Tonight, Sarah Palin will be nominated as the Republican Party's choice for vice president of the United States.
But back home, she has cheered the work of a tiny party that long has pushed for a statewide vote on whether Alaska should secede from those same United States. And her husband, Todd, was a member of the party for seven years.
"Keep up the good work," Sarah Palin told members of the Alaskan Independence Party in a videotaped speech to their convention six months ago in Fairbanks. She wished the party luck on what she called its "inspiring convention."
The Alaskan Independence Party, founded in 1978, initially promoted "the Alaskan independence movement." But now, according to its website, "its primary goal is merely a vote on secession."
McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said Tuesday that Palin did not support splitting Alaska off from the rest of the country. He sidestepped the question of whether she favored a statewide vote on secession.
"Gov. Palin believes that every American is entitled to their point of view, and their political beliefs," he said.
Bounds also did not directly answer the question of whether her husband supported the secession of Alaska.
"I can tell you that Mr. Palin is a proud American," Bounds said. "And he's excited that his wife has joined John McCain to reform Washington and make government work more effectively for all Americans."
For all but two months from 1995 to 2002, the governor's husband was registered as an Alaskan Independence Party member, according to the Alaska Division of Elections.
With McCain's campaign emphasizing patriotism -- his latest slogan is "Country First" -- the Palins' links to a party founded by the late secessionist gold miner Joe Vogler could prove awkward.
"I'm an Alaskan, not an American," Vogler is quoted as saying elsewhere on the party’s website. "I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."
The party supports a plebiscite on four options that it says Alaskans were entitled to vote on before becoming a state in 1959: Form a sovereign nation of their own, become a state, accept commonwealth status similar to Puerto Rico's, or remain a U.S. territory.
Leaders of the party say many of its 13,681 registered members have joined out of frustration over restrictions that the federal government has placed on the use of its vast land holdings in Alaska. Beyond the secession vote, the party also advocates gun rights, home schooling and abolition of property taxes.
