The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin

by McGinniss, Joe

  “But it’s right next to our driveway, so people will think my mother is supporting Woodruff, and she’s not.”

  Dewey explained that he didn’t care what people would think. He also told Track that he and his friends had best move their vehicles. He’d be leaving when he finished putting up the sign and it would be a shame if he bumped into any of them on his way out.

  At that point, Dewey told me, Track’s attention shifted from the sign to Dewey’s truck, which boasted a new driver’s-side window. Track told Dewey how much he admired the truck. Then he asked, “How much would you sell it for? I’d love to buy it.”

  Dewey said it wasn’t for sale, but everything ended amicably. “I had to give him a lesson in the concept of private property and ownership rights. I think he believed that everything back there belonged to his parents, or even if it didn’t, that they controlled it just because they were the Palins. But once we got to be just a couple of good old boys talking trucks, things were fine.”

  As for Sarah during my absence? She hasn’t spent enough time at home even to realize I wasn’t there. She’s been flying all over the state filming episodes of Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Apparently, it hasn’t all been smooth sledding.

  The crew drove down to Homer to do a halibut fishing episode but had a hard time finding someone willing to take Sarah out on his boat. Producers approached one prominent commercial fisherman, Todd Hoppe, and he said, “Not my boat. I’d sucker-punch Todd Palin if I had half a chance.”

  The Palins are not popular in Homer, which describes itself as “A quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem.” In Homer, authenticity and common courtesy are considered to be among the highest of civic virtues.

  While in Homer, Sarah posted on Facebook that she was “out on a commercial fishing boat, working my butt off for my own business” and that because “the Left” was getting so “wee-wee’d up” by her criticism she would “go back to setting my hooks and watching the halibut take the bait.”

  On Jeanne Devon’s Mudflats blog, Shannyn Moore, who has actually earned a living fishing commercially out of Homer, points out that “The Palins’ fishing business doesn’t include IFQ’s [individual fishing quotas] necessary for commercially harvesting halibut.” So Sarah is breaking the law if she’s actually working her butt off for her own business, unless by “my own business” she means appearing on TLC, which is paying her $250,000 per episode. Also, “Her baiting hooks and keeping a manicure is laughable,” and, finally, “Halibut are on the bottom of the ocean, hard to watch them ‘take the bait.’ ”

  Unsurprisingly, Homer voted for Tony Knowles over Sarah in 2006. Her popularity in the town declined further as she embarrassed herself and Alaska during her run for the vice presidency. But the bottom really fell out when she quit as Alaska governor in July 2009. Homer has no respect for quitters.

  A fifty-two-year-old Homer schoolteacher named Kathleen Gustafson, wife of a commercial fisherman, decided to show Sarah how Homer felt. She hung a thirty-by-three-foot banner that read WORST GOVERNOR EVER from a railing outside a fish-processing shack owned by her friend Billy Sullivan, at the top of the boat ramp on the Homer docks. Gustafson was rankled by Sarah’s pretending to do, for a television stunt, what Gustafson’s husband and many others in Homer did for real: fish for halibut.

  Sarah and her entourage were more than fifty yards away, at the other end of the public dock, when Gustafson put up her banner. The TLC crew was setting up for filming while members of Sarah’s private security force were spreading across the area patting down citizens who happened to find themselves on the dock.

  Coincidentally, Walt Monegan and Gary Wheeler and their wives were in Homer that day and had considered a morning walk along the dock. What would have been a classic moment in Alaskan history came very close to happening: Sarah Palin’s private security guards trying to frisk her former chief of security and the man she fired as director of public safety before letting them continue on their walk.

  That confrontation did not occur, but Sarah could not resist provoking another. Having spotted Gustafson’s banner, she was unable to ignore it. Trailed by Todd and Willow and a couple of her security specialists, she marched straight toward it. Billy Sullivan saw Sarah coming and took a cell-phone video of what happened next.

  Palin: What’s up?

  Gustafson: You swore on your precious Bible that you would uphold the interests of this state, and then when cash was waved in front of your face, you quit.

  Palin: Oh, you wanted me to be your governor! I’m honored! Thank you!

  Gustafson: I wanted you to honor your responsibilities. That is what I wanted. I wanted you to be part of the political process instead of becoming a celebrity.

  Palin: Here’s the deal. Here’s the deal. That’s what I’m out there fightin’ for Americans to be able to have a Constitution protected so that we can have free speech.

  Gustafson: In what way are you fighting for that?

  Palin: Oh my goodness!

  Gustafson: In what way?

  Palin: To elect candidates who understand the Constitution, to protect our military interests so that we can keep on fightin’ for our Constitution that will protect some of the freedoms that evidently are important to you, too.

  Gustafson: By using your celebrity status …

  Willow Palin: How is she a celebrity? That’s my question.

  Palin: I’m honored! No, she thinks I’m a celebrity!

  Willow Palin: That’s funny that you think she is.

  Gustafson: Well, you’re certainly not representing the state of Alaska any longer …

  Willow Palin (gesturing with both hands, as if outlining a map of the United States): She’s representing United States!

  Gustafson: Yes, I know. You belong to America now, and that suits me just fine.

  Palin: What do you do here?

  Gustafson: I’m a teacher.

  Palin (rolling her eyes and grimacing): Ooh!

  Willow Palin: Ooh!

  As Sarah rolls her head, mother and daughter exchange a glance that seems to say, “That explains it!”

  Gustafson: I also have a few other jobs. I’m married to a commercial fisherman. And so I fish.

  Palin: Oh, that’s cool. So am I!

  Palin (waving to Sullivan’s camera): Hi! Are we on video?

  Once Sarah becomes aware that the encounter is being recorded she shifts to conciliatory mode and wraps things up within a few sentences, as one of her security people sticks his hand in front of the camera and then tries to stand in front of it. Later, members of Palin’s entourage come back and tear down the banner, in a display of Sarah’s respect for the right of free speech.

  Almost everywhere she goes this summer, Sarah is shielded from the once-adoring Alaskan public by either private security or by throngs of cameramen and soundmen and television producers and technicians. The days of her high approval ratings are long gone. A majority of Alaskans now disapprove of her. They don’t even like her. They don’t like how she walked out on her duties as governor in order to become an instant millionaire and they don’t like how she’s made the state, in the minds of outsiders, synonymous with herself.

  It used to be that when an Alaskan traveled Outside, the questions would be about bears or cold winters or mountains or darkness or fish. Now, invariably, the only questions are about Sarah. I’m meeting many Alaskans who have taken to claiming to be Canadian when traveling Outside, just so they won’t have to talk about her.

  Nonetheless, despite what Willow said, Sarah is inarguably a celebrity, and therefore the center of attention in public places. She once basked in this, confident of her popularity. Now she can only do that Outside. Within Alaska, she shies away from unguarded public places, aware that glances in her direction are likely to be less adoring than disgusted.

  Both she and Todd have become hypersensitive to cameras they can’t control being aimed in their direction. An example of this occurs on August 17 at the Valdez Ai
rport.

  Sarah and Todd have arrived with Greta Van Susteren and her Fox News production team for a flight to Anchorage. A local small businessman named Hawk Pierce (the very sort of person whose interests Sarah so often claims to have at heart) has brought his wife to the airport for the same flight.

  He sees Sarah at the airport entrance talking to the interim mayor of Valdez, Dave Cobb. Keeping his distance, Pierce starts to take a video. As soon as Sarah notices him, she breaks off her conversation and turns to him:

  Sarah: Hello there, how are you?

  Pierce: Good.

  Sarah: What’s your name?

  Pierce: What’s your name? You look familiar.

  Sarah approaches him.

  Sarah: Hi, I’m Sarah … what’s your name?

  Pierce: Hawk. Nice to meet you, Sarah.

  Sarah: Nice to meetcha. This is my husband, Todd Palin. What do you do here?

  Pierce: Hi, Todd. I’m a small-business owner.

  Sarah (voice getting higher): Okay! What kind of business do you own?

  Pierce: I have skateboard shops, espresso shops, things like that.

  Sarah: Very good. And you live here in Valdez?

  At this point, Todd steps to the side and begins to take pictures of Pierce.

  Pierce: I do.

  Sarah: Do you mind if I take a picture of ya? Love meetin’ the locals.

  Pierce: Not at all.

  Sarah takes a picture of Pierce.

  Sarah: That’s wonderful. Todd, ya wanna stand by him and I’ll take a picture?

  Todd: Hey, I’m good right here.

  Pierce pans his camera to show Todd.

  Sarah: Good, good. Okay, we’re gettin’ on the flight.

  Todd: What was your name again?

  Pierce: Hawk.

  Sarah: Hawk. And he’s got the local skateboard shop.

  Todd: And you’re doin’ the video for what?

  Pierce: Just me.

  Sarah: Nice to meet you, Hawk.

  At that point, Todd and Sarah walk into the airport. No harm, no foul. It seems slightly odd that both Sarah and Todd would take pictures of the owner of a Valdez skateboard shop, but then, taking pictures of presumed critics and then disseminating them is a tactic commonly employed by Scientologists. It’s not unreasonable to assume that Van Susteren, a Scientologist, has suggested that Todd and Sarah try this approach as a way of discouraging unwanted cell-phone videographers. No matter. Pierce takes their picture, they take his, pleasantries are exchanged, they move on.

  Then things start to get weird. Inside the airport, Sarah poses for photographs with airline employees. From a distance, Pierce starts taking more video. Suddenly, Todd steps in front of him.

  Todd: What do you need a video camera for, man?

  Pierce: You got a problem with that?

  Todd: I mean, you got a life, or what?

  Pierce: I’m here with my wife. She’s getting on the plane.

  Pierce is clearly unsettled by Todd’s aggressiveness.

  Todd: Why you shaking so bad?

  Moving toward Pierce, Todd takes more photographs of him, as Pierce backs away.

  Todd: Why you shaking so bad? Why you shaking so bad?

  Todd takes more pictures of Pierce, then turns away and returns to Sarah at the other end of the terminal. Ten minutes later, Pierce is seated, his camera off, when Todd suddenly springs up from behind him.

  Todd: Why are you videotaping my wife?

  Pierce: Why do you have a problem with it?

  Todd: Why are you doing that?

  Pierce: I was never—

  Todd: Why did you stick the camera in Sarah Palin’s face? Why did you do that?

  Pierce: I didn’t stick it in her face. I wasn’t within ten feet of you guys.

  Pierce stands and starts to back away. With his camera phone held in front of him and aimed at Pierce, Todd advances. Pierce retreats.

  “Do you have a problem with me being here with a camera?” he says.

  Todd glares at him. Then one of Van Susteren’s production assistants jumps in and says, “No, there’s no problem. There’s just nothing to see here,” and starts hitting Pierce’s camera with papers she’s holding in her hand.

  Then the flight is called and those who are going to Anchorage, including Sarah and Todd and Van Susteren and her crew and Pierce’s wife, board the plane. Pierce goes home.

  Clearly, being reduced to the role of Chihuahua carried around in a rich lady’s purse is proving stressful for Todd.

  ALL SUMMER, I’VE been wanting to get to Homer. It was one of my favorite places in Alaska in the seventies and I’ve wondered how it’s fared over the thirty-five intervening years, during which its population has more than doubled. Sarah’s tête-à-tête with Kathleen Gustafson gives me all the excuse I need to accompany Shannyn Moore and her partner, Kelly Walters, on a visit to Shannyn’s hometown on Saturday, August 21.

  The town was named for Homer Pennock, a gold-mining entrepreneur who arrived in 1896 to find lots of fish but no gold. When I first went there in 1975 the mayor put me up in his house. Because other guests were occupying the guest room, he put me in his own bedroom and went to sleep elsewhere that night. Nothing out of the ordinary in Alaska.

  On this trip, we’re planning to stay with Shannyn’s parents. They moved to Alaska from Tennessee in the late 1960s to teach orphaned Native children at Cookson Hills Christian Home, at the head of Kachemak Bay. Like so many from Outside who have made Alaska their home, they planned to stay for only a year. Shannyn’s father wound up teaching in a Russian Orthodox settlement featured in a National Geographic article in 1972 and later became a commercial fisherman. He and his wife are still here, Alaskan to the core.

  Whenever she’s in Homer, Shannyn touches base with special friends, one of whom, Clem Tillion, I wrote about in Going to Extremes. Clem, a native of Long Island, came to Alaska after World War II, almost straight from Guadalcanal, where he fought as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps. He literally walked into Homer in 1947 “with long hair and a beard and not a penny to my name. I was the first hippie in town.”

  He and his wife, Diana, an artist known particularly for her work in octopus ink, lived in Halibut Cove, on the south shore of Kachemak Bay, six miles from Homer by water. Clem became one of the most powerful Republican politicians in Alaska, serving many years in the legislature, winding up as state senate president, and becoming one of Alaska’s legendary figures.

  One of his accomplishments in Juneau was seeing that the four hundred thousand acres that surrounded his home in Halibut Cove became Kachemak Bay State Park, ensuring that the only development the cove would ever see would be whatever Clem himself decided to do. The population of Halibut Cove is now about twenty-five, almost all of them descended from Clem and Diana.

  The Tillions had been married for fifty-nine years at the time of Diana’s death in February 2010. At a memorial service at her grave site in June, Clem explained the success of the marriage by saying, “You can’t talk a woman out of anything, but if you kiss her enough, she’ll follow you to the end of the world.” A few mourners commented that Clem apparently never figured out that in her own quiet manner it was Diana who’d led every step of the way.

  Shannyn calls Clem to tell him that we’re coming to Halibut Cove tonight, to have dinner at The Saltry, the cove’s one and only restaurant, owned and operated, not surprisingly, by Clem’s daughter Marian. He invites us to come to his house afterward and spend the night. Shannyn’s father takes us across the bay in his boat.

  Marian tells us that Sarah and her crew wanted to book The Saltry for dinner after their day of filming on Kachemak Bay for Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Marian informed them that the restaurant’s ethics committee disapproved. A TLC producer asked if he could speak to a member of the committee. “You are,” Marian said. “It’s a committee of one. Me. I’m not serving dinner to Sarah Palin.”

  Clem’s house is a ten-minute walk, by boardwalk, from The Saltry. Though
still grieving the loss of Diana, he’s as gracious a host to us as he was to me thirty-four years earlier. He tells us stories by the fire as we sip a fine brandy from his wine cellar, which is as extensive as any I’ve ever seen in a private home. Being an Alaska fisherman all his life has done nothing to dull Clem’s appreciation of Grand Crus (not to be confused with Sarah’s marketing company, Rouge Cou). At the age of eighty-eight, he feels he has the right to tell anyone who asks that he believes Sarah to be a nitwit.

  The next morning, after he cooks us pancakes and takes us to Diana’s grave, we ride a Tillion-operated ferry back to Homer. We go to Billy Sullivan’s halibut shack, where Billy re-creates the Gustafson-Palin confrontation for us, then to meet Kathleen Gustafson herself at the Salty Dawg Saloon.

  Inside the Salty Dawg are hundreds, probably thousands of dollar bills tacked to the walls and ceiling. This is a tradition started many years ago by a regular customer who tacked a bill to the wall as he left so the friend who was supposed to meet him there would find his first drink paid for when he arrived.

  Billy Sullivan’s video has been viewed more than a million times on YouTube. But it captured only about two minutes of the eight- to ten-minute exchange. Gustafson tells us that before Sullivan turned on his camera, Sarah approached her and winked.

  “I said, ‘Don’t flirt with me,’ ” Gustafson says. “So I think that kind of set the tone. I tried really hard not to be a bitch, but when somebody’s throwing that at you, it’s hard. When I made that banner I specifically chose a criticism that was true no matter what your politics are. She quit.”