Sarah surge

Months and months into our long presidential campaign, a small-town hockey mom turns establishment politics on its head. Those who know her best say Americans have only seen the beginning of Alaskan toughness | Mark Bergin

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

WASILLA, Alaska—Alaska just might be America's biggest small town—and its governor America's biggest small-town girl. Sarah Palin's rapid rise to political stardom has set the Land of the Midnight Sun abuzz. She is the conversation of grocery store checkout lines, the featured topic of most every radio program, and a fixture on the flat-screen televisions of neighborhood sports bars, now tuned to round-the-clock cable news.

More than a mere expression of state pride, this fascination is personal, familial even. That's because in the massive small town that is Alaska, everybody knows Sarah.

On a recent Thursday morning, local residents of tiny Talkeetna, the base camp for Mount McKinley and home to the annual Moose Dropping Festival, duck inside the Latitude 62 restaurant for cheese-covered eggs and black coffee. Mary Farina, 53, sits at the bar sipping a hot drink and quoting favorite lines from the governor's speech at the Republican convention the night before. Palin's reference to hockey moms resonated especially, given that Farina often shared a bleacher with Alaska's first mom when their sons played on the same team a few seasons back.