Investigators Are Looking at Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska About Firing

DENVER — In unveiling Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as Senator John McCain's running mate, the campaign is portraying her as a champion of ethics reform for taking on members of her own party whom she saw as beholden to special interests.

But just a few weeks ago she became the subject of a state ethics investigation.

This month, a bipartisan panel of state legislators appointed an independent investigator to look into whether Ms. Palin had fired a top law enforcement official in her administration because he had failed to dismiss a state trooper who was involved in a divorce with Ms. Palin's sister.

State Senator Hollis S. French II, a Democrat and former prosecutor who is directing the inquiry and picked the independent investigator, said his sense was that the inquiry would probably not turn up a "smoking gun on the governor" but that it "certainly has the possibility of giving her an ethical black eye."

The questions began in mid-July, shortly after Ms. Palin fired Walt Monegan, the public safety commissioner and a former Anchorage police chief. Ms. Palin said she had wanted to take the department in a different direction.

A week later, however, Andrew Halco, a former state legislator who ran against Ms. Palin for governor in 2006, published a lengthy article on his blog highlighting a bitter back-and-forth between members of Ms. Palin's extended family and the trooper, Mike Wooten. Ms. Palin's sister, Molly McCann, was divorced from Mr. Wooten in 2005 and was locked in a bitter custody dispute.

Investigators Are Looking at Governor About Firing