Sarah Palin was a member of the City Council of Wasilla, Alaska from 1992 to 1996 and the city's mayor from 1996 to 2002. Wasilla is located 29 miles (47 km) north-east of the port of Anchorage, and is the largest population center in the Mat-Su Valley. At the conclusion of Palin's tenure as mayor in 2002, the city had about 6,300 residents, and is now the fifth largest city in the state. Term limits prevented Palin from running for a third term as mayor.
City Council of Wasilla
Palin was elected twice to the City Council of Wasilla, Alaska, in 1992 and 1995. Wasilla's city councillors serve three-year terms. Palin says she entered politics because she was concerned that revenue from a new Wasilla sales tax would not be spent wisely.
Palin's first foray into politics was in 1992, when the then 28-year-old ran for Wasilla city council against John Hartrick, a local telephone company worker. She won 530 votes against Hartrick's 310. On the council, she successfully opposed a measure to curtail the hours at Wasilla's bars by two hours. This surprised Hartrick because she was then a member of a church that advocated abstinence from alcohol. After serving on the city council for three years, she ran for reelection against R'nita Rogers in 1995, winning 413 votes to Rogers' 185. Palin did not complete her second term on the city council because she ran for mayor in 1996.
Remark about library book
According to Laura Chase of Wasilla, and former Wasilla Mayor John Stein, Palin mentioned in 1995 that she saw the book Daddy's Roommate in the public library and did not think that it belonged there. Chase later became Palin's campaign manager for mayor in 1996, when Palin defeated John Stein, but Chase had a falling out with Palin and then became a vocal critic.
City of Wasilla Library records indicate that there was never a request for the library to remove the book and that no books were ever censored or banned. A New York Times article in 2008 mentioned the Daddy's Roommate episode, and intimated that the episode is relevant to accusations that Palin may be sympathetic to censorship. The Times article was subsequently criticized by the Times''' own ombudsman for presenting "confusing and incomplete" anecdotes about Palin.
The McCain-Palin campaign said that Palin was not advocating censorship. Eventually, the Wasilla Library did remove the book in question, according to Kathy Martin-Albright who became library director in 2005: "The books were removed as part of ongoing collection development and not due to the subject matter presented in the books."
1996 campaign for Wasilla Mayor
The duties of Wasilla's Mayor are more circumscribed than those of many other mayors in the United States. Firefighting and schools are overseen by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough government, and the state government handles social services and environmental regulation, such as storm water management for building projects. Palin told the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman that she could handle the job of Mayor without any assistance from veteran town officials: "It's not rocket science. It's $6 million and 53 employees."
In 1996, Palin had been serving on the Wasilla City Council for four years, and decided to run for Mayor. She defeated three-term incumbent John Stein, running on a platform of "fresh ideas and energy".
In the campaign, she vowed to replace "stale leadership" and criticized Stein for wasteful spending and high taxes. She also introduced campaign issues such as abortion, gun rights, and term limits into the race. Although the mayoral election was non-partisan, the state Republican party ran advertisements on her behalf. Palin did not brandish her religious views during that campaign, but did play up her church work. A local cable TV program referred to Palin as Wasilla's first "Christian Mayor," which prompted an objection from Stein who noted that he and several previous Mayors of Wasilla were Christian.