Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin: governor of Alaska, Mother of five, long time hockey mom and now a candidate for vice president of the United States.  After all her achievements, those who aren’t in favor of her have accused her of not having enough “qualifications”.  However, Governor Palin has refused to let these accusations faze her. “I don’t think qualifications necessarily mean that you have to have been a senator or led a state with more than five people in it,” said Palin when questioned on her experience. Those are some strong words, and she said them right to the face of her accusers.

Sarah Plain was elected mayor of Wasilla, Alaska and served that role for two terms from 1996 to 2002.   At the end of her tenure as mayor Wasilla had become the fifth largest population center in the state.  In 2006 she ran for governor of Alaska and won, beating her democratic opponent 48.3% to 40.9%. She became Alaska’s first female governor, Alaska’s youngest governor at age 42, and also the Alaska’s first governor to be born after Alaska became a state. She took office on December 4, 2006 and has been very popular with Alaska voters. Polls taken in 2007 early in her term showed her with 93% and 89% popularity among all voters. A poll taken in September 2008 shows her popularity at 82%! As Alaskan governor Palin declared that top priorities of her administration would be resource development, education and workforce development, public health and safety, and transportation and infrastructure development. In the time that followed she proved she was dedicated to putting those priorities at the very top of her list. Her first legislative action after taking office was to push for a bipartisan ethics reform bill. She promoted “oil and natural gas resource development” in Alaska. Then, in August 2008, Palin signed a bill awarding TransCanada Pipelines $500 million in seed money and a license to build and operate the $26 billion pipeline to transport gas from the North Slope to the Lower 48 through Canada. This will allow more oil and gas to be produced, which means gas prices will go down. Americans all over the country will feel this project’s results. If Sarah Palin lacked the “experience and knowledge” that it takes to be a vice president of the US would she have accomplished so many things?