PALIN'S COLD SHOULDER

WASILLA, Alaska — While Sarah Palin’s supporters tout her personal warmth and openness, the newly minted Republican vice presidential nominee can be brusque to allies, advisers and employees who fall from her favor.

Palin has unceremoniously ended relationships with an aide who was dating a family friend’s soon-to-be ex-wife, a campaign adviser whose mother-in-law fought Palin’s legislative agenda, a local political mentor who she felt represented the “old boys network,” a police chief who she said tried to intimidate her with “stern look[s]” and a state commissioner who refused to fire her sister’s ex-husband.

By KENNETH P. VOGEL 9/5/08 1:21 PM EST
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13190.html

“When she decides you’re done, you’re done,” said John Bitney, who was a top aide to Palin’s gubernatorial campaign and administration.Bitney, a longtime state Capitol hand who grew up in this small town with Palin and her husband, Todd, said he was asked to leave his job as legislative director in the governor’s office last year after the Palins found out that he was dating the soon-to-be-ex-wife of one of Todd’s good friends.While Palin’s office framed the departure as an “amicable” mutual decision, Bitney told Politico that Sarah and Todd Palin “were upset with me about my divorce and who I was dating and they didn’t want that in the governor’s office. I wanted to stay with the governor and support the governor — we’re talking about someone who’s been a friend for 30 years — but I understood it and I have no ax to grind over the whole thing.”

Still, Bitney took a line from the "Seinfeld" character Elaine, deeming Palin “a bad breaker-upper.” Palin’s abrupt and often unexplained — or not fully explained — dismissals, though, leave former colleagues and political observers speculating about the “real reasons,” Bitney said, adding that her style “is more dramatic than the way most executives do it. They bring you in, tell you they’re going to go in another direction and get everyone in the office to sign a card and cut a cake. But that’s just not her style.”

The McCain-Palin campaign declined to answer questions about Palin’s personnel moves or personal rifts. Her supporters in Wasilla — a group that seems to include an overwhelming majority of the city’s 7,000 or so residents — say she is guided by the taxpayers’ interests and a strong moral compass.“In general, she is an extremely kind-hearted person,” said Judy Patrick, a close ally who served on the city council when Palin was mayor.

“It’s just difficult when you’re a leader. She had to make tough decisions on how she planned to accomplish what she planned to accomplish and who was going to be on the team to do that.”Palin’s willingness to end allegiances with those who offend her may have helped propel her rise in 2004, when she exposed corrupt dealings by a Republican bigwig on the state’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, burnishing her reformer credentials and setting the stage for her 2006 gubernatorial campaign.But on other occasions, her trigger has gotten her into trouble.

An ongoing investigation by the state legislature—expected to be released before the presidential election—into Palin’s firing of Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan in January threatens to damage her reputation as a reformer.At first, Palin offered only a vague, platitudinal explanation for Monegan’s dismissal. But after Monegan asserted http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/469001.html he was pressured by both Sarah and Todd Palin, the governor accused Monegan of not being a team player, and of failing to hire sufficient numbers of troopers or doing enough to reduce rural alcohol abuse.

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