The state of Alaska has a new governor.

Sarah Palin officially stepped down from the post and turned the job over to her Lt. Governor over the weekend.

After a weekend of goodbyes to Sarah Palin, came the official moment.

The swearing in of a new governor of Alaska.

The former Lt. Governor will take over the remaining year and a half of Palin’s term.

“It is an honor to speak to all Alaskans, to our Alaskan family, this one last time as your governor,” said Palin.

In Palin’s final address as governor, a tribute to her home state.

“In Alaska, it is not an easy living, but it is a good living. And, here it is impossible to lose your way,” Palin said.

The send-off started Friday in her hometown of Wasilla, where she helped serve food at one of three weekend picnics she attended across the state.

“I do want to tell you I love you and I thank you for the support of me,” said Palin.

Unknown on the national stage until John McCain picked her as his running mate, Palin burst onto the political scene.

But ethics complaints, mounting legal fees, and dwindling popularity have plagued her.

“There are more than 9 lives in American politics, and she’s only on her first,” said Wendy Schiller an associate professor of political science at Brown University.

Surrounded by family and supporters most agree Palin’s goodbye as governor looked nothing like a final political farewell.

Palin has said she plans to write a book, campaign for political candidates, and build a right-of-center coalition.

Her announcement that she would step down as governor came three and a half weeks ago.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska  – Sarah Palin says she’s not a quitter, she’s a fighter, but adds that, politically speaking, “if I die, I die. So be it.”

The Alaska governor spoke in taped interviews on ABC, NBC and CNN broadcast Tuesday morning.

She told CNN that “all options are on the table” for her future.

But told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that she recognizes she might not have political staying power after her surprise resignation Friday, which came just as she had been expected to elevate her national profile ahead of a possible 2012 GOP presidential run.

“I said before … ‘You know, politically speaking, if I die, I die. So be it,”‘ she said.

Speaking in fishing waders from the town of Dillingham, Palin said her administration has been paralyzed by fending off frivolous lawsuits.

“I’m not going to take the comfortable path. I’m going to take the right path for the state,” she said of her resignation, which she characterized as a matter of progressing in an unconventional way.

“That caught people off guard. … It’s out of the box and unconventional. That’s what we are as Alaskans and certainly how I am as a public servant.”

Palin said she doesn’t think she needs a title to affect “positive change,” but added that she can’t see herself being totally out of public service.

Palin is returning to the public eye four days after her bombshell announcement, albeit in a place far removed from the glare of the national media: in a remote fishing village 30 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

Palin was scheduled to appear in Kotzebue to sign a bill designed to bring public safety officers to small towns. Kotzebue, a town of about 3,000 people, is 550 miles northwest of Anchorage and lies on a spit of sand at the end of a peninsula.

There has been speculation that she has some legal issue that is not yet known to the public. But her lawyer told The Associated Press on Monday that she has no legal problems whatsoever, and simply is tired of the hostile political climate, legal bills and other distractions.

“She is leaving now because I think she believes that she has become the issue, rightly or wrongly, with all these ethics complaints and with the issues involving the Legislature, the combativeness they’ve been demonstrating toward her since she returned from the campaign,” Thomas Van Flein said.

“I think she believes it’s in the best interest of the state to progress forward, for her to move on to other issues.”

Palin has become a lightning rod for partisan politics in Alaska since her return from the 2008 presidential campaign after John McCain selected her as his running mate for the GOP ticket. She has racked up an estimated $500,000 in legal bills defending the flurry of ethics complaints, including one filed Monday that alleges she is violating ethics law by taking per diem payments when she stays in her Wasilla home instead of the governor’s mansion in Juneau.

In addition, her relationship with Democrats in the state Senate – once among her staunchest allies – deteriorated in the last session.

At the state Capitol in Juneau, the “Time to Make a Difference” clock that counted the time left in Palin’s term was taken down from the wall outside her office. And people from around the country called up her office to inquire about the situation, as did a few cruise ship tourists who made the trek to the Capitol.

The young woman at the desk outside Palin’s office was busy answering phones.

“Yes, she is getting swamped with e-mails,” the woman tells one caller. “Yes, they do get forwarded to the appropriate person.”

“Unfortunately, we are having a back load of e-mails so it will take some to get a response,” she tells another.

Where is she? Why is she stepping down? When is her last day? Why so soon?

The tour guide tried to politely answer the questions for the tourists when she could, but for the most part had no answers.

Some of the visitors left Palin messages in a guest log.

“Sarah – Please Stay!” one person wrote.

Kathy Waldo-Gilbert, a registered Democrat from Iowa who was on her honeymoon in Alaska, said she was especially disappointed because she believes that Palin’s early departure from the governor’s job will make it harder for other women who want to be taken seriously in high-profile positions. Waldo-Gilbert voted Republican for the first time in last year’s presidential election.

“When things get hard, you stick around,” she said.

Erika Fagerstrom, executive residential manager at the governor’s mansion, said Palin and her family will be missed. Even though Palin lived most of the time at her home in Wasilla, she spent “quite a bit” of time at the stately columned mansion near the capitol building, she said.

“We are sad to see her go. They are a great family,” she said.

Palin will be succeeded by Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who has announced he will seek to retain the office in the 2010 election.

State Rep. John Harris, a former House speaker and Republican from Valdez, announced Monday that he’s preparing to file paperwork with state election officials in a bid for governor.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says she is resigning from office.
     
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska – The 18-year-old daughter of former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has given birth in Alaska to a son.

People magazine reports that Bristol Palin gave birth to Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston on Sunday. He weighed 7 pounds, 4 ounces.

Relative Colleen Jones tells the magazine the baby is fine and Bristol is “doing well.” Jones is the sister of Bristol’s grandmother.

The father is Levi Johnston, a former hockey player at Alaska’s Wasilla High School. He has said he and Bristol plan to marry.

Palin created a stir in September by announcing the pregnancy as she prepared to accept her nomination at the Republican National Convention.

The governor’s office called the birth a private family matter.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Alaska’s incoming senator is bullish on gun rights, wants to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling and believes less government is better. And he’s a Democrat.

But “definitely different than a New York Democrat,” says Mark Begich. “I’m from Alaska.”

Begich, the 46-year-old, two-term Anchorage mayor, will take office in January after narrowly defeating 85-year-old Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican in the history of the Senate. Part of Stevens’ undoing in his bid for a seventh term was his conviction on federal felony charges last month.

With Republican Gov. Sarah Palin and 51-year-old Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Begich represents the face of a shifting political landscape in the nation’s northernmost state, and arguably its most misunderstood.

Begich says he’s part of a generational break with Stevens and others in the state’s political old guard, a theme the 44-year-old Palin, the defeated Republican vice presidential candidate, has often used to define herself.

Begich says his concerns are in large part bipartisan, in contrast to the rigid orthodoxy often practiced in Washington. He warned that party leaders there shouldn’t look for a rubber stamp from his office, even when trying to round up votes to break Republican filibusters on the Senate floor.

As a Democrat from a a state long regarded as a conservative GOP stronghold, Begich hopes to use his party-bridging style to political ends, such as winning over Congress on drilling in the refuge, an issue that has been stalled for years.

Asked about Palin, Begich singled out one of Palin’s signature issues: building a pipeline to tap the vast natural gas reserves on Alaska’s North Slope.

“Right now, I think her issues are very similar to mine. We need to create jobs and opportunity for the state.”

Palin, who at one point called for Stevens to step aside, issued a brief statement a day after Begich’s victory Tuesday declaring, “this is a new era for Alaska.”

Stevens has served for four decades in the Senate, earning a reputation for extracting billions of dollars in federal aid for his home state. He is of the same generation as former Gov. Frank Murkowski, 75, who was ousted by Palin. Unlike Stevens’ famously cantankerous personality, Begich is known for being affable, approachable, polite.

To some, the changing of the political dynamics in Alaska was inevitable.

“There’s not much left of anybody’s old guard,” said state  Rep. Mike Doogan, an Anchorage Democrat. “There aren’t that many of Ted Stevens’ contemporaries walking around above ground.”

Part of the change in Alaska politics is not just new faces in office – it comes from its large transient population. Workers who come from elsewhere in search of jobs don’t have much loyalty to long-serving politicians such as Stevens or Rep. Don Young, a Republican now headed for his 19th term after a tight race.

Stevens’ pursuit of a seventh term was damaged by his conviction in federal court – just days before the election – for lying on Senate disclosure forms to conceal more than $250,000 in gifts and home renovations from an oil field services company. Young also is being investigated for his connections to the same firm, VECO Corp.

He says he’s done nothing wrong. Palin’s was elected after promising to take on Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips and BP, the multinational energy companies that long dominated the state’s biggest industry. Her proposals included a hefty tax hike on oil production and a natural gas pipeline plan that the companies fought.

“The Alaska legislature has been essentially subservient to the industry since 1977, when oil production began,” said University of Alaska Anchorage historian Steve Haycox.

“That’s changing. Alaskans have come to realize they can exert more leverage on the industry without harming the state’s economic profile.”

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Gov. Sarah Palin, heralded by some conservatives as the future of the Republican Party, faces some cold political realities in present-day Alaska.

Within days of the McCain-Palin ticket’s defeat earlier this month, the unsuccessful GOP vice presidential nominee capped her tumultuous two months on the campaign trail with a whirlwind series of national media interviews and a headline-grabbing appearance at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Florida.

Now it’s back to her day job at the state capital in Juneau.
 
Palin’s state budget proposal is due in a month, with plummeting oil prices slashing Alaska’s revenues by billions of dollars.

The 1,700-mile natural gas pipeline she bragged about on the campaign trail – “We began a nearly $40 billion-dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence,” she said at the Republican National Convention – is nowhere near being built.

Some hard feelings linger over her administration’s initial decision to ignore subpoenas in the investigation of whether she abused her power in firing the public safety commissioner who wouldn’t oust her ex-brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper.

“The main focus is going to be on the gas line and on the long-term financial issues,” said Democratic state Sen. Bill Wielechowski. “You’re going to see really a clampdown on government services.”

Uncertain is whether the bipartisanship that existed during Palin’s 20 months as governor can survive the heated rhetoric from the presidential campaign and her own political ambitions, with the 44-year-old clearly signaling that she’s open to a bid for president in 2012.

The difficult task at hand “provides the governor with a great opportunity to roll up her sleeves and get back to her job,” said Kenneth Khachigian, a former adviser to President Ronald Reagan.
 
“She’s got four or five election cycles ahead of her where she can do things. She doesn’t have to comment on 2012 or 2016. Being a good governor is the best thing she can do right now.”

Among the challenges she faces:
      -THE BUDGET:
      Alaska has no income or sales tax, and a huge chunk of its annual revenue – as much as 90 percent – comes from taxes and fees on oil companies. When oil prices soar, as they did this summer, so do the state’s coffers: Alaska in the past two years has socked away billions in its already massive savings accounts.

But one of those accounts, the $28 billion Alaska Permanent Fund, sends every Alaskan a dividend each year – this year it was $2,069. So tapping its income to pay for government is considered political suicide, and falling oil prices can put big pressure on state spending.

The governor’s chief economist is working on a new revenue forecast, and many lawmakers expect the state to drastically reduce spending on such things as road projects.
     
-THE PIPELINE:
      With overwhelming support from Democrats, Palin awarded a license to TransCanada in August to pursue building a pipeline that would carry natural gas from Alaska’s North Slope to an existing pipeline network in Alberta.

Although the state granted TransCanada $500 million to plan the pipeline, there’s no guarantee it will be built. TransCanada says it won’t get financing for the massive project until it has guarantees from oil companies to ship the gas through the pipeline; the oil companies say they won’t give such guarantees unless Alaska sets a fixed tax rate on production of the gas, and Palin says she won’t approve the rates the oil companies want.

Solving that problem will require not only cooperation from the Legislature, but probably from the oil companies Palin has battled. And her claim to being a national leader on energy issues depends on it.

-TROOPERGATE AND THE CAMPAIGN:
      The episode – and the media spotlight that resulted from Palin’s vice presidential nomination – drew attention to practices that simply can’t be ignored.

Palin’s administration routinely used private e-mail accounts for state business, circumventing public disclosure laws. “We will undoubtedly address that in some form of legislation,” said Democratic Sen. Hollis French, who oversaw the Troopergate investigation.

Lawmakers also said they could hold hearings on, and possibly restrict, Palin’s practice of charging the state for her children’s travel and taking per diem payments for nights spent in her Wasilla home.

Democratic Rep. Les Gara has – without luck – asked the Alaska State Troopers and the Palin’s appointed attorney general to investigate whether the McCain-Palin campaign urged anyone to ignore their subpoenas. Under state law, to “induce a witness to be absent” from an official proceeding to which they’ve been summoned is second-degree witness tampering.

But even Gara, a recently outspoken critic of Palin, said he doesn’t want such matters preoccupying the government.

“There are much more important things in this state than rehashing Troopergate,” Gara said. “We all have to sit down and let bygones be bygones, but it’s going to take some conversations.”

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, a stalwart of Alaska politics who was convicted of felony charges last month, trails his Democratic rival by more than 800 votes and many of the outstanding ballots come from parts of the state that have favored the challenger.

Even a Republican pollster and Stevens’ friend said his chances for re-election to a seventh term were slim.

“When he came back from the trial and began to campaign personally, it really made a difference,” said David Dittman.

“That doesn’t change anything for all those votes that were cast earlier.”

Mark Begich, the two-term mayor of Anchorage, holds an 814-vote lead with ballot counting resuming on Friday. State election officials said they planned to count 10,000 votes, and the bulk of the rest – about 25,000 – on Tuesday.

Neither candidate was claiming victory nor conceding defeat. Begich said he was “very pleased we’re ahead of the game,” but added, “I can’t predict anything at this point.”

Roughly 15,000 of the remaining ballots come from Anchorage and the surrounding region where Begich is leading. Nearly 9,000 more are from the state’s southeastern panhandle, which Begich is winning handily. Votes from both areas won’t be counted until Tuesday.

Of the votes to be counted Friday, about 5,000 come from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough north of Anchorage, a conservative area home to Gov. Sarah Palin. Stevens has been leading in that area by a margin of 2-to-1. Also to be counted were votes from the interior city of Fairbanks and surrounding areas, where Stevens has a slight lead; and the vast Alaska Bush, where Begich is winning easily Dittman said most of the ballots being counted now were cast in the weeks before the election.

Absentee ballots went out Oct. 14; Stevens was convicted Oct. 27 of lying on Senate disclosure forms to conceal more than $250,000 in gifts and home renovations from an oil field services company.

Statewide, about 15,000 of the remaining votes are questioned ballots, known elsewhere as provisional ballots. They are most commonly cast by people who are voting away from their home polling places. Ivan Moore, an Anchorage pollster who has worked for Democrats, said voters out of the area tend to be younger, single and more likely to vote Democratic.

“I just don’t see a significant bloc of votes that’s remaining for Ted to get him back into this,” Moore said. Begich was winning votes in military installations and the state’s remotest areas, both historical strongholds for Stevens.

The Democrat contends that Stevens’ return wasn’t enough to win over those who supported him in the past.

“His base of support – during the trial, prior to the conviction, and now – didn’t stay with him,” he said of Stevens.

“His core vote areas, those guys said no. They changed votes.” Stevens’ campaign didn’t return calls seeking comment.

WASILLA, Alaska – Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin returned to where her political career began to cast her vote at the snow-dusted, two-story city hall where she once presided as a small-town mayor.

Palin, accompanied by her husband Todd, voted just after 7 a.m. Tuesday, pushing aside a red, white and blue curtain on a voting booth and handing her white paper ballot to a clerk.
 
Wearing a brown-hooded jacket emblazoned with the seal of the state of Alaska, the governor hugged and shook hands with poll workers and voters before meeting with reporters outside, where dozens of supporters chanted, “Sarah, Sarah” in the pre-dawn darkness.

An “I voted” sticker was pasted to her jacket.

“Tomorrow, I hope, I pray, I believe that I’ll be able to wake up as vice president-elect and be able to get to work,” she said. “I’m so anxious to get to work for the American people.”

In remarks at turns emotional and reflective, John McCain’s running mate said she recognized the historic significance of a campaign that will end with the election of the first woman vice president, or the first black president, Barack Obama.

“It bodes so well for the progress our great country is making,” she said. “This is the land of possibilities and opportunities.”

She wouldn’t discuss for whom she voted, citing her right to privacy.

Palin said the campaign “had strengthened my belief in the American people … and strengthened the resolve in me to do all that I can to help American families meet the challenges that they are facing. Todd and I, we face those same challenges.”
 
In the end, she said, “I’m going to be Sarah from Alaska.”

Palin’s stop in her frigid home state was brief – about 4½ hours. After a blur of last-minute campaigning across the country Monday, she found time to stop at her lakeside home, her favorite coffee shop in Wasilla, the Mocha Moose, and make a detour to a gas station owned by her sister and brother-in-law, who were not there.

At another coffee shop, she held up a newspaper that showed a headline reading, “Board exonerates Palin,” which heralded the news that a state board had found no ethical violations by Palin in what has been known as the “Troopergate” scandal. Holding the newspaper for TV cameras, she remarked, “Nice headline.”

Although the state personnel board – its members are appointed by the governor – found that Palin had violated no ethics laws, a separate investigation by the state Legislature found that she had abused her office. She dismissed the critical report as the product of partisans.

The state’s public safety commissioner alleged that he felt pressure from Palin, her husband and her staff to fire a state trooper who had gone through a contentious divorce from Palin’s sister. Palin denied the claim and said she fired Commissioner Walt Monegan in July because she wanted the department to head in a new
direction.

The investigation by the Legislative Council concluded last month that Palin abused her office by allowing her husband and staffers to pressure Monegan to fire the trooper, Mike Wooten. However, it upheld the firing because Monegan was an at-will employee.

Asked whether the race had left her with any regrets, Palin at first said, “I wish there were more hours in the day.” She went on to express disappointment with some of the media coverage and material displayed across the blogosphere. “Too much is reported based on gossip and innuendo, and things taken out of context.”

Palin, a former TV broadcaster, said some reporting “skewed my record” and was never corrected.

Shortly after 9 a.m., Palin and her husband boarded the campaign’s plane, and left for Arizona, where they will spend election night with McCain.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A report has cleared Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin of ethics violations in the firing of her public safety commissioner.
   
Released Monday, the report says there is no probable cause to believe Palin or any other state official violated the Alaska Executive Ethics Act in connection with the firing. The report was prepared by Timothy Petumenos, an independent counsel for the Alaska Personnel Board.

A separate legislative investigation recently concluded that Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, abused her office by allowing her husband and staffers to pressure the public safety commissioner to fire a state trooper who went through a nasty divorce from Palin’s sister.

Palin says the firing had nothing to do with the trooper.