Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is a beloved cultural warrior to her followers around the country. Here’s how she described her people when she was on stage with Donald Trump, endorsing his candidacy in 2016: “Right-winging, bitter-clinging, proud clingers of our guns, our God, our religions and our Constitution.”
Other than the “bitter” part, that description seems to fit Ron Johnson, right down to the American flag t-shirt he wears under a camouflage-printed fleece jacket.
Johnson is a retired Vietnam veteran who lives in a log house in Butte, on the Matanuska side of the Mat-Su, where he keeps bees and raises chickens. He’s got a Trump sign by his driveway, and another sign proclaiming that his house is protected by the Second Amendment. Johnson does like firearms.
“Once you get into it, no telling how many guns you’ll have. Just right here, there’s one above me,” he told a recent visitor, standing in his front entryway. “And two set in here, and one on my waist.”
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Johnson is a dedicated conservative and a church-goer. He voted for Palin for governor. But now that she’s running for Alaska’s sole U.S. House seat?
“I think she’s out of touch with Alaskans right now,” he said. “She’s moved into a different circle … I just think that she’s gotten away from her roots. I don’t think that the people here locally, at least in the Mat-Su — we don’t take her very seriously.”
The Mat-Su is the heartland of Alaska’s conservative base, and Palin lives there. That she doesn’t have the conservative vote locked up on this ruby-red home turf suggests Alaska’s most famous Republican has some campaign challenges to overcome if she’s going to be Alaska’s next member of Congress.
One of those is that, as her celebrity grew nationally, her image at home suffered.
“She’s made a lot of money and, you know, good for her. I’m glad that she’s successful,” Johnson said. “That might excite the people Outside, but I don’t think it excites Alaskans too much.”
Other Mat-Su conservatives say some of her television appearances damaged her stature, like in 2020 when she wore a pink-and-blue bear suit on the show “The Masked Singer” and rapped “Baby Got Back.”
“That (national) attention has made her more of an — to me it’s just made her more of an embarrassment to Alaskans than someone to respect and support,” said Karina Wentworth, a stay-at-home mom and marketing manager who lives in Wasilla.
Wentworth’s politics, like Johnson’s, are clear from the driveway: A small banner proclaims her household is “Pro-life, Pro-God, Pro-gun, Pro-Trump.” Even though her kids go to middle school with Sarah Palin’s son, Wentworth is just not that into Palin.
“Her focus has become, more centered on herself and less on Alaska,” Wentworth said. “So yeah, I would like to see a candidate that is more Alaska focused.”
Wentworth contrasts her own dim view of Palin with that of her in-laws in Georgia. She said they watch Palin on Fox News and are “sparkly eyed fans.”
Wentworth wants Republican Nick Begich III to win the U.S. House seat. Begich has done months of outreach in the Mat-Su and locked up a lot of endorsements from local political leaders. Johnson, a regional representative to the state Republican party, also supports Begich in the race.
Shoppers at the Carrs supermarket in Wasilla offered a broader range of views about Palin, from adoration to indifference.
“I don’t think many people up here have a very high standing of her,” said Jennefer DelaVega, a libertarian.
“I think it’s great that she’s running,” said Dan Lousberg. “I’d like to see her win. I think it’d be great for our state.”
Lousberg said he doesn’t blame Palin for resigning as governor. The stream of ethics charges — unfounded, in his view — “basically just run her plumb broke.”
But another shopper called Palin “a quitter.” That shopper is not unique.
In a survey about three years after Palin resigned from the governor’s office, Anchorage pollster Ivan Moore said more than half of Alaskans had a negative view of her.
“We asked them why, and ‘quit,’ ‘quitter’ — all the way down,” Moore said. “Every other comment was ‘quit’ or ‘quitter.’”
There aren’t a lot of polls that have been made public, but Moore asked Alaskans in October whether they have a positive or negative view of Palin.
“Her positive-negative came back at 31 positive, 56 negative. So that’s the immediate problem,” said Moore, who previously did work for other candidates in the race.
He said another challenge for Palin is that voters haven’t seen her active on Alaska issues since she resigned in 2009.
“We haven’t heard anything from her about anything of any political importance,” Moore said. “She hasn’t weighed in. She hasn’t appeared. She hasn’t testified. She hasn’t spoken in an official capacity about anything that I’m aware of. And then all of a sudden pops up and wants to represent Alaska in Congress.”
Still, Moore says among Republicans in Alaska, close to half viewed Palin positively in October, so she still has a significant amount of support in the state. Moore thinks Trump’s endorsement will sway some voters. And she’s a household name. He expects she will be one of the four candidates who survives the 48-way primary and goes on to the special general. What happens after that is harder to say.
The Palin campaign declined several interview requests, but Palin told reporters at Don Young’s funeral that she’s traveled in the Lower 48, but never moved away from Wasilla.
“Still in the same house. Same group of friends. Same groups of political supporters. And yeah, this is home,” she said.
Here’s a reason not to count Palin out: Even conservatives who don’t support her, like Ron Johnson and Karina Wentworth, say they could vote for her, depending on the alternative. In a ranked choice general election, that could amount to some valuable second-place votes for Palin.
Alaska Public Media photojournalist Jeff Chen contributed to this report from Wasilla.
RELATED: As some question her commitment, Palin says she’s never left Alaska
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at lruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Liz here.
