Sarah Palin was elected based on her commitment to open and transparent government and ethics. She ended up governing plenty behind closed doors and was plagued by ethics complaints. The law she wanted and passed ended up putting her in debt, spurring her book deal and departure.

Questionable Ethics

In November 2006, then gubernatorial candidate Sarah Palin declared that she would not support an abortion for her own daughter even if she had been raped.

At the time, her daughter was 14 years old. Moreover, Alaska's rape rate was an abysmal 2.2 times above the national average and 25 percent of all rapes resulted in unwanted pregnancies.

Ethics Violations

Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday.