Here is the complete article, as printed in the Sunday St Paul Pioneer Press. From the comments and interviews of those who know her in Alaska, it could well be that Palin would be even worse than Bush when it comes to trampling on people's rights, if given the chance.


Palin hired school friends, hit critics, muzzled staff

Probe reveals her unflattering side as governor and mayor
By Jo Becker, Michael Powell and Peter S. Goodman
New York Times
Article Last Updated: 09/13/2008 10:12:04 PM CDT


WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.


So when there was a vacancy at the top of the state Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as one of her qualifications for running the roughly $2 million agency.


Havemeister was one of at least five high school classmates Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private-sector wages.


When Palin had to cut the 2007 state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.


Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of "good old boys" politics and a champion for ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Sens. Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.


SEES 'HATERS'
But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents
"haters" — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.


Throughout her career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.


Still, Palin has many supporters. As mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she has pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of the state's economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents display unflagging affection, cheering "our Sarah" and hissing at her critics.


"She is bright and has unfailing political instincts," said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska. "She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future. But her governing style raises a lot of hard questions."


Palin declined to grant an interview for this article, and she did not respond to written questions. The McCain-Palin campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and that of her husband, while referring others to the governor's representatives, who did not respond.


A local builder said in an interview he complained to then-Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorney's firing.


Interviews show Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by the New York Times show that staff studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.


Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Steiner that it would cost $468,784 to process his request.


When Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in trouble, records show.


"Their secrecy is off the charts," Steiner said.


State legislators are currently investigating accusations that Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, which she denies. But interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.


STRIKING BACK
Last summer, State Rep. John Harris, the Republican speaker of the House, picked up his phone and heard Todd Palin's voice. The governor's husband sounded edgy. Todd Palin wanted to know why Harris had hired John Bitney as his chief of staff. Bitney was a high school classmate of the Palins and had worked for Palin. But she fired Bitney after learning that he had fallen in love with another longtime friend.


"I understood from the call that Todd wasn't happy with me hiring John and he'd like to see him not there," Harris said.
"The Palin family gets upset at personal issues," he added. "And at our level, they want to strike back."


Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Palin's first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.


"'I WANT TO BE PRESIDENT'"
"I said, 'You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,' " Chase recalled. "She replied, 'I want to be president.' "


As mayor, Palin presided over a city rapidly outgrowing itself. Septic tanks had begun to pollute lakes, and residential lots were carved willy-nilly out of the woods. She passed a road and sewer bond, cut property taxes but raised the sales tax, and loosened the reins on enforcing zoning laws.


The mayor also tended to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the planning board. And she eyed the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.


"People would bring books back censored," recalled Mayor John Stein. "Pages would get marked up or torn out."


Witnesses and contemporary news accounts state that Palin asked the librarian to take books off the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Palin never advocated censorship.


But in 1995, Palin, then a councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book "Daddy's Roommate" on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Chase, then on the council, and Stein, who was mayor at the time. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Palin read it.


"Sarah said she didn't need to read that stuff," recalled Chase, who has become disenchanted with Palin. "It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn't even read it."


Many lawmakers contend that Palin is overly reliant on a tiny inner circle that leaves her isolated. She is often described by Democrats and Republicans alike as a leader missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor's mansion in Juneau, according to state records.


The administration's e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who help engineer her rise have felt her wrath.


Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found himself branded a "hater."


It is part of a pattern, Fagan said, in which Palin characterizes critics as "bad people who are anti-Alaska." Since then he has been inundated with critical calls. "Do you have any idea how much this state hates me right now?" he said.