McCain selects Sarah Palin for VP

(CNN) - Sen. John McCain has chosen Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his vice-presidential candidate on the Republican ticket for the White House in November, a senior McCain campaign official has told CNN.

Palin, 44, is a first-term governor who unseated incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in the Republican primary in 2006 and went on to defeat former Gov. Tony Knowles, a Democrat, in the general election.

An advocate of drilling for oil in her state's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, she is little known outside of Alaska.