I think I've met Sarah Palin. Many times.
Not in person, mind you.
My only trip to Alaska was in 1965, the year I graduated from high school, a year after Palin was born.
Still, as the portrait of the Alaska governor and mother of five is filled in, I can't shake this feeling that I've met her, or at least parts of her, while covering North County for the past 20-plus years.
Details of the Republican vice-presidential nominee's biography are unique to her oil-rich state, a vast frontier apart from the Lower 48. In these desert parts, we race bikes, not snowmobiles. The only moose we consume is the chocolate variety.
In important ways, however, Palin's PTA-to-pol metamorphosis evokes many North County mothers who defied stay-at-home norms and staked out their seats in the region's civic chambers.
Right off, I think of the late Vista Mayor Gloria McClellan, a Mormon mother of five who for almost 30 years fought for her small city with a cheery blend of generosity, guile and grit.
In the 1960s, before she ran for the City Council, McClellan broke her first barrier when she formed an organization to support what we know today as special-needs children.
Mayor Glo, as she was called, outfoxed Escondido to win the regional big-box trophy, the North County Courthouse complex. She could pull back-room strings like Yo-Yo Ma.
You think Palin is tough? McClellan had two titanium knees installed in one surgery. In a couple of weeks, she was hobbling back on the dais.
Eight years ago, after I had written a column critical of her pet project, downtown redevelopment, Mayor Glo called me as I was driving.
“Logan, I want to kill you!” she screamed.
Irrelevantly, I told her I was in traffic.
“Drive carefully, honey,” she cautioned, “because I want to kill you with my own hands.”
Former Escondido Mayor Doris Thurston, a nurse and mother of three, carved out time to serve on the hospital board followed by two council terms in the 1980s and early '90s, finally retiring from politics and moving to the coast after losing a son to a brain tumor.
Melba Bishop – the former Oceanside councilwoman and mother of three, derisively called the “Little League Mom” in the local press – stood up to a vicious recall effort and, though in poor health, remains active in grass-roots politics today.
Ann Kulchin, the 28-year Carlsbad councilwoman and mother of three, would have been her city's mayor if it hadn't been for the iron-willed longevity of Mayor Bud Lewis. As second fiddles go, Kulchin's proved to be a virtuoso.
All these remarkable women embody the modern archetype of the supermom who graduates from training grounds like the PTA and goes on to juggle family, work and elective office.
In Escondido, you see the same pattern in Mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler and Councilwoman Marie Waldron; in Poway, Merrilee Boyack; in San Marcos, Councilwoman Rebecca Jones; and others I've no doubt overlooked.
After Palin's selection, some observers have predicted a reigniting of the “culture wars” that dominated the 1990s.
On that score, two politically active North County soccer-style moms – at the time, their critics might have called them “pit bulls in lipstick” – offer their own cautionary tales.
Who could forget Connie Youngkin, the personally quite charming but uncompromising Poway mom and nurse who fought against abortion as an apocalyptic civil-rights issue?
Youngkin tried to win various elective offices but found tough sledding. She had the reputation of a crank trying to scare people into moral rectitude. Last I heard, she was running an orphanage and outreach program for prostitutes in Tijuana.
One wonders if, during the campaign, Palin can make her anti-abortion view, one that would deny choice to rape or incest victims, more palatable to the political middle.
On another front in the culture war, Vista conducted in the early 1990s its version of the 1925 Scopes Trial, thanks to the natural political genius of school trustee Deidre Holliday, a Christian social conservative.
In the early '90s, CNN trucks camped outside as the Vista school board debated the merits of teaching “intelligent design” – i.e., creationism – along with evolution, an equal-time position Palin reportedly supports, as do many evangelicals (but precious few scientists).
Eventually, Holliday tired of the fight and retired from public life to devote more time to her children. Ultimately, it was a losing battle in these parts, finessing faith-based faux science into the secular classroom.
The ultimate lesson? The social conservative agenda meets bitter partisan resistance as it moves toward the middle of the political spectrum. The presidential election – and Palin's role in history – may hinge on whether she can soften the edges of her sincerest convictions.
If she is going to avoid getting burned on the national stage, Palin would do well to face the press while adopting GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's easygoing approach, which is that he is a social conservative “but I'm not mad at anybody about it.”
Palin, a former small-town mayor, could make (or, then again, undo) John McCain's come-from-behind surge to the White House. If he were to win, it would set up the distant, but distinct, possibility that the nation's 45th president would be an ambitious mom from Alaska, a human moon shot.
But down here, in our southern exposure, variations on Palin's political life story have been written – with style.
And that's why you might think you've met her before.
Logan Jenkins: (760) 737-7555; logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com.
