ANCHORAGE — On election day, a smiling Sarah Palin touched down briefly on home turf at Wasilla City Hall to cast her vote, declaring how much she was looking forward to waking up in "transition mode" as vice president. Then she headed off to spend election night in Arizona with Sen. John McCain.
One day later, Palin was on a plane back to Alaska, this time to pick up where she left off before joining McCain's presidential campaign: as the state's overwhelmingly popular governor, praised for her bipartisanship by Democratic allies in the state Capitol, championed for her fight for ethics reform and presiding over a state with, thanks to soaring oil prices, a multibillion-dollar surplus.
But wait -- what fairy tale is that? After several months co-starring with its governor in one of the hardest-fought presidential campaigns in modern U.S. history, America's 49th state bears little resemblance to the friendly, folksy place Palin left in August.
With her vice-presidential carriage turned back into a pumpkin, Palin faces a return to a state rife with hard feelings, a sagging budget and rising political uncertainty. Will its powerful veteran U.S. senator hold on to his job despite a felony corruption conviction? And what can Palin do about her home-grown political adversaries, some of them showing a gleeful appetite for torpedoing whatever national political ambitions the governor may harbor?
Palin's approval ratings in Alaska, once in the stratospheric 80% range, have tumbled to a mere mortal 65%. A minor dust-up over the firing of her former public safety commissioner has blossomed into two full "Troopergate" investigations, with some lawmakers threatening to lead off the coming legislative session by sending some of Palin's senior aides to jail.
The state faces the potential of an operating deficit if oil prices go much below $63 a barrel. The heavy lifting to get Alaska's natural-gas pipeline off the ground is going to have to go through a not-so-friendly new Democratic administration in Washington. And with a stronger Democratic majority in Congress, Palin likely will wait for the proverbial freeze-over before anyone drills in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
How she gets through the next few months is crucial to her future, analysts say, since Palin's return to Alaska is an inevitable costume change before her national relaunch -- probably in 2012, or sooner if she decides to run for the U.S. Senate.
