Newsmax reports on Palin’s decision to shun the national spotlight in order to keep her focus firmly on Alaska:
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has fielded requests for interviews from 500 news organizations, but you’re not likely to see her in the spotlight anytime soon.
Indeed, Palin won’t even be appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which begins Feb. 26 in Washington.
As soon as Palin began running for vice president, critics in Alaska attacked her for allegedly not paying enough attention to state business.
“Of course, she paid attention to Alaska even while campaigning, but some people just won’t have it,” Bill McAllister, her communications director, tells Newsmax. “We’re constantly fighting that.”
But that won’t stop the ankle-biting attention freak from complaining.
Ethics complaints have been filed, and a record number of broad-based Freedom of Information requests have been made, McAllister says.
“In some cases, they want somebody’s entire e-mail account over a period of months,” McAllister says. “It’s unbelievable.
Although the public is entitled to file such requests, McAllister notes, to deal with the deluge, the state’s Department of Law has had to pull off attorneys working on issues such as those affecting the state’s production of oil and gas that are important to the public.
Andree McLeod’s vendetta against Gov. Palin takes precedence over oil and gas issues! Doesn’t matter how frivolous her ethics complaints are, just as long as she can make headlines.
Mr. Bill confirms what we already knew. He’s forced to toe the line very carefully when it comes to anything which might be perceived as partisan:
McAllister, a former reporter for KTUU-TV, Alaska’s top television station, says that, because he is a government employee, he cannot discuss or get involved with Palin’s political activities, such as speaking at CPAC.
“I can tell people that she’s not going,” he says. “It’s just a matter of fact in terms of what her schedule is. But she didn’t consult with me on that, appropriately so, because it’s not a government function.”
After the election, some conservative pundits advised Gov. Palin to go home and focus on being a good governor of Alaska. That’s just what she’s doing:
McAllister agrees that, “by default,” when it comes to national exposure, Palin is keeping a low profile.
“She’s focusing on her job as governor, and perhaps that has the effect of reducing what could be her national exposure,” he says. “We’ve got a legislative session going on with some weighty issues.”
When Palin attended the Alfalfa Club dinner in Washington Jan. 31, McAllister received calls asking for interviews from Chris Wallace of Fox News, George Stephanopoulos of ABC, John King of CNN, Chris Matthews of MSNBC, and producers of late-night shows.
Palin turned them down. Even on that Washington trip, Palin attended to state business, McAllister says.
“She met with members of the U.S. Senate on the stimulus package,” he says. “She met with her Washington staff. The Alfalfa dinner gave her the opportunity to speak with the president one-on-one. She was able to express her concerns about the stimulus package to a wide variety of people in both politics and the business community.”
There were three notable exceptions to this nation media silence: Ziegler, Esquire, and Beck.
McAllister contends that they didn’t know that a portion of the Ziegler interview would be released early and cause such a huge media to-do.
The Esquire interview was actually “committed to before John McCain asked her to run with him on the Republican ticket. Recently, the magazine updated the article with a few follow-up questions, McAllister says.”
And the Glenn Beck interview was a one-off deal. It was his premier show, and Mr. Bill noted that “she did the show on Martin Luther King Day, a day before the Alaska legislative session started” — so no harm, no foul.
Mr. Bill reports that Gov. Palin “plans to provide a taped presentation” for CPAC. Good move. We can’t wait to see it!
