TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin says the $150,000 in clothes and accessories bought for her by the Republican National Committee don't belong to her, equating the high-priced wardrobe with the stagecraft at campaign rallies.

Dogged for days by the brouhaha over outfits from upscale stores such as Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, Palin argued Sunday that she and her family live frugally. To emphasize her point Sunday night, she wore jeans at an event in Asheville, N.C.

"This whole thing with the wardrobe, I try to just ignore it because it's so ridiculous," Palin told a Florida crowd earlier in the day.

"Those clothes, they are not my property, just like the lighting and the staging and everything else the RNC purchased," she said. "I'm not taking them with me. I'm back to wearing my old clothes from my favorite consignment shop in Anchorage, Alaska."

On Sunday, a McCain spokesman said about a third of the clothes were returned because they were the wrong size or for other reasons, and the rest would be donated to charity.

Palin talked about her accessories Sunday: earrings that were a gift from her husband's Yup'ik Eskimo mother, and "a $35 wedding ring from Hawaii that I bought myself. Because with my ring, I always thought, it's not what it's made of, it's what it represents."

News of such expensive clothes offered a stark contrast to Palin's image as an average "hockey mom."

In North Carolina, Palin was joined by country artist Gretchen Wilson, who performed her song "Redneck Woman." Palin sang along — though not into a microphone — and clapped her hands.

At her Florida rally, Palin said the election wasn't over yet despite polls showing Democrat Barack Obama ahead nationally and in several battleground states. Palin said the Democratic presidential nominee was acting as if he's already won the election and had already written his inaugural address.

"Barack Obama and I both have spent quite some time on the basketball court," Palin told a raucous crowd of more than 5,000 at the convention center. "But where I come from, you have to win the game before you start cutting down the net."

Nine days before the election, Palin was making another push to sway voters in the battleground state of Florida, where polls show Republican nominee John McCain trails Obama in the fight for the state's 27 electoral votes. The Interstate 4 corridor between Tampa to Orlando, where Palin was concentrating her efforts Sunday, is where most of the state's undecided voters live. It takes 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency.

"You kinda get the feeling that the Obama campaign thinks this whole election process is just a formality," she said. "They've overlooked, though, the minor detail of earning your confidence and your trust and winning your vote.

"And judging from the media coverage, it does seem the coronation is already set," Palin said.

Obama's campaign said the claim that he has written an inaugural address is "completely false." Spokesman Bill Burton said the reference to an address came from a New York Times report Saturday that former White House chief of staff John D. Podesta had written a draft inaugural speech for Obama and included it in a recent book. Burton said Podesta wrote it as a sample address, not for Obama but for whoever became the nominee.

At both stops in Florida, Palin was joined on stage by her husband, Todd, and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. She was introduced by Elizabeth Hasselbeck, a co-host of the ABC talk show "The View" who often spars about politics with her more liberal colleagues on the set.

In North Carolina, backers of Obama engaged in a heated exchange

By MITCH STACY and MARK WANGRIN
Associated Press Writers

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