Why do I suspect AK was just happy to have an African American contestant and handed her the prize? She’s nowhere near pretty.
You can see the dynamics of pageant voting if you ever watch one.
The judges are mostly white. Nobody wants to be called a racist so all of them pick one black girl to be in their top 10. It is almost like a mini-contest within the contest - the best black contestant is going to be in the top 10 even if there is only 1. Then it is a matter of how many competitive white girls are in the pageant. If there are a few, the vote is split and a black girl wins and sometimes she is like Vanessa Williams and you say “Well, yeah, that’s a good pick” and sometimes you say “Huh?”
That's not much of a stretch to believe.
Not to say she wasn't more talented and did deserve to win over Palin at the time..
But if I was forced to guess; I would say your theory is highly likely