Frank Bailey: ‘If she made it to the White House and I had stayed silent, I could never forgive myself.’
The release comes just days before Palin is expected to announce her candidacy for the 2012 presidential race.
- Frank Bailey: ‘If she made it to the White House and I had stayed silent, I could never forgive myself.
- Book claims couple had marital problems
- Former governor ‘wrote fake letters praising herself’
- Divine Calling
Sarah Palin was today bracing herself for the release of a damning ‘tell-all’ book by former aide Frank Bailey.
Billed as the first Palin release by a former aide, ‘Blind Allegiance’ bolsters the perception of the Tea Party darling as self-serving, while casting Mr Bailey as her enforcer – willing to do the dirty work, no questions asked.
Problems: Todd and Sarah Palin. He laughed about a doctored nude picture of his wife sent to her campaign headquarters and allegedly snooped on her emails
Frank Bailey worked with Palin on her 2006 gubernatorial campaign and continued through her failed run for vice president in 2008 and her brief stint as governor.
His book, ‘Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years’ is based on tens of thousands of emails kept during his time with Palin, who is expected to announce her decision to run for president any time.
Today it also emerged a number of polls placed the former governor as tied first for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.
According to a Gallup poll released on May 17, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney led all potential Republican presidential nominees with 20 percent of respondents saying they would prefer he be the 2012 GOP choice.
Palin was only two points behind.
AIDE TELLS ALL IN ‘REVEALING’ NEW BOOK
- Palin repeatedly wrote: ‘I hate this damn job…’ about governorship
- She ‘violated’ campaign law with ‘illegal coordination’ between Palin and the Republican Governors Association in 2006
- Accuses Palin of never turning up to scheduled talks
- Says she lost interest in Alaska governorship after Vice Presidential run
Given the statistical margin of error for the poll (+/- 3 per cent), there is a statistical possibility Palin just might be the most preferred of all the candidates.
The Tuesday release follows a leaked manuscript that emerged in February.
In the earlier release, it was revealed They include the revelation the former Alaskan governor and her husband Todd ‘don’t talk’, she walks around their home in an open bathrobe and his laughter over a doctored nude photograph.
It catalogues angry emails and conversations during her political campaigns, including a description of her skin as being ‘tanning-bed bronze’.
And it claims she wrote fake letters to newspapers in the name of supporters praising her ‘leadership and ethics’.
Mr Bailey said: ‘In 2009 I had the sense if she made it to the White House and I had stayed silent, I could never forgive myself.’
To speak up when he saw things he didn’t agree with ‘went against all that investment of time and energy that I put into her,’ said Bailey.
He said he ‘shed his family,’ his wife and two kids, to singularly focus on Palin during her rise to the governor’s office and beyond.
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- Mother of the groom! Sarah Palin dresses down as son Track becomes her first child to marry in a very casual ceremony
When Palin burst onto the statewide political scene, she was seen as a ‘breath of fresh air’ amid the corruption that had seeped into Alaska politics.
He added: ‘We looked at her as … that queen on a horse that could come in and save the state.
‘As we started to see that that was not the case, I kept silent and I just kept on working.’
Close: Palin is only two points behind Mitt Romney in the GOP nominations list
The Alaska attorney general’s office has said it’s investigating Mr Bailey’s use of the emails.
Executive ethics laws bar former public officials from using information acquired during their work for personal gain if the information hasn’t been publicly disseminated.
Mr Bailey’s attorney has said the author took ‘great care’ to ensure his writings were consistent with legal requirements.
Impact: The book may harm Palin’s image with supporters
Mr Bailey became a footnote in Alaska political history by getting embroiled in an investigation of Palin’s firing of her police commissioner over allegations the commissioner wouldn’t fire trooper Mike Wooten, who’d had a bitter divorce with Palin’s sister.
Mr Bailey was caught on tape questioning a state trooper official about why Wooten was still employed.
Mr Bailey, who was Palin’s director of boards and commissions, was put on leave after news of the recording broke, though he claims his actions were with the prodding of Palin’s husband, Todd.
In spite of this, and what he describes as campaigns by Sarah Palin over the years to tear down others who have crossed or confronted her, he stuck around.
Mr Bailey said the final straw for him came in the summer of 2009, when Palin didn’t attend a rally he believed she’d repeatedly agreed to attend, for supporters of a voter initiative to require minors get parental consent for an abortion.
‘Getting Sarah to meetings and events was like nailing Jell-O to a tree,’ Mr Bailey wrote. On the campaign trail and as governor, Sarah went through at least ten schedulers, with few lasting more than months.
He added: ‘Nobody wanted the job because Sarah might fail to honour, at the last minute, the smallest commitments, and making excuses for her became a painful burden.’
By the time she cancelled on the parental notification event in Anchorage, Palin had resigned as Alaska’s governor and embarked on a new path, one in which she’d become a best-selling author, highly sought-after speaker, political phenomenon and prospective presidential candidate.
Mr Bailey claims her heart wasn’t in governing after she returned to Alaska from her failed run for vice president.
Family: Palin with her husband Todd, daughters Bristol, Piper, Willow and son Track. Her former aide claims their school grades suffered because they were left alone for ‘long stretches’
At home, she faced a barrage of ethics complaints — nearly all of which were ultimately dismissed — and Bailey said she told him as early as February 2009 that if she could find the right message to tell Alaskans, she’d ‘quit tomorrow.’
She resigned in July 2009.
In the February release of the manuscript, it also emerged Mr Bailey had described how her husband would take Palin’s BlackBerry in order to read her emails for ’emotional clues’ during the 2006 Alaska campaign.
He would then ‘relay his wife’s demeanor,’ to the team.
Bailey also alleges that Todd even accessed her emails without her knowledge, and if he saw something that worried him, he would call Bailey with his concerns.