Rigged Polls, Broken Laws: Inside the Palin Tell-All

Frank Bailey was once one of Sarah Palin’s closest aides, but he turned on her and wrote a tell-all alleging, among other things, that Palin broke state election law in 2006. The 500-page manuscript, titled In Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of our Tumultuous Years, was leaked Friday. The Anchorage Daily News got its copy from author Joe McGinniss (who is writing his own book about Palin and famously irked her by moving in next door) and it offers a look inside:

• Bailey alleges that Palin coordinated with the Republican Governors Association during her gubernatorial campaign, a violation of election law. The RGA paid for TV commercials and mailers, calling it an “independent” effort, but Bailey says Palin worked with the group on at least one ad (an allegation that was made at the time by the Alaska Democratic Party). State candidates are not allowed to team up with soft-money groups like the RGA.

• Palin was obsessed with minor slights and often sought revenge: “We set our sights and went after opponents in coordinated attacks, utilizing what we called ‘Fox News surrogates,’ friendly blogs, ghost-written op-eds, media opinion polls (that we often rigged), letters to editors, and carefully edited speeches.”
• Bailey is best-known for his involvement in the “Troopergate” scandal; he was the one who made a phone call to a trooper lieutenant complaining about Palin’s one-time brother-in-law Mike Wooten and asking why he was still employed as a trooper. In the book, Bailey claims Todd Palin had been feeding him the information on Wooten that he passed along to troopers.
• Bailey also alleges that Palin’s animosity toward Wooten influenced her choice of Morgan Christen for the state Supreme Court, because Christen had ruled in Palin’s sister’s favor during a custody dispute.
• Less than three years into her term as Alaska’s governor, shortly before her resignation, Palin allegedly sent Bailey a message saying, “I hate this damn job.”

Click for more on the manuscript and its author. (More Sarah Palin stories.)