Palin Emails Show Power of "First Dude"

February 05, 2010

Palin Emails Show Power of "First Dude"

"Officially he was the first gentleman of Alaska. More people called him the "first dude." But newly released e-mails show that Todd Palin was busy doing more than snow machine driving and salmon fishing during Sarah Palin's two and a half years as governor and vice presidential candidate," msnbc.com reports.

Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails "draw a picture of a Palin administration where the governor's husband got involved in a judicial appointment, monitored contract negotiations with public employee unions, received background checks on a corporate CEO, added his approval or disapproval to state board appointments and passed financial information marked 'confidential' from his oil company employer to a state attorney."

Other revelations from the emails:

Palin "coached her staff on how to disguise the amount of electrical work needed at the mansion to hook up her new tanning bed."
Palin and her staff "stewed over the refusal of the state Public Safety Department to provide a plane so the children could fly to Todd's family's home in Dillingham."
A Palin aide searched for a public event to use as justification -- "I just need one" -- to charge the state for an airplane flight for Palin's daughter.

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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February 05, 2010