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It was three days before the legislature was to go home, and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was frustrated. The state Senate was thwarting a reduction she wanted in the fee for business licenses. So the governor's aides culled records at the state Department of Commerce for the e-mail addresses of nearly 23,000 Alaskan business owners.

Using the addresses, Palin sent a mass "special message" with her official portrait, the state seal and a backdrop of snow-rimmed mountains. "I urge you to contact your senator TODAY," she wrote, enclosing the phone number of every member of the state Senate.

Lawmakers and other critics were livid. The governor, they complained, had misused state records, violating people's privacy and flouting an ethics rule that forbids Alaska's state employees to use information to which they have access for personal or political benefit. Palin insisted she had done nothing wrong. And the legislature reduced the fee.

The episode in April over the license fee, which went from $100 to $50, illustrates central aspects of Palin's style of governing during her 21 months as Alaska's chief executive. According to lawmakers, senior gubernatorial aides and others who have watched her closely, the woman chosen by Republican Sen. John McCain as his vice presidential running mate has little interest in political give-and-take, or in sustained working relationships with legislators or other important figures around the state. Nor has she proven particularly attentive to the details of public policy. "She's not known for burning the midnight oil on in-depth policy issues," said Larry Persily, a former journalist who was associate director of the governor's Washington office until the spring.

But those who know her say Palin, 44, is uncommonly deft at something else: sensing the mood of her constituents, shaping her public messages and harnessing a remarkable personal popularity to accomplish what she wants. "She has an incredible pulse on the public will," said Bruce Botelho, a Democrat who is mayor of Juneau, the state capital.

"She tends to . . . create a situation where legislators are cornered -- going against her would be political suicide," said John Bitney, who grew up with Palin, was her campaign policy director and became her first legislative liaison.

Her ear for the job insecurities of Alaskans has blended with her pro-business conservatism, making the state's economic development her main priority.

To that end, she has taken on environmental restrictions and members of her own party -- even a co-chairman of her campaign who is a gray eminence of Alaska politics. She has instituted tax breaks that could prove lucrative to small oil and gas exploration firms; sued the Bush administration over listing polar bears as a threatened species because the listing could stop oil drilling; spoken out against a state referendum that could have impeded a giant copper and gold mine proposed near the world's largest salmon run; and sought bids for a geothermal project near a volcano. She favors oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, something McCain has opposed.

Yet Palin has been less ideologically pure than the public image she has cultivated. An avowed fiscal conservative, she has increased state spending by about one-fifth since taking office. An ardent opponent of abortion, she did not fight for measures requiring parental consent and banning the procedure opponents call "partial birth" abortion -- bills the legislature ultimately defeated. A proponent of public safety, she has drawn criticism for devoting too little money to the state police and public safety projects.

Her admirers view her as gutsy and sure-footed; her detractors see her as reckless and insular. She relies heavily on a small coterie of senior advisers, and her husband, Todd, an oilfield worker and commercial fisherman, is present in the statehouse to a degree unusual for a first spouse, sitting in on news conferences, occasional Cabinet meetings and private sessions with lawmakers.

With her independent streak and her method of governing by leveraging her popular appeal, some who know Palin wonder privately how she would adapt as second-in-command in a McCain administration. Others can envision a natural role she might play. "She is going to be the deliverer of the message," said Bitney, who is now chief of staff to the state House speaker, "as opposed to sitting down and hashing out the war strategy for the Mideast."

A group of computer hackers said yesterday that they had accessed a Yahoo e-mail account of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, publishing some of her private communications to expose what appeared to be her use of a personal account for government business

The hackers posted what they said were personal photos, the contents of several messages, the subject lines of dozens of e-mails and Palin's e-mail contact list on a site called Wikileaks.org. That site said it received the electronic files from a group identifying itself only as "Anonymous."

"At around midnight last night some members affiliated with the group gained access to governor Palin's email account, 'gov.palin@yahoo.com' and handed over the contents to the government sunshine site Wikileaks.org," said a message on the site.

Rick Davis, the campaign manager for Republican presidential nominee John McCain, issued a statement yesterday afternoon condemning the incident.

"This is a shocking invasion of the Governor's privacy and a violation of law," he said. "The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them. We will have no further comment."

The episode focuses attention on Palin's use of her personal e-mail account as lawmakers in Alaska look into whether she fired the state's public safety commissioner, Walter Monegan, because he refused to take action against her brother-in-law, a state trooper at the time.

Palin has been criticized in recent days for using a personal e-mail account to conduct state business. An Alaska activist has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking disclosure of e-mails from another Yahoo account Palin used, gov.sarah@yahoo.com.

That account appears to have been linked to the one that was hacked.

Both accounts appear to have been deactivated. E-mails sent to them yesterday were returned as undeliverable.

Andrée McLeod, who filed the FOIA request, said yesterday evening that Palin should have known better than to conduct state business using an unsecured e-mail account.

"If this woman is so careless as to conduct state business on a private e-mail account that has been hacked into, what in the world is she going to do when she has access to information that is vital to our national security interests?" she asked.

McLeod's Anchorage attorney, Donald C. Mitchell, said Palin declined to comply with a public records request in June to divulge 1,100 e-mails sent to and from her personal accounts, citing executive privilege.