[Vision2020] Who is the Real Sarah Palin?

[Saundra Lund]

Meet Sarah Palin's radical right-wing pals
Extremists Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll helped launch Palin's political
career in Alaska, and in return had influence over policy. "Her door was
open," says Chryson - and still is.
Editor's note: Research support provided by the Nation Institute
Investigative Fund.
By Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert
Oct. 10, 2008 

On the afternoon of Sept. 24 in downtown Palmer, Alaska, as the sun began to
sink behind the snowcapped mountains that flank the picturesque Mat-Su
Valley, 51-year-old Mark Chryson sat for an hour on a park bench, reveling
in tales of his days as chairman of the Alaska Independence Party. The
stocky, gray-haired computer technician waxed nostalgic about quixotic
battles to eliminate taxes, support the "traditional family" and secede from
the United States.

So long as Alaska remained under the boot of the federal government, said
Chryson, the AIP had to stand on guard to stymie a New World Order. He
invited a Salon reporter to see a few items inside his pickup truck that
were intended for his personal protection. "This here is my attack dog," he
said with a chuckle, handing the reporter an exuberant 8-pound papillon from
his passenger seat. "Her name is Suzy." Then he pulled a 9-millimeter
Makarov PM pistol -- once the standard-issue sidearm for Soviet cops -- out
of his glove compartment. "I've got enough weaponry to raise a small army in
my basement," he said, clutching the gun in his palm. "Then again, so do
most Alaskans." But Chryson added a message of reassurance to residents of
that faraway place some Alaskans call "the 48." "We want to go our separate
ways," he said, "but we are not going to kill you."

Though Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the
secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other
like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not
without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah
Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, Chryson has been a political
fixture in the hometown of the Republican vice-presidential nominee for over
a decade. During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another
radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in
electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda
afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin's campaign
financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp
before, during and after her victory.

Palin backed Chryson as he successfully advanced a host of anti-tax, pro-gun
initiatives, including one that altered the state Constitution's language to
better facilitate the formation of anti-government militias. She joined in
their vendetta against several local officials they disliked, and listened
to their advice about hiring. She attempted to name Stoll, a John Birch
Society activist known in the Mat-Su Valley as "Black Helicopter Steve," to
an empty Wasilla City Council seat. "Every time I showed up her door was
open," said Chryson. "And that policy continued when she became governor."

When Chryson first met Sarah Palin, however, he didn't really trust her
politically. It was the early 1990s, when he was a member of a local
libertarian pressure group called SAGE, or Standing Against Government
Excess. (SAGE's founder, Tammy McGraw, was Palin's birth coach.) Palin was a
leader in a pro-sales-tax citizens group called WOW, or Watch Over Wasilla,
earning a political credential before her 1992 campaign for City Council.
Though he was impressed by her interpersonal skills, Chryson greeted Palin's
election warily, thinking she was too close to the Democrats on the council
and too pro-tax.

But soon, Palin and Chryson discovered they could be useful to each other.
Palin would be running for mayor, while Chryson was about to take over the
chairmanship of the Alaska Independence Party, which at its peak in 1990 had
managed to elect a governor.

The AIP was born of the vision of "Old Joe" Vogler, a hard-bitten former
gold miner who hated the government of the United States almost as much as
he hated wolves and environmentalists. His resentment peaked during the
early 1970s when the federal government began installing Alaska's oil and
gas pipeline. Fueled by raw rage -- "The United States has made a colony of
Alaska," he told author John McPhee in 1977 -- Vogler declared a maverick
candidacy for the governorship in 1982. Though he lost, Old Joe became a
force to be reckoned with, as well as a constant source of amusement for
Alaska's political class. During a gubernatorial debate in 1982, Vogler
proposed using nuclear weapons to obliterate the glaciers blocking roadways
to Juneau. "There's gold under there!" he exclaimed.

Vogler made another failed run for the governor's mansion in 1986. But the
AIP's fortunes shifted suddenly four years later when Vogler convinced
Richard Nixon's former interior secretary, Wally Hickel, to run for governor
under his party's banner. Hickel coasted to victory, outflanking a moderate
Republican and a centrist Democrat. An archconservative Republican running
under the AIP candidate, Jack Coghill, was elected lieutenant governor.

Hickel's subsequent failure as governor to press for a vote on Alaskan
independence rankled Old Joe. With sponsorship from the Islamic Republic of
Iran, Vogler was scheduled to present his case for Alaskan secession before
the United Nations General Assembly in the late spring of 1993. But before
he could, Old Joe's long, strange political career ended tragically that May
when he was murdered by a fellow secessionist.

Hickel rejoined the Republican Party the year after Vogler's death and
didn't run for reelection. Lt. Gov. Coghill's campaign to succeed him as the
AIP candidate for governor ended in disaster; he peeled away just enough
votes from the Republican, Jim Campbell, to throw the gubernatorial election
to Democrat Tony Knowles.

Despite the disaster, Coghill hung on as AIP chairman for three more years.
When he was asked to resign in 1997, Mark Chryson replaced him. Chryson
pursued a dual policy of cozying up to secessionist and right-wing groups in
Alaska and elsewhere while also attempting to replicate the AIP's success
with Hickel in infiltrating the mainstream.

Unlike some radical right-wingers, Chryson doesn't put forward his ideas
freighted with anger or paranoia. And in a state where defense of gun and
property rights often takes on a real religious fervor, Chryson was able to
present himself  as a typical Alaskan.

He rose through party ranks by reducing the AIP's platform to a single page
that "90 percent of Alaskans could agree with." This meant scrubbing the old
platform of what Chryson called "racist language" while accommodating the
state's growing Christian right movement by emphasizing the AIP's commitment
to the "traditional family."

"The AIP is very family-oriented," Chryson explained. "We're for the
traditional family -- daddy, mommy, kids -- because we all know that it was
Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. And we don't care if Heather has two
mommies. That's not a traditional family."

Chryson further streamlined the AIP's platform by softening its secessionist
language. Instead of calling for immediate separation from the United
States, the platform now demands a vote on independence.

Yet Chryson maintains that his party remains committed to full independence.
"The Alaskan Independence Party has got links to almost every
independence-minded movement in the world," Chryson exclaimed. "And Alaska
is not the only place that's about separation. There's at least 30 different
states that are talking about some type of separation from the United
States."

This has meant rubbing shoulders and forging alliances with outright white
supremacists and far-right theocrats, particularly those who dominate the
proceedings at such gatherings as the North American Secessionist
conventions, which AIP delegates have attended in recent years. The AIP's
affiliation with neo-Confederate organizations is motivated as much by
ideological affinity as by organizational convenience. Indeed, Chryson makes
no secret of his sympathy for the Lost Cause. "Should the Confederate states
have been allowed to separate and go their peaceful ways?" Chryson asked
rhetorically. "Yes. The War of Northern Aggression, or the Civil War, or the
War Between the States -- however you want to refer to it -- was not about
slavery, it was about states' rights."

Another far-right organization with whom the AIP has long been aligned is
Howard Phillips' militia-minded Constitution Party. The AIP has been listed
as the Constitution Party's state affiliate since the late 1990s, and it has
endorsed the Constitution Party's presidential candidates (Michael Peroutka
and Chuck Baldwin) in the past two elections.

The Constitution Party boasts an openly theocratic platform that reads, "It
is our goal to limit the federal government to its delegated, enumerated,
Constitutional functions and to restore American jurisprudence to its
original Biblical common-law foundations." In its 1990s incarnation as the
U.S. Taxpayers Party, it was on the front lines in promoting the "militia"
movement, and a significant portion of its membership comprises former and
current militia members.

At its 1992 convention, the AIP hosted both Phillips -- the USTP's
presidential candidate -- and militia-movement leader Col. James "Bo" Gritz,
who was campaigning for president under the banner of the far-right Populist
Party. According to Chryson, AIP regulars heavily supported Gritz, but the
party deferred to Phillips' presence and issued no official endorsements.

In Wasilla, the AIP became powerful by proxy -- because of Chryson and
Stoll's alliance with Sarah Palin. Chryson and Stoll had found themselves in
constant opposition to policies of Wasilla's Democratic mayor, who started
his three-term, nine-year tenure in 1987. By 1992, Chryson and Stoll had
begun convening regular protests outside City Council. Their demonstrations
invariably involved grievances against any and all forms of "socialist
government," from city planning to public education. Stoll shared Chryson's
conspiratorial views: "The rumor was that he had wrapped his guns in plastic
and buried them in his yard so he could get them after the New World Order
took over," Stein told a reporter.

Chryson did not trust Palin when she joined the City Council in 1992. He
claimed that she was handpicked by Democratic City Council leaders and by
Wasilla's Democratic mayor, John Stein, to rubber-stamp their tax hike
proposals. "When I first met her," he said, "I thought she was extremely
left. But I've watched her slowly as she's become more pronounced in her
conservative ideology."

Palin was well aware of Chryson's views. "She knew my beliefs," Chryson
said. "The entire state knew my beliefs. I wasn't afraid of being on the
news, on camera speaking my views."

But Chryson believes she trusted his judgment because he accurately
predicted what life on the City Council would be like. "We were telling her,
'This is probably what's going to happen,'" he said. "'The city is going to
give this many people raises, they're going to pave everybody's roads, and
they're going to pave the City Council members' roads.' We couldn't have
scripted it better because everything we predicted came true."

After intense evangelizing by Chryson and his allies, they claimed Palin as
a convert. "When she started taking her job seriously," Chryson said, "the
people who put her in as the rubber stamp found out the hard way that she
was not going to go their way." In 1994, Sarah Palin attended the AIP's
statewide convention. In 1995, her husband, Todd, changed his voter
registration to AIP. Except for an interruption of a few months, he would
remain registered was an AIP member until 2002, when he changed his
registration to undeclared.

In  1996, Palin decided to run against John Stein as the Republican
candidate for mayor of Wasilla. While Palin pushed back against Stein's
policies, particularly those related to funding public works, Chryson said
he and Steve Stoll prepared the groundwork for her mayoral campaign.

Chryson and Stoll viewed Palin's ascendancy as a vehicle for their own
political ambitions. "She got support from these guys," Stein remarked. "I
think smart politicians never utter those kind of radical things, but they
let other people do it for them. I never recall Sarah saying she supported
the militia or taking a public stand like that. But these guys were
definitely behind Sarah, thinking she was the more conservative choice."

"They worked behind the scenes," said Stein. "I think they had a lot of
influence in terms of helping with the back-scatter negative campaigning."

Indeed, Chryson boasted that he and his allies urged Palin to focus her
campaign on slashing character-based attacks. For instance, Chryson advised
Palin to paint Stein as a sexist who had told her "to just sit there and
look pretty" while she served on Wasilla's City Council. Though Palin never
made this accusation, her 1996 campaign for mayor was the most negative
Wasilla residents had ever witnessed.

While Palin played up her total opposition to the sales tax and gun control
-- the two hobgoblins of the AIP -- mailers spread throughout the town
portraying her as "the Christian candidate," a subtle suggestion that Stein,
who is Lutheran, might be Jewish. "I watched that campaign unfold, bringing
a level of slime our community hadn't seen until then," recalled Phil
Munger, a local music teacher who counts himself as a close friend of Stein.

"This same group [Stoll and Chryson] also [publicly] challenged me on
whether my wife and I were married because she had kept her maiden name,"
Stein bitterly recalled. "So we literally had to produce a marriage
certificate. And as I recall, they said, 'Well, you could have forged
that.'"

When Palin won the election, the men who had once shouted anti-government
slogans outside City Hall now had a foothold inside the mayor's office.
Palin attempted to pay back her newfound pals during her first City Council
meeting as mayor. In that meeting, on Oct. 14, 1996, she appointed Stoll to
one of the City Council's two newly vacant seats. But Palin was blocked by
the single vote of then-Councilman Nick Carney, who had endured countless
rancorous confrontations with Stoll and considered him a "violent" influence
on local politics. Though Palin considered consulting attorneys about
finding another means of placing Stoll on the council, she was ultimately
forced to back down and accept a compromise candidate.

Emboldened by his nomination by Mayor Palin, Stoll later demanded she fire
Wasilla's museum director, John Cooper, a personal enemy he longed to
sabotage. Palin obliged, eliminating Cooper's position in short order.
"Gotcha, Cooper!" Stoll told the deposed museum director after his
termination, as Cooper told a reporter for the New York Times. "And it only
cost me a campaign contribution." Stoll, who donated $1,000 to Palin's
mayoral campaign, did not respond to numerous requests for an interview.
Palin has blamed budget concerns for Cooper's departure.

The following year, when Carney proposed a local gun-control measure, Palin
organized with Chryson to smother the nascent plan in its cradle. Carney's
proposed ordinance would have prohibited residents from carrying guns into
schools, bars, hospitals, government offices and playgrounds. Infuriated by
the proposal that Carney viewed as a common-sense public-safety measure,
Chryson and seven allies stormed a July 1997 council meeting.

With the bill still in its formative stages, Carney was not even ready to
present it to the council, let alone conduct public hearings on it. He and
other council members objected to the ad-hoc hearing as "a waste of time."
But Palin -- in plain violation of council rules and norms -- insisted that
Chryson testify, stating, according to the minutes, that "she invites the
public to speak on any issue at any time."

When Carney tried later in the meeting to have the ordinance discussed
officially at the following regular council meeting, he couldn't even get a
second. His proposal died that night, thanks to Palin and her extremist
allies.

"A lot of it was the ultra-conservative far right that is against everything
in government, including taxes," recalled Carney. "A lot of it was a
personal attack on me as being anti-gun, and a personal attack on anybody
who deigned to threaten their authority to carry a loaded firearm wherever
they pleased. That was the tenor of it. And it was being choreographed by
Steve Stoll and the mayor."

Asked if he thought it was Palin who had instigated the turnout, he replied:
"I know it was."

By Chryson's account, he and Palin also worked hand-in-glove to slash
property taxes and block a state proposal that would have taken money for
public programs from the Permanent Fund Dividend, or the oil and gas fund
that doles out annual payments to citizens of Alaska. Palin endorsed
Chryson's unsuccessful initiative to move the state Legislature from Juneau
to Wasilla. She also lent her support to Chryson's crusade to alter the
Alaska Constitution's language on gun rights so cities and counties could
not impose their own restrictions. "It took over 10 years to get that
language written in," Chryson said. "But Sarah [Palin] was there supporting
it."

"With Sarah as a mayor," said Chryson, "there were a number of times when I
just showed up at City Hall and said, 'Hey, Sarah, we need help.' I think
there was only one time when I wasn't able to talk to her and that was
because she was in a meeting."

Chryson says the door remains open now that Palin is governor. (Palin's
office did not respond to Salon's request for an interview.) While Palin has
been more circumspect in her dealings with groups like the AIP as she has
risen through the political ranks, she has stayed in touch.

When Palin ran for governor in 2006, marketing herself as a fresh-faced
reformer determined to crush the GOP's ossified power structure, she made
certain to appear at the AIP's state convention. To burnish her maverick
image, she also tapped one-time AIP member and born-again Republican Walter
Hickel as her campaign co-chair. Hickel barnstormed the state for Palin,
hailing her support for an "all-Alaska" liquefied gas pipeline, a project
first promoted in 2002 by an AIP gubernatorial candidate named Nels
Anderson. When Palin delivered her victory speech on election night, Hickel
stood beaming by her side. "I made her governor," he boasted afterward. Two
years later, Hickel has endorsed Palin's bid for vice president.

Just months before Palin burst onto the national stage as McCain's
vice-presidential nominee, she delivered a videotaped address to the AIP's
annual convention. Her message was scrupulously free of secessionist
rhetoric, but complementary nonetheless. "I share your party's vision of
upholding the Constitution of our great state," Palin told the assembly of
AIP delegates. "My administration remains focused on reining in government
growth so individual liberty can expand. I know you agree with that ... Keep
up the good work and God bless you."

When Palin became the Republican vice-presidential nominee, her attendance
of the 1994 and 2006 AIP conventions and her husband's membership in the
party (as well as Palin's videotaped welcome to the AIP's 2008 convention)
generated a minor controversy. Chryson claimed, however, that Sarah and Todd
Palin never even played a minor role in his party's internal affairs.
"Sarah's never been a member of the Alaskan Independence Party," Chryson
insisted. "Todd has, but most of rural Alaska has too. I never saw him at a
meeting. They were at one meeting I was at. Sarah said hello, but I didn't
pay attention because I was taking care of business."

But whether the Palins participated directly in shaping the AIP's program is
less relevant than the extent to which they will implement that program.
Chryson and his allies have demonstrated just as much interest in grooming
major party candidates as they have in putting forward their own people. At
a national convention of secessionist groups in 2007, AIP vice chairman
Dexter Clark announced that his party would seek to "infiltrate" the
Democratic and Republican parties with candidates sympathetic to its
hard-right, secessionist agenda. "You should use that tactic. You should
infiltrate," Clark told his audience of neo-Confederates, theocrats and
libertarians. "Whichever party you think in that area you can get something
done, get into that party. Even though that party has its problems, right
now that is the only avenue."

Clark pointed to Palin's political career as the model of a successful
infiltration. "There's a lot of talk of her moving up," Clark said of Palin.
"She was a member [of the AIP] when she was mayor of a small town, that was
a nonpartisan job. But to get along and to go along she switched to the
Republican Party . She is pretty well sympathetic because of her
membership."

Clark's assertion that Palin was once a card-carrying AIP member was swiftly
discredited by the McCain campaign, which produced records showing she had
been a registered Republican since 1988. But then why would Clark make such
a statement? Why did he seem confident that Palin was a true-blue AIP
activist burrowing within the Republican Party? The most salient answer is
that Palin was once so thoroughly embedded with AIP figures like Chryson and
Stoll and seemed so enthusiastic about their agenda, Clark may have simply
assumed she belonged to his party.

Now, Palin is a household name and her every move is scrutinized by the
Washington press corps. She can no longer afford to kibitz with
secessionists, however instrumental they may have been to her meteoric
ascendancy. This does not trouble her old AIP allies. Indeed, Chryson is
hopeful that Palin's inauguration will also represent the start of a new
infiltration.

"I've had my issues but she's still staying true to her core values,"
Chryson concluded. "Sarah's friends don't all agree with her, but do they
respect her? Do they respect her ideology and her values? Definitely."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/10/palin_chryson/