Politics gets dirty

[Wickerman]

Sarah's local paper has quite an archive, the following is posted without further comment.

http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2002/08/27/news2.txt

Politics gets dirty

By RINDI WHITE-Frontiersman reporter
Published on Tuesday, August 27, 2002 9:18 PM AKDT
WASILLA -- Sarah Palin, candidate for lieutenant governor and Wasilla mayor, was discouraged to find that, fewer than 10 days before the election, someone was trying to play the character assassination card.

Last week, anonymous letters were sent out to several news organizations across the state. Enclosed were printed Web pages that showed what appeared to be a 1993 felony conviction lurking in Palin's past. Nothing was included to reveal where the information came from, and the Aug. 19 postmark read only Anchorage.

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Palin dashed off a press release and even put together a campaign commercial to let potential constituents know the apparent felony conviction was simply a paperwork error. What she had really received, she said, equated to a parking ticket and had been taken care of years ago.

"This is a deliberate attempt by someone to hurt my chances next Tuesday," Palin said. "Their intent was to get the media to report a story that would harm my candidacy only five days before the primary. Whoever wanted to spread these lies was not only a coward, but they also were a pretty dumb coward, for they failed to get the facts straight."

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