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After being slowed down by Hurricane Gustav, the momentum is building on the third day of the Republican National Convention in Minnesota.
John McCain is now in the Twin Cities to claim the spotlight at the convention that tonight will nominate him for President.
When he arrived at the airport, his wife, Cindy, and other members of his family were waiting for him on the tarmac. Also there was his running mate, Sarah Palin, and her family. McCain exchanged hugs with Palin and with her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol. He shook hands with Bristol's 18-year-old boyfriend Levi Johnston. The young couple will be in the hall for Sarah Palin's speech tonight, apparently to emphasize her anti-abortion stance.
Throughout the halls of the convention it's very noticeable that many of the conversations are focusing on Palin rather than McCain.
Today it's Gov. Sarah Palin's turn to take the spotlight and show the delegates and the rest of the country who she is and why she accepted the invitation to run with John McCain.
Conservatives, as the Republican party's base, support Palin and are thrilled with McCain's choice, but moderates and swing voters are somewhat unsure of Palin. Political analysts say tonight is the time for Palin to dispel doubts and recent reports about her family and truly become the maverick the McCain campaign needs her to be.
Early this morning, Palin visited the stage where she will be speaking tonight. She did a run-through at the Xcel Center to get comfortable with where she will stand and where she should look during her prime-time speech.
Also today, McCain's staff has been briefing Palin on campaign positions. She has been out of sight most of the week and has taken no questions from reporters, but she's still the talk of the convention and much of the nation.
Tonight is Palin's chance to convince voters beyond the convention arena that she could take over as president. Three months ago she spoke in a different setting at her church in Wasilla, talking about her son who was months away from being deployed to Iraq. There, she said she believed "that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."
Palin's evangelical faith is just one of the things the public is beginning to learn about the woman who would be a heartbeat away from the presidency, and skeptics are blasting her resume. Political analyst Norman Ornstein said, "This is someone who has never appeared on Meet the Press or any major talk show, never been through vetting of the press corps or the public."
Delegate Zan Bunn said, "The country does not know her, and when they get to know her they will think as positively as many of our delegates do."
Palin was the mayor of a small town in Alaska and has served as the state's governor for less than two years.
While critics still challenge that resume, others weighed in today on the ethics investigation in Alaska referred to as "Troopergate." It's an ethics investigation underway in Alaska.
State Sen. Hollis French (D), the director of the ethics investigation, said, "There's a good chance that the governor was using her public office to settle a private score, and we need to get to the bottom of that."
The probe focuses on whether Governor Palin abused her power by pressuring Alaska's public safety commissioner to fire her former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, who is an Alaskan state trooper.
The commissioner says he was dismissed because he wouldn't fire Wooten. He also claims the issue impacted his department's funding.
NBC News discovered Palin launched several complaints against Wooten, alleging he threatened her father and used a Taser on his step-son.
Palin acknowledged she has had a problem with Wooten -- but denies she put pressure on his superiors to get him fired. She has called on Alaska's personnel board to conduct its own investigation of the matter.
The findings of the investigation are scheduled to come out a week before the November election.
McCain's campaign is angrily calling for an end to questions about Palin's background. It issued a written statement, deriding a "faux media scandal designed to destroy the first female Republican nominee" for vice president and said, "this nonsense is over."
Utah Sen. Bob Bennett says she's been a real boost for the ticket. He says by McCain choosing Palin, he brought excitement to a campaign that was what Bennett called "a little bit dull."
Since being introduced as McCain's running mate pick five days ago, Palin has announced that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant; the narrative has revealed Palin sought pork-barrel projects for her city and state; and her husband once belonged to a fringe Alaskan political group, some of whose members support secession from the United States.
Tonight, Sarah Palin will present her own personal narrative.
Other speakers tonight include three former McCain rivals --now supporters: Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani. This morning, Giuliani defended Palin, saying she is ready for the job.
"Of course she has enough experience. She's been a mayor and a governor. The day she became mayor, the first day she served in office, she had more experience than Joe Biden and Barrack Obama combined," Giuliani said.
As for the pressure on Palin to deliver her speech tonight, her advisers say Democrats and the media have lowered expectations so much, they'll easily raise them. We expect Giuliani and the other speakers will take more jabs at the Democratic ticket tonight.
Critics are trying to use the attention Palin is attracting to taint John McCain. Robert Gibbs, Sr., an Obama campaign advisor, said, "I definitely think that how one picks a vice presidential nominee says a lot about the leader that that person is going to be. By all accounts, they met her, they met one time before he tapped her to be the vice presidential nominee."
By afternoon, McCain was helping to fill aid packages for hurricane victims. Later tonight, delegates will officially nominate him as their candidate for president of the United States.
E-mail: rjeppesen@ksl.com
