Alaska Public Safety Commissioner dismissal Alaska Public Safety Commissioner dismissal The Alaska Public Safety Commissioner dismissal, also known as Troopergate, involves the possibly illegal July 2008 dismissal of the Alaskan Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan by Governor Sarah Palin for not firing Alaskan State Trooper Mike Wooten, who was in a bitter divorce with Palin's Sister. On October 10, 2008, the twelve-member bipartisan Alaska Legislative Council hired investigator Stephen Branchflower to investigate the matter. The Legislative council voted unanimously to release the so called, Branchflower Report, which found that Palin had violated the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act covering state executive employees when she dismissed
Sean Parnell Palin resigned. Parnell replaced her becoming Alaska's tenth governor in accordance with the Alaska Constitution. Craig Campbell, commissioner of Alaska's Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, succeeded Parnell as lieutenant governor after Palin first named Joe Schmidt, commissioner of corrections as a replacement for Parnell and Schmidt resigned from the second-in-line position on July 6, 2009. Parnell ran for a full term as governor in 2010. In the primary, he faced off against Bill Walker, a former mayor of Valdez, Alaska and aide to former governor Walter J. Hickel, and Ralph Samuels, a retiring member of the Alaska House of