The day after vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin wowed the country with her address, fact checkers challenged her account of how she disposed of her predecessor's private jet as a cost cutting measure. Referring to the previous Alaska governor's state-funded 1984-vintage Westwind II, Palin said, "That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay." In fact, three attempts to sell the jet on the Internet auction fell short of finding a bidder to meet the reserve. It was ultimately sold through a broker in August 2007, at some $500,000 less than the $2.7 million purchase price in 2005. If Palin appears anti-business jet, she and her husband are apparently sufficiently enamored of their PA-18 Super Cub on floats that they named one of their daughters 'Piper.'
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The original purchase of the 'status-symbol' jet by Palin's predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, rubbed a lot of Alaskans the wrong way. It seemed like an expensive pretence to no small number of voters ... and it created a political opening for Palin. (Tho at $2.7 million - it strikes me as not that bad of a buy!)
I didn't get the impression that Palin has any specific beef against Westwind jets or the class of aircraft that it belongs to, but rather that she was just 'cashing in' on Frank Murkowski's over-the-top spending habits ... and the Alaska voters agreed with her. I.e.; the attack wasn't so much on Westwind or business jets, as it was on Murkowski. The jet was a proxy.
Palin did name daughter Piper after the Piper (Super Cub) aircraft ... and named her (veteran) son Track after a running-track, and named daughter Bristol after Bristol Bay, where they fish for salmon, etc. Piper's name is less an aviation-thing, than an Alaskan kid-naming thing.
But no - it won't prove to be a problem for Alaska voters, nor I expect for most contiguous U.S. voters either, that the Palin family 'cling' to their Super Cub bush plane.
