Wasilla High School.