The National Education Association in 2008 praised Sen. John McCain’s pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate, in large part because she opposed school vouchers when she ran for governor two years earlier, and she supported increased funding for public schools.

Sen. John McCain supported school voucher; it was one of the areas where the two running mates disagreed on policy issues. That year, the mainstream media focused on the campaign tension over Palin’s wardrobe costs; some $150,000 in fashion purchases for Palin were billed to the Republican National Committee over the months she was the vice presidential nominee for the Republican ticket.

“The 3.2 million members of the National Education Association are pleasantly surprised by Senator John McCain’s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to join his ticket as the Republican nominee for vice president,” the labor union said in a news release on Aug. 29, 2008, the day McCain made his announcement of Palin as his running mate.

The shocking news was reported at the time not only by Christian News Service, but the right-of-center Washington Times, left-of-center Education Week, and others, such as the New Jersey Star-Ledger, where a conservative columnist said her statements on the need put more funding into schools and to pay teachers more was “heresy to conservatives.”

“While she is only in her second year as Alaska’s Governor, she has thus far shown herself to be a supporter of children and public education,” the NEA said in its statement.

“In her less than two years as the state’s chief executive officer, she was able to increase per-pupil education spending, and she is opposed to sending public money to support private schools through political schemes like vouchers,” the NEA continued. The statement has since been scrubbed from the NEA website but can be found widely online.

Palin is now running for Congress to fill the empty congressional seat resulting from the death of Congressman Don Young.

When Palin ran for governor in 2006, she spoke about education issues, including vouchers, with the NEA’s Alaska chapter, which asked Palin if she supported the use of vouchers, tax credits, or other programs that provide public money for students to attend private or religious schools.

Palin said vouchers were unconstitutional.

“No,” Palin said. “It is unconstitutional and it is as simple as that.” In the same interview, she said she would not support amending the Alaska Constitution to allow for vouchers so that parents could move their children out of government schools.

Palin told NEA-Alaska she wants to give parents as much choice and as many options as possible for educating their children, but “not public funding via vouchers.”

Instead, she stressed the need for vocational education, especially in “resource rich” Alaska, where so many skills are needed in the trades.

Paul Mulshine, a conservative columnist for the New Jersey Star-Ledger, noted that in her interview with the NEA-Alaska, “Palin spends the rest of the interview making it clear that she will support the interests of the union over that of the taxpayers. Palin has made the argument that she supports public schools because her father was a public school teacher, apparently unaware that this is a conflict of interest. And later in this interview she goes on to make a commitment to expand pension funding for public employees at the expense of taxpayers who may not themselves have pensions.”

“Palin sells out conservatives by opposing vouchers,” Mulshine’s reported after a 2008 debate Palin had with Joe Biden.

“Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again,” Palin said on the topic of education during the debate. “You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I’m glad you did. I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more.”

This story is largely rewritten from the Christian News Service’s website, where it appeared in 2008. CNSNews.com is a division of the Media Research Center, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Like National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System, CNSNews.com is able to provide its services and information to the public at no cost, thanks to the generous support of our thousands of donors and their tax-deductible contributions. However, unlike NPR or PBS, CNSNews.com does not accept any federal tax money for its operations. Brent Bozell is the president of CNS, Media Research Center, and the NewsBusters.org website.