Palin says clothes aren't worth $150,000

PITTSBURGH — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin insisted Thursday that she did not accept $150,000 worth of designer clothes from the Republican Party and "that is not who we are."

"That whole thing is just, bad!" she said. "Oh, if people only knew how frugal we are.

"It's kind of painful to be criticized for something when all the facts are not out there and are not reported," said Palin, saying the clothes are not worth $150,000 and were bought for the Republican National Convention. Still, she has been wearing pricey clothes at campaign events this fall. She said they will be given back, auctioned off or sent to charity. Most of them, she said, haven't even left the belly of her campaign plane.

Vote-registration claim exaggerated

On Oct. 6, the community organizing group ACORN and an affiliated charity called Project Vote announced they had registered 1.3 million new voters. But it turns out the claim was a wild exaggeration, and the real number of newly registered voters nationwide is closer to 450,000, Project Vote's executive director, Michael Slater, said.

The remainder are made up of registered voters who were changing their address and roughly 400,000 that were rejected by election officials for a variety of reasons, including duplicate registrations, incomplete forms and fraudulent submissions from low-paid field workers trying to please their supervisors, Slater acknowledged.

In registration drives, it is common for a percentage of newly registered voters to be disqualified for various reasons, although experts say the percentage is higher when groups pay workers to gather registrations. But the disclosure Thursday that 30 percent of ACORN's registrations were faulty was described by Republicans as further proof of what they said was ACORN's effort to unfairly tilt the election.

Democrats and officials with ACORN accuse the Republicans of trying to manufacture a controversy to deflect attention from alleged voter-suppression activities.

Also

On the trail: The economy continued to dominate the presidential rivals' stump speeches as they sought to shore up support in battleground states. Republican John McCain campaigned in Florida on Thursday, while Democrat Barack Obama attended a rally in Indianapolis.

Resignation: The president of a San Bernardino County Republican club resigned after apologizing for distributing a newsletter with a caricature of Barack Obama on a fake food stamp surrounded by ribs, watermelon and fried chicken.

Republicans for Obama: Scott McClellan, President Bush's former press secretary who angered old colleagues with a tell-all book this year, said he is backing Barack Obama for president. Arne Carlson, a former GOP governor in Minnesota, also endorsed Obama.

Seattle Times news services