Sarah Palin’s Endorsement Curse

Greg Nash/WDCPIX.COM

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Quiz: What do these struggling or failed political aspirants all have in common?

  • Vaughn Ward, a GOP candidate for Idaho’s 1st congressional district who plagiarized Barack Obama’s famous 2004 Democratic National Convention speech and thought Puerto Rico was a separate country;
  • Nikki Haley, the South Carolina gubernatorial candidate embroiled in controversy with a political blogger who claims he had an affair with Haley, who is married with two children;
  • Doug Hoffman, the conservative candidate in last fall’s special House election in upstate New York’s 23rd district who ultimately lost in an upset to Democrat Bill Owens;
  • Tim Burns, the Republican candidate to fill the late Pennsylvania Democratic congressman John Murtha’s 12th district who lost to Democrat Mark Critz;
  • Clint Didier, the Republican candidate for Senate in Washington state trailing incumbent Democrat Patty Murray by anywhere from 15 to 26 percentage points; and
  • John McCain, the Republican loser in the 2008 presidential election

They’re all the (un)lucky recipients of campaign endorsements from the Tea Party darling herself, Sarah Palin! Of course, there’s no doubt Palin remains a superstar in conservative circles, her every tweet and Facebook message treated as conservative scripture these days. And she has been right on a few occasions—notably, Rand Paul in the recent Kentucky GOP Senate primary. But overall, her political seal of approval may be losing some of its luster.

And some of her fellow Republicans have noticed. In early May, Palin endorsed Carly Fiorina in the California Republican Senate primary. Later that month, Matt Rexroad, a director for political strategy group Meridian Pacific, which is employed by Fiorina’s campaign, posted on Facebook  that “if Sarah Palin endorsed me I would be too embarrassed to tell anyone. [F]rom my point of view, I don’t know how you quit as the governor of your state and get taken seriously.” Ouch.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see how the remaining candidates that Palin has blessed with her endorsement—Fiorina, Wisconsin House candidate Sean Duffy, et al—fare before deciding whether Palin’s support amounts to a golden touch or the kiss of death.

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate