Palin: More on those clothes
Posted: Monday, October 27, 2008 9:15 AM by Carrie Dann
Filed Under:
Sarah Palin
Palin decided to confront the clothes story on the campaign trail yesterday.
How did the RNC get itself into this clothes situation? From Newsweek: "The decision to greenlight the purchases was made after Palin arrived in Minneapolis for the Republican Party convention. Campaign aides quickly concluded that she lacked the necessary wardrobe for two months of intensive national campaigning. ‘She didn't have the fancy pantsuits that Hillary Clinton has,’ explained one staffer (who, like most others interviewed for this account, declined to be identified speaking about the episode). The problem was figuring out how to pay for new dresswear: the 2002 McCain-Feingold law, co-authored by the GOP candidate, tightened the rules to ban using campaign funds for personal clothing.”
“While Jeff Larson, a veteran GOP consultant who headed the party's ‘host’ committee, provided his credit card for the Palin family shopping spree, he was directed to send the bills over to the Republican National Committee (which was not covered by the clothing ban in McCain-Feingold). RNC officials were not happy about it. ‘We were explicitly directed by the campaign to pay these costs,’ said one senior RNC official who also requested anonymity. After at first declining to comment, a McCain spokeswoman said the clothes would be donated to charity after the campaign was over.”
“Palin said she was getting a bum rap. ‘If people knew how frugal we are,’ she said. She told Fox News that her ‘favorite’ store is an Anchorage consignment shop called Out of the Closet. Still, some of the disgruntled party donors said her claim of frugality was hard to square with the details in campaign spending reports, such as the $75,062 one-day tab at the Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, and $4,902 spent at Atelier New York (a high-end men's store). One veteran GOP consultant (who also requested anonymity) said the real puzzle among his peers is why Larson didn't find a way to disguise the expenses, at least until after the election. Larson declined to comment."
"Palin's signature accomplishment - a contract to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48 - emerged from a flawed bidding process that narrowed the field to a company with ties to her administration, an Associated Press investigation shows. ... Despite Palin's boast of a smart and fair bidding process, the investigation found that her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited the winner, TransCanada Corp. And contrary to the ballyhoo, there's no guarantee the pipeline will ever be built; at a minimum, any project is years away..."
"The Anchorage Daily News, Alaska's largest newspaper, endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Sunday after declaring Gov. Sarah Palin 'too risky' to be one step away from the Oval Office." Ouch.
