Palin's neighbor who hasn't voted since McCarthy, is voting Obama!

Back home, Palin lives model life in Last Frontier
By GARANCE BURKE (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
October 04, 2008 10:45 AM EDT

WASILLA, Alaska - To people in this hard-scrabble region tucked between two soaring mountain ranges, Gov. Sarah Palin is a working-class heroine. As the Republican vice presidential candidate's star rises nationally, she's increasingly held up as the model for life in the Last Frontier.

Palin and her husband, Todd, a champion snowmobiler racer, have all the trappings of that life: a coveted permit to fish salmon-rich Bristol Bay, a vast gun collection, a vintage float-plane and a fleet of gas-powered vehicles to roar through the wilderness.


"Everyone hunts and fishes here, but it's just that few people look so good doing it as Todd and Sarah," said David Parks, a 27-year-old Republican who has known Sarah Palin since he was a child and is volunteering for her campaign. "What attracts people is they have the plane, the snow machines and the whole lifestyle."

Others, though, object to the governor's readiness to equate her conservative values with the Alaskan way of life.

"Sarah's got all the toys to be marketed as the Alaska wilderness woman, but the reality is that she's been in that uppercrust for a while," said John Gourley, who with his wife, Jennifer, raised three children in a generator-powered cabin near Wasilla. "Plus, she's a trophy hunter, and I tend to respect people who shoot a moose because they need the meat."

Gourley said he hasn't voted for a presidential candidate since liberal Sen. Eugene McCarthy but now plans to vote for Democrat Barack Obama.

Even before McCain chose Palin as his running mate, she had appeared in magazines like Vogue - where she's shot in a long wrap, striding on the tundra - and in local brochures aimed at new arrivals to Wasilla that tout "tours of local dog mushing kennels and local farms, trips to glaciers and musk ox farms are part of the local fun."

"First Dude" Todd Palin is also a local celebrity, having won four medals in the Iron Dog, a grueling 55-hour snowmobile race that follows the 2,000-mile Iditarod Trail from Wasilla to Fairbanks.

"They're competitive people, and you can judge their level of sport by how hard they go at it all," said his longtime racing partner, Scott Davis. "You're trying to raise a family and run a company and race and be in politics? That takes a lot of dedication."

The family's seasonal working arrangement - common to many rural Alaskans - has earned them a relatively affluent life in the sprawling Matanuska-Sisutna region 40 miles north of Anchorage, where many roads are still dirt and some houses lack indoor plumbing.

"A huge part of Sarah Palin's appeal is that people see her as an ordinary person," said Dianne Woodruff, the lone nonpartisan member of Wasilla's Republican-dominated city council. "Truthfully, though, she's been a very fortunate ordinary person."

As governor, Palin draws a $125,000 annual salary. Todd Palin's self-employment in 2007 brought him $66,893 in gross receipts from fishing and snowmachine racing, though tax returns released Friday show an overall net income of only $5,874 after deductions. He also earned $43,519 working part-time on the North Slope for BP Exploration.

In the past two decades, the Palins have owned 43 vehicles, including at least 17 snowmobiles. In 2000, the most recent year for which information is available, there were 33,576 registered snowmobiles for a total of 221,600 Alaskan households, which means the average household did not have even one snowmobile, according to the Division of Motor Vehicles and the U.S. Census Bureau.


Their large lakeside home - worth $526,800, according to the most recent assessment - sits on more than two acres and looks onto the jutting Chugiak Mountains and groves of white birch.

Tied to the deck is their red-and-white Piper Cub plane, an outdoorsman's favorite that can be outfitted with skis in winter to fish on frozen lakes.

Local Democrats caution that just because Sarah Palin can butcher a moose doesn't mean she's prepared to be vice president.

But this is Alaska. Palin bagged her first bunny when she was 10, and her family proudly circulated a photograph of Palin posing over a caribou she shot a day after she was nominated for vice president.