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Palin's candidacy raises eyebrows in Alaska
Sarah Palin's credentials questioned as critics call John McCain's choice of Palin as running mate reckless.
- Agencies
- Published: 13:02 August 30, 2008
- Image Credit: AP
- US Republican presidential candidate John McCain chose Palin as his vice presidential running mate on Friday.
Anchorage: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is under fire over revelations that members of her staff tried to have her former brother-in-law fired from his job as an Alaska trooper.
US Republican presidential candidate John McCain chose Palin as his vice presidential running mate on Friday.
Palin's approval ratings range from 79 to 86 per cent, says Mark Hellenthal, a Republican pollster in Alaska, but she is hardly without strong critics.
Dermot Cole, a longtime columnist for Alaska's Fairbanks Daily News-Miner newspaper, called McCain's choice of Palin reckless and questioned her credentials.
"Sarah Palin's chief qualification for being elected governor was that she was not Frank Murkowski," Cole said of her enormously unpopular predecessor, who lost favour with Alaskans in part because of unpopular budget cuts.
"She was not elected because she was a conservative. She was not elected because of her grasp of issues or because of her track record as the mayor of Wasilla," Cole said.
State lawmakers have also launched an investigation to determine if Palin dismissed Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan last month because Monegan refused to dismiss a state trooper involved in a custody battle with her sister.
Palin denied her safety commissioner's dismissal had anything to do with her former brother-in-law. The investigation is expected to take at least three months.
State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat from Anchorage, said Palin's candidacy does not change the investigation.
"I think it raises its profile. I don't think it changes the steps you go through. It is what it is. You have to find out what happened," French said.
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