`First dude' probably doesn't host many teas
ANCHORAGE — It was mid-February and Todd Palin, Alaska's first gentleman, was speeding across 2,000 miles of ice and snowy tundra en route to victory in the world's most grueling snowmobile race.
That same week, his wife, Republican Gov. Sarah Palin, was in Juneau requesting more money for the state budget and assuring legislators they'd soon see her plan for a natural gas pipeline that could one day be the most expensive construction project in North America. Then she flew to Fairbanks to wave her exhausted husband across the finish line.
It's not just his title as the state's reigning snowmobile co-champion that sets Todd Palin, 42, apart from the nation's other first spouses. And it's not that he's one of just five who are men.
White-collar jobs in law, education or healthcare are typical among the current crop of first spouses, but Palin spent nearly 20 years as a blue-collar employee in the Arctic oil fields of the North Slope. And every summer he heads west to his birthplace in Dillingham to work the Bristol Bay commercial salmon fishery from his property on the Nushagak River.
A lifetime of manual labor in the state's two largest and most physically demanding industries is helping Palin carve out his role as Alaska's first spouse, or "first dude," a nickname he has in common with the Kansas governor's husband, Gary Sebelius.
Like other first spouses around the country, Palin has been asked to champion an array of causes or institutions since his wife took office in December.
His favorite is steering young Alaskans toward jobs in the oil and gas industry. It's a singular choice among his counterparts, whose pet issues include schools, public health, domestic violence, poverty or the arts.
"For those of us who learn by touching and tearing stuff apart and for those who don't have the financial background to go to college, just being a product of that on-the-job training is really important," Palin said one morning over pastries at an Anchorage coffee shop, before meeting with trainers at several companies and trade groups in Anchorage and Wasilla.
Palin, who took college courses but does not have a degree, said he was grateful for the training he received from the multinational oil company BP starting in 1989.
