Who Is Advising Sarah Palin?

When it comes to Sarah Palin, there are two big questions that everybody in Washington wants to know. Is she going to run for president in 2012? And who exactly is working for her these days? Since she resigned as governor of Alaska in July, Palin has been uncharacteristically quiet. She’s stayed largely out of the public eye—though she’s been posting messages on her official Facebook page and wrote an op-ed on health care for The Wall Street Journal. Last week she earned her first check as a paid speaker, receiving a reported low six figures for addressing a Hong Kong business group—a speech that was closed to the public. Yesterday, word broke that the publication of Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue, had been pushed up from next spring to this November, just in time for the holidays. According to reports, Palin worked on the book with a ghostwriter, conservative journalist Lynn Vincent. The big mystery, even to those who once worked closely with the former VP candidate: besides Vincent, who is working with Palin to keep her brand alive?

In the nasty aftermath of the McCain-Palin ticket, Palin broke with many of the advisers she had worked with in the final days of the campaign. She went back to Alaska, surrounded by her longtime political team, including chief spokeswoman and top adviser Meg Stapleton and Kristan Cole, who helped Palin launch a legal-defense fund to cover costs related to several ethics investigations in Alaska. In January, Palin launched a new political-action committee, SarahPAC—a move widely interpreted as an effort to help forward her political ambitions. Between January and June, the PAC raised more than $730,000, with almost $270,000 of that going to staff and consulting fees. Palin hired Pam Pryor, a GOP operative who once worked for former representative J. C. Watts, as an adviser. In February she tapped Becki Donatelli, a longtime GOP consultant close to McCain, to run SarahPAC, but the two severed the relationship in April. Donatelli declined to comment and, like Pryor, directed all questions to Stapleton, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

One key question: who has been ghostwriting the Facebook messages and op-eds signed in Palin’s name? Since August, after she left the governor’s office, Palin’s messages have been more heavy on policy than her previous post-2008 remarks. But many GOP strategists, including those who worked for McCain last year, claim to have no idea who is manning the Palin ship these days. Last week we got at least a few hints at who she's been talking to. According to Politico’s Ben Smith, former McCain foreign-policy adviser Randy Scheunemann accompanied Palin to Hong Kong and helped write her speech. Scheunemann, as you might recall, was viewed as a Palin sympathizer during the McCain campaign, even as she clashed with other top McCain strategists. Another contributor to the speech: Steve Biegun, a former foreign-policy adviser to President George W. Bush who worked with Palin during the campaign. She also reportedly got assistance from two other longtime GOP policy hands: Dan Blumenthal, a China expert at the American Enterprise Institute, and Kim Daniels, a lawyer for the conservative Thomas More Law Center. Still, it's unlikely that any of these people are the main stewards when it comes to helping Palin guide her political image in the run-up to 2012. Who else ranks in the former gov's inner circle? At this point, we might have to wait for the "acknowledgments" section of her book to find out.