Sarah
Palin’s wardrobe joined the ranks of symbolic political excess on Wednesday,
alongside John
McCain’s multiple houses and John
Edwards’s $400 haircut, as Republicans expressed fear that weeks of
tailoring Ms. Palin as an average “hockey mom” would fray amid revelations that
the Republican
Party outfitted her with expensive clothing from high-end stores.
Cable television, talk radio and even shows like “Access Hollywood” seemed
gripped with sartorial fever after campaign finance reports confirmed that the
Republican
National Committee spent $75,062 at Neiman Marcus and $49,425 at Saks Fifth
Avenue in September for Ms. Palin and her family.
Advisers to Ms. Palin said on Wednesday that the purchases — which totaled
about $150,000 and were classified as “campaign accessories” — were made on the
fly after Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska, was chosen as the Republican
vice-presidential candidate on Aug. 29 and needed new clothes to match climates
across the 50 states. They emphasized, too, that Ms. Palin did not spend time on
the shopping, and that other people made the decision to buy such an array of
clothes.
Yet Republicans expressed consternation publicly and privately that the
shopping sprees on her behalf, which were first reported by Politico, would
compromise Ms. Palin’s standing as Senator McCain’s chief emissary to
working-class voters whose salvos at the so-called cultural elite often delight
audiences at Republican rallies.
That possibility was brought to life, for instance, on “The View” on ABC, as
Joy Behar, a co-host, noted the McCain campaign’s outreach to blue-collar
workers — like an Ohio plumber who recently chided Senator Barack
Obama over taxes — after another co-host, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, defended the
expenditures.
“I don’t think Joe the Plumber wears Manolo Blahniks,” Ms. Behar said.
Advisers to Mr. Obama — as well as those of his rival in the Democratic
primaries, Senator Hillary
Rodham Clinton — said that campaign money was never spent on personal
clothing but that potentially embarrassing purchases could be blended into
advertising budgets.
Mr. Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, however, listed two $400
haircuts as a campaign expense, and after they were detected he struggled to
shake an elitist image in his failed Democratic presidential bid.
Such an image is unhelpful at this late stage of the general election,
Republicans said, especially when many families are experiencing economic pain,
and when the image applies to a candidate, like Ms. Palin, who has run for
office in part on her appeal as an outdoors enthusiast and former small-town
mayor who scorns pretensions.
“It looks like nobody with a political antenna was working on this,” said Ed
Rollins, a Republican political consultant who ran President Ronald
Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984. “It just undercuts Palin’s whole
image as a hockey mom, a ‘one-of-us’ kind of candidate.”
Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle,
have been described as elitist by both Republicans and Democrats at times, and
so much was made when she appeared on “The View” in June in a black-and-white
patterned dress. Turns out it sold for $148 at an off-the-rack store.
Few Republican operatives or politicians, even those critical of the
McCain-Palin campaign, were publicly criticizing the ticket on Wednesday over
the clothing purchases. Some said privately that doing so would be akin to
kicking a campaign while it was down.
Others said the issue was tainted with sexism, given that male politicians
often spend thousands of dollars on suits.
“She had a legitimate need to purchase clothing to get her through three
months of grueling campaigning in the constant spotlight of television cameras,”
said William F. B. O’Reilly, a Republican consultant in New York. “No one would
blink if this was a male candidate buying Brooks Brothers suits.”
Other Republicans said the focus on Ms. Palin’s clothing did not fairly
reflect the challenge she faced: Neither she nor her Republican allies expected
that she would be tapped as Mr. McCain’s running mate until the last minute,
when she was elevated from her comfort zone in Alaska and presented to the
nation as the first female Republican vice-presidential nominee.
“If they hadn’t done this, ‘Saturday
Night Live’ would be doing jokes where Governor Palin would be dressed in
elk skin,” said Rich Galen, a Republican consultant not associated with the
McCain campaign.
Party officials, who said they had discussed the matter with McCain and Palin
advisers, said all concerned wanted Ms. Palin to present herself as a
fashionable-but-sensible on-the-go working mother — a multilayered sartorial
strategy, in other words, that has yielded an array of well-cut jackets and
skirts, suitable for the different seasons and state climates.
More than $130,000 of the charges used to outfit Ms. Palin and her family
were initially footed by Jeff Larson, a prominent Republican consultant in St.
Paul whose firm has been tied to the onslaught of negative robocalls about Mr.
Obama from Mr. McCain’s campaign. Mr. Larson was also the chief executive of the
local host committee for the Republican
National Convention, in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Federal
Election Commission records showed Mr. Larson was reimbursed by the
Republican National Committee for charges at Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus,
Macy’s, Barneys New York and Atelier New York, a men’s clothing store.
Other purchases by the R.N.C. included $98 from Pacifier, a children’s
boutique in Minneapolis.
Hours before Ms. Palin was to speak at the convention on Sept. 3, a woman
burst into the store, said Jon Witthuhn, an owner. After she said she needed
something for a 6-month-old boy and was doing shopping related to the
convention, it began to dawn on him that he might be outfitting Trig Palin, Ms.
Palin’s youngest.
The woman paid for a blue striped convertible romper, a matching monkey-ear
hat and socks. Trig Palin appeared on television that night wearing the outfit —
without the hat.
Republican officials said all the clothes would be given to charity after the
campaign is over. If Ms. Palin kept the clothes, the $150,000 would have to be
taxed as income, tax experts said.
Had the purchases been made by the McCain campaign, it would be a conversion
of campaign money into personal use, which is prohibited. The same rule does not
apply to money from party committees.
“The R.N.C. cleverly used the party committee’s money to avoid the liability
that would have occurred if campaigns funds were used,” said Kenneth Gross, a
lawyer who is an expert in campaign finance.
Under disclosure requirements of the Alaska Public Offices Commission, Ms.
Palin would need to report any gifts valued at over $250 from a single
giver.