This is from my Aunt Gene, formerlly of Wasilla AK, who knows Palin quite well. This is from a family email, so I don't know if she wants to be quoted by media. Let me know if you want to quote her and I'll ask.
To those who want to know my feelings on Sarah Palin:
I have been getting a number of emails asking me if I know Sarah Palin and what I think about her so I'll write one opinion and send it to all.
I know her quite well. When she was on the city council in Wasilla I had a major run in with her over bar closing times. I was testifiying on behalf of the Alaska Christian Conference and the Valley Christian Conference. I was president of both. There was a push to close the bars at 2 am instead of 5 am. She responded to my testamony that she didn't see any relationship between her Christian faith and the time the bars closed. She said she was a Sunday School teacher at the Assembly of God Church. In essence, she felt it was out of line for me to testify on behalf of the church groups I represented. She had not yet integrated her faith - there was the sacred and the secular and one should not mess with the other. She won. I lost. Wasilla also lost - because when Anchorage bars were closing at 2 am, their drunks were driving to Wasilla (40 miles) and then going home about the time Wasilla workers were headed to Anchorage. After Anchorage started closing its bars at 2 am, there was a significant traffic accident spike of these drunks driving back and forth. to drink in Wasilla until 5 am.
Wasilla also lost since the police chief said 5 am bar closings had always caused a lot of domestic violence when drunken parents came home just as the family was getting up to go to school and work. That night Sarah supported the bar owners, not those who believed a 2 am closing would cut back on traffic accidents which caused injuries, deaths and damage. She voted in favor of the bar owners and didn't understand or care that closing them earlier could avoid early morning abuse of spouses and kids. So I lost a lot of respect for her then that still lingers.
My problem with her now is that she has been a city council person of a city of 5000 plus its mayor. She went from there to governor and she has been governor for less than two years. I shudder to think what would happen if McCain was elected and dropped dead after a month in office. One has to keep that in mind with McCain because of his age. And, Wasilla is not like just any other city in the US and Alaska is not like just any of the other state in the Lower 48. If she was VP for four years she might grow into a broader understanding of what this nation is really like - and if she found out, she might want to pack up and head back for Alaska.
She has grown since my encounter with her and she has pushed for reform in Alaska politics where the whole Republican Party seems to have been tainted with corruption. For that I applaud her. She ought to have rejected the request to be VP knowing she was too inexperienced - far less experienced in dealing with the whole country than Obama - and kept up her good work of cleaning up Alaskan Republican politics.
She is a conservative so that wing of the Republican Party will love her.
She is a graduate of Wasilla High Scool, was runnerup in the 1984 Miss Alaska contest and has a B.A. in journalism from the University of Idaho in Moscow. She is married to Todd Palin, an Alaskan Native. They have five kids, have been married 20 years, the last child just born has Downs Syndrome and Todd has worked on the North Slope of Alaska in the oil fields.
As a reformer, she has been embroiled in a controversy of her own and there is a special investigation being conducted right now - did she or did she not ask one of her underlings to see that her former brother-in-law got fired as a State Trooper. The jury is still out.
Right now the thought of her possibly being President scares the fear of Hurricane Gustav which is heading towards Crystal Beach right out of me.
Gene