If it seems like Sarah Palin day, that’s because the McCain campaign decided to do the bulk of its news dumping during the holiday. On top of her husband’s D.U.I., her daughter’s teen pregnancy and her own state trooper issues, we now know about this bizarre nugget: Sarah Palin and her husband, according to the group’s chair, were once members of the Alaskan Independence Party, a political party that seeks a vote on Alaska’s secession from the union.
Time’s Mark Halperin says lawyers and journos are flocking to Alaska to probe this new national figure who, it now seems, may have missed out on a full vetting.
ABC News / Political Punch:
Lynette Clark, the chairman of the AIP, tells ABC News that Palin and her husband Todd were members in 1994, even attending the 1994 statewide convention in Wasilla. Clark was AIP secretary at the time.
“We are a state’s rights party,” says Clark, a self-employed goldminer. The AIP has “a plank that challenges the legality of the Alaskan statehood vote as illegal and in violation of United Nations charter and international law.”
She says it’s not accurate to describe the party as secessionist—they just want a vote, she says, adding that the members of the AIP hold different opinions on what Alaska should be.
“My own separate opinion as an individual is that we should be an independent nation,” Clark says. Others in the AIP “believe that being a commonwealth would be a good avenue to follow.” Some advocate statehood—but a fuller statehood than exists now.
Read more
