GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Hundreds of Sarah Palin fans lined up Wednesday at a Michigan book store to get the chance to meet the former Alaska governor as she kicked off a national tour for her book “Going Rogue.”
Some supporters camped out overnight to be among the first to get wristbands from the Barnes and Noble bookstore at Woodland Mall in Grand Rapids. Those with the orange bands will get the opportunity to have the former 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate sign their copies of the book at the three-hour signing event Wednesday evening.
The memoir was released Tuesday but has topped best-seller lists for weeks.
“Everyone here has been excited and patient,” Barnes and Noble spokeswoman Maddie Hjulstrom said of the waiting crowd.
Calvin College students Megan Patzky, of Racine, Wis., and Sarah Cranmer, of Chicago, were among those waiting overnight to get wrist bands. The two 20-year-olds skipped their Wednesday classes at the private college located less than a mile from the book store .
Patzky bought a copy last night for her father, a Palin supporter, and plans to give it to him as a Christmas present.
After standing in the cold all night, the pair was happy to get into the Woodland Mall around 6:15 a.m.
“We were hoping that someone would start selling coffee, but nobody did,” Patzky joked.
Todd Shaffer, of East Lansing, said some of those in line were Palin supporters and other were there to get books signed to give as gifts.
A Transportation Security Administration worker at Lansing’s Capital Region International Airport, the 38-year-old arrived early Wednesday at the bookstore and described himself as a conservative Republican who voted for Palin and presidential candidate John McCain last year.
Shaffer said he would vote for Palin if she ran for president in 2012.
“As a woman in politics, she’s a pioneer in the Republican Party and she’s opened a lot of doors up for a lot of women to think about politics” as a career, he said. “I thought she added a lot to the ticket.”