Jul 03 2009
Palin Resigns as Governor
Sarah Palin announced today that she’ll resign as Alaska’s governor, effective July 26. Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell will become governor then. Parnell and Palin agree on most issues so a seamless transition is expected.
Palin decried the national media and opposition research as she explained why she’s leaving the state house. She said she’s had to spend a lot of time and money–both personal and taxpayers’–to defend against frivilous charges of ethics violations. Palin stated that, although she’s been cleared in all 15 cases filed against her, she thinks she’d better serve Alaska from outside the governor’s office.
Palin’s political action committee is likely to remain operational. The governor has discussed finding top-notch Republican candidates to run for office. Pundits thinks she’ll take a brief respite from public scrunity before resuming efforts to run for president in 2012.
Indeed, Palin might be better served away as a private citizen if she wasn’t planned to run for re-election. Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are both former governors. They’re also past–and possibly future–presidential candidates. Ronald Reagan wasn’t damaged by being a former California governor in the 1980 presidential contest.
That said, none of those men resigned from office. Quitting the governorship can’t be considered a positive. Perhaps Palin feels she’s in the same boat as South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, albeit for very different reasons.
Maybe she thinks she can’t focus on helping her state given the barrage of ancillary issues affecting her family and her. Sanford faces the same problem for another reason.
Some people thing she must’ve been involved in some sort of scandal and resigned during the holiday weekend to keep everything hush hush. It is awfully strange of someone to randomly resign…