Palin gets hero's welcome in Alaska

Republican vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin returned home to Alaska late yesterday to a hero's welcome as a new U.S. political star and promised her compatriots she would make the state proud.

The Alaska governor was greeted by cheers and even squeals of excitement at her first solo rally as Republican John McCain's running mate, less than two weeks after she burst onto the national stage.

"It's been an amazing couple of weeks," Palin told about 2,000 supporters in a Fairbanks airport hangar. "The response has been overwhelming."

"USA, USA," the crowd cheered.

While in Alaska, Palin is to attend a deployment ceremony on Thursday for the Army unit of her 19-year-old son, Track, who is going to Iraq. She will also participate in her first major television network interview.

It was clear that the crowd was well aware of a controversy that erupted in recent days over comments from Democrat Barack Obama that the McCain campaign said it construed as a sexist attack on Palin, a charge denied by Obama.

Obama's comment that McCain's plans for government reform were like "putting lipstick on a pig," a comment that the McCain team saw as a put-down to Palin for her remark in a speech last week that a hockey mom is a pit bull with lipstick.

"Read my lipstick, Sarah," said one sign held up in the crowd.

Palin has proved a powerful tool for McCain in his presidential campaign, helping draw white women and independent voters and giving the Arizona senator a surge in the polls a week after his accepted the nomination of his party to face Obama in the Nov. 4 election.

"I promise I will do my best to make Alaskans proud in the weeks to come," she said.

Palin, revisiting some of the material from her well-received acceptance speech at the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, last weekend, vowed to pursue reform in Washington if elected with McCain.

"He's willing to shake things up in Washington, and that's only one more reason to send a maverick of the Senate right to the White House," she said.

She also pressed for increasing America's energy supply by drilling for more domestic oil and making the country more energy-independent, saying Americans are sending $700 billion a year overseas on energy that could be invested in the U.S. economy.

It was Palin's first big solo event away from McCain. How often it will happen is unclear.

A top McCain campaign official said it is under serious consideration to have McCain and Palin campaign together frequently.

"There's a huge amount of enthusiasm. It clicks," the official said. "Their chemistry works very well. People are really responding to it."

Presidential candidates and their running mates typically split up so they can cover more ground. But McCain and Palin, after spending the next several days apart, are expected to get back together again next week.

With her at his side, McCain is drawing the biggest crowds of his candidacy and public opinion polls have been moving in his favor with Palin helping him draw in white women and independent voters.

The official, briefing reporters on Palin's plane, likened the McCain-Palin roadshow to that of Democrats Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992, when the pair campaigned together a lot and defeated incumbent President George H.W. Bush.