98 Facts About Sarah Palin

Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator, and author who served as the ninth governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009.

Sarah Palin was the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee under US senator John McCain.

Sarah Palin was nominated as John McCain's vice presidential running mate at the 2008 Republican National Convention.

Sarah Palin was the first Republican female vice presidential nominee and the second female vice presidential nominee of a major party, after Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.

Sarah Palin has led a career as a television personality.

In 2022, Sarah Palin ran in the special election for Alaska's at-large congressional seat that was vacated after the death of Representative Don Young, but lost to Democrat Mary Peltola, who completed Young's unfinished term.

When Sarah Palin was a few months old, the family moved to Skagway, Alaska, where her father had been hired to teach.

Sarah Palin attended Wasilla High School, where she was head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and a member of the girls' basketball and cross-country running teams.

In 1984, Sarah Palin won the Miss Wasilla beauty pageant; she finished third in the Miss Alaska pageant, where she won the title of "Miss Congeniality".

Sarah Palin played the flute in the talent portion of the contest.

Shortly after arriving in Hawaii, Sarah Palin transferred to Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu for a semester in the fall of 1982.

Sarah Palin returned to the mainland, enrolling at North Idaho College, a community college in Coeur d'Alene, for the spring and fall semesters of 1983.

Sarah Palin transferred and enrolled at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho, for an academic year starting in August 1984.

Sarah Palin returned to the University of Idaho in January 1986 and received her bachelor's degree in communications with an emphasis in journalism in May 1987.

Sarah Palin was elected to the Wasilla City Council in 1992, winning by a margin of 530 votes to 310.

Sarah Palin's biographer described her campaign as targeting wasteful spending and high taxes; her opponent, Stein, said that Palin introduced abortion, gun rights, and term limits as campaign issues.

Sarah Palin ran for reelection against Stein in 1999 and won, 909 votes to 292.

Sarah Palin was elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors in 1999.

Sarah Palin oversaw creation of new bike paths and procured funding for storm-water treatment to protect freshwater resources.

Sarah Palin stated this request was to find out their intentions and whether they supported her.

Sarah Palin temporarily required department heads to get her approval before talking to reporters, saying they needed to learn her administration's policies.

In October 1996, Sarah Palin asked library director Mary Ellen Emmons if she would object to the removal of a book from the library if people were picketing to have the book removed.

Sarah Palin said she fired Police Chief Irl Stambaugh because he did not fully support her efforts to govern the city.

In 2002, Sarah Palin ran for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, coming in second to Loren Leman in a five-way Republican primary.

Sarah Palin was said to be on the "short list" of possible appointees to Murkowski's US Senate seat, but Murkowski ultimately appointed his daughter, State Representative Lisa Murkowski, as his successor in the Senate.

Sarah Palin resigned in January 2004 and put her protests against Ruedrich's "lack of ethics" into the public arena by filing a public complaint against Ruedrich, who was then fined $12,000.

Sarah Palin joined with Democratic legislator Eric Croft in complaining that Gregg Renkes, then the attorney general of Alaska, had a financial conflict of interest in negotiating a coal exporting trade agreement.

In 2004, Sarah Palin told the Anchorage Daily News that she had decided not to run for the US Senate that year against the Republican incumbent, Lisa Murkowski, because her teenage son opposed it.

In 2006, running on a clean-government platform, Sarah Palin defeated incumbent Governor Frank Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary.

Sarah Palin became Alaska's first female governor and, at the age of 42, the youngest governor in Alaskan history.

Sarah 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.

Sarah Palin had championed ethics reform throughout her election campaign.

Sarah Palin signed the resulting legislation in July 2007, calling it a "first step" and declaring that she remained determined to clean up Alaska politics.

Sarah Palin publicly challenged then-US Senator Ted Stevens to "come clean" about the federal investigation into his financial dealings.

Sarah Palin promoted the development of oil and natural-gas resources in Alaska, including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

In 2008, Sarah Palin vetoed $286 million, cutting or reducing funding for 350 projects from the FY09 capital budget.

Sarah Palin did not use the former governor's private chef.

Sarah Palin said that she would not accept the pay raise.

Sarah Palin has said that her decreasing support for federal funding was a source of friction between her and the state's congressional delegation; Sarah Palin requested less in federal funding each year than her predecessor Frank Murkowski requested in his last year.

In 2007, Sarah Palin supported a 2003 Alaska Department of Fish and Game policy allowing the hunting of wolves from the air as part of a predator control program intended to increase moose and caribou populations for subsistence-food gatherers and other hunters.

Sarah Palin told the Palins that there was nothing he could do because the matter was closed.

Chuck Kopp, whom Sarah Palin had appointed to replace Monegan as public safety commissioner, received a $10,000 state severance package after he resigned following just two weeks on the job.

Legislators stated that Sarah Palin had the legal authority to fire Monegan, but they wanted to know whether her action had been motivated by anger at Monegan for not firing Wooten.

Sarah Palin placed an aide on paid leave due to a tape-recorded phone conversation that she deemed improper, in which the aide, appearing to act on her behalf, complained to a trooper that Wooten had not been fired.

Several weeks after the start of what the media referred to as "troopergate", Sarah Palin was chosen as John McCain's running mate.

On October 10,2008, the Alaska Legislative Council unanimously voted to release, without endorsing, the Branchflower Report, in which investigator Stephen Branchflower found that firing Monegan "was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority," but that Sarah Palin abused her power as governor and violated the state's Executive Branch Ethics Act when her office pressured Monegan to fire Wooten.

On July 3,2009, Sarah Palin announced that she would not run for reelection in the 2010 Alaska gubernatorial election and would resign before the end of the month.

Sarah Palin said her resignation was influenced by her desire not to be a lame duck.

Parnell became governor on July 26,2009, in an inaugural ceremony in Fairbanks, upon Sarah Palin's resignation taking effect.

Nonetheless, Sarah Palin's selection was a surprise to many because a main criticism he had of Obama was his lack of experience, and speculation had centered on other candidates, such as Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, US senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge.

Sarah Palin was largely unknown outside Alaska before her selection by McCain.

On September 1,2008, Sarah Palin revealed that her daughter Bristol was pregnant and that she would marry the child's father, Levi Johnston.

On September 3,2008, Sarah Palin delivered a 40-minute acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that was well received and watched by more than 40 million people.

Polling from CNN, Fox and CBS found that while Sarah Palin exceeded most voters' expectations, they felt that Biden had won the debate.

Political scientists have debated the impact that Sarah Palin had on the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.

Sarah Palin was the first guest on commentator Glenn Beck's Fox News television show on January 19,2009, commenting on Barack Obama that he would be her president and that she would assist in any way to bring progress to the nation without abandoning her conservative views.

Fox News and Sarah Palin ended this relationship in January 2013.

Sarah Palin's team believed the attack was executed by Anonymous during Operation Payback.

On January 27,2009, Palin formed the political action committee, SarahPAC.

Gabrielle Giffords, Palin faced criticism for her SarahPAC website's inclusion of a political graphic that included a crosshair over Giffords's district.

In November 2009, Sarah Palin released her memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, in which she details her private and political career, including her resignation as Governor of Alaska.

Sarah Palin said she took the title from the phrase 'gone rogue' used by McCain staffers to describe her behavior when she spoke her mind on the issues during the campaign.

Sarah Palin traveled to 11 states in a bus, with her family accompanying her, to promote the book.

Sarah Palin made a number of media appearances as well, including a widely publicized interview on November 16,2009, with Oprah Winfrey.

On February 6,2010, Sarah Palin was the keynote speaker at the first Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tennessee.

Sarah Palin said Obama was weak on the War on Terror for allowing the so-called Christmas bomber to board a plane headed for the United States.

In 2011, Sarah Palin was the keynote speaker at an annual tax day tea party rally at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, and a featured speaker at a Tea Party Express rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, at which Sarah Palin urged members of the Tea Party movement to avoid internal bickering with establishment Republicans.

In mid-2010, Sarah Palin positioned herself as a champion of conservative Republican women, calling for a "whole stampede of pink elephants" in the 2010 midterm elections.

Sarah Palin endorsed a number of female Republican candidates in primary elections, including Karen Handel, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for Governor of Georgia in the 2010 election.

Sarah Palin spoke at a May 2010 fundraiser for the Susan B Anthony List, an anti-abortion political advocacy group and political action committee that supports pro-life women in politics, in which she coined the term "mama grizzly".

Sarah Palin endorsed Nikki Haley for the Republican nomination for Governor of South Carolina three weeks before the election.

In October 2014, Sarah Palin endorsed the "unity ticket" of Independent Bill Walker and Democrat Byron Mallott in the 2014 Alaska gubernatorial election, which ran against her successor and former lieutenant governor, Sean Parnell.

Sarah Palin had previously supported a referendum to repeal the tax cuts, which was narrowly defeated in August 2014.

In January 2016, Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump for president of the United States.

In June 2017, Sarah Palin filed a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times for an editorial accusing Sarah Palin of "political incitement" in the run-up to the 2011 shooting of Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Sarah Palin's lawsuit was dismissed by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in August 2017.

Judge Jed S Rakoff ruled that Palin had failed to show actual malice on the part of the Times.

On February 15,2022, the jury reached a unanimous verdict in favor of The New York Times, finding that Sarah Palin had not proven actual malice.

Sarah Palin was one of the three remaining of 50 initial candidates in the 2022 Alaska's at-large congressional district special election.

Sarah Palin received 58,328 votes in the first round, and 85,987 votes once Begich's second preferences had been transferred.

Sarah Palin opposed the 2010 health care reform package, saying it would lead to rationing of health care by a bureaucracy, which she described using the term "death panels".

Sarah Palin has called marijuana use a "minimal issue" and suggested that arresting cannabis users should be a low priority for local police.

Sarah Palin attacked what she called "heavy-handed" environmental laws and cited her 2008 suit, as Alaska's governor, against the federal government to overturn the listing of polar bears as a threatened species.

Sarah Palin considered environmental regulations as an economic burden to businesses trying to recover from the recession and environmental activists as wanting to "lock up the land".

Sarah Palin supported the surge strategy in Iraq, the use of additional ground forces in Afghanistan, and, in general, maintaining a strong defensive posture by increasing the defense budget.

Sarah Palin opposed the Obama administration's proposed 2013 military intervention in Syrian Civil War, suggesting to let "Allah sort it out" in the Syrian Civil War.

In 2008, Sarah Palin supported NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, and affirms that if Russia invaded a NATO member, the United States should meet its treaty obligations.

Sarah Palin opposed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action which placed limits on Iran's nuclear program, on the grounds that the treaty was not strict enough.

In 2020, Sarah Palin competed in season three of The Masked Singer as "Bear".

Sarah Palin was the first of Group C to be eliminated and stated to Nick Cannon that she did it as a 'walking middle finger to the haters'.

Sarah Palin's youngest child, Trig, born 2008, was prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome.

Todd Sarah Palin worked for oil company BP as an oil-field production operator, retiring in 2009.

Sarah Palin was "baptized Catholic as a newborn" as her mother, Sally, had been raised Catholic.

Sarah Palin requested an equal division of debts and assets, and to have joint custody of their son, Trig.

In June 2008, the Alumni Association of North Idaho College gave Sarah Palin its Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award.

Sarah Palin said it was because of abuses she witnessed involving other Republican commissioners and their ties to energy companies and energy lobbyists; she claimed to have confronted the industry when she raised taxes on oil companies as governor.

In turn, others have said that Sarah Palin is a "friend of Big Oil" due to her advocacy for oil exploration and development including for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and for the de-listing of the polar bear as an endangered species.

Sarah Palin was named one of America's "10 Most Fascinating People of 2008" by Barbara Walters for an ABC special on December 4,2008.