Sarah Palin--The most valuable endorsement in politics today

NY Times:

The latest candidate to win the most coveted Republican prize of the election year stood on the steps of a gazebo here and reminded voters of a new reason to support her in the crowded race for Georgia governor.

“Sarah Palin has come on board,” the candidate, Karen Handel, told a group of supporters who gathered Friday on the grounds of the Gwinnett Historic Courthouse. As they broke into applause, she added: “It means one thing. We’re winning.”

Last week, Ms. Handel became at least the 50th candidate to win the Palin seal of approval. Through a breezy 194 words posted on Ms. Palin’s Facebook page — calling Ms. Handel a “pro-life, pro-Constitutionalist with a can-do attitude” — a four-way Republican primary came alive, the latest in a number of races across the country that have been influenced by Ms. Palin.

One year after leaving public office behind, defiantly stepping down as governor of Alaska to become a best-selling author and a television celebrity, Ms. Palin has waded deeply back into electoral politics, and she plans to increase her visibility on the campaign trail after Labor Day.

That she is leaving a major footprint on the 2010 midterm elections is not disputed, but less clear is whether the endorsements are rooted in an effort to amplify her image or to create a political strategy for the future.

When her organization, SarahPAC, filed its quarterly financial report last week, it prompted renewed speculation about her political ambitions for 2012. She raised $866,000 and donated $87,500 to Republican candidates — the biggest tallies in both categories since she opened the political action committee last year, but hardly exceptional for a prospective presidential candidate.

After parting ways with Senator John McCain following the 2008 presidential race, Ms. Palin did not receive the list of campaign donors she had helped build, so her aides have been creating her own roster, a critical ingredient to a future political bid. More than half of her contributions have come from California, Florida, New York, Tennessee and Texas, but she received donations from all 50 states.

She has extended many of her endorsements to women, whom she refers to as “Mama Grizzlies.” (One exception is Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, whose male opponent Ms. Palin endorsed.) But some of her decisions have been met with resistance from social conservatives who argue that her selections are guided by politics over principle.

In Iowa, conservative Christians criticized her for passing over their candidate in favor of a former governor, Terry Branstad.

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The Branstad endorsement was as important as the Nicki Haley endorsement. That gives her a friend in the governors chair in two of the most important states in the Presidential selection process in recent years. That is smart politics. While Palin has not raised as much money as Mitt Romney, her endorsements have been much more valuable.