Murkowski Fights for Her Life, Scott Shocks the GOP Establishment and Ben Quayle’s the Gift that Will Keep Giving

Tuesday night’s primaries reminded us that nothing this election season is as we expect it. A third Senate incumbent is fighting for her political life this morning: in a surprisingly close race Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski is trailing Tea Party fave Joe Miller by 2,000 votes with 98% of precincts reporting. The results of this race, though, won’t be known for more than a week as there are still 7,600 absentee ballots out of 16,000 issued outstanding and absentee ballots received within 15 days of election day can still be counted. Alaska primaries are often upended by absentee results: in 2008 Mark Begich trailed Ted Stevens by 3,000 votes before the absentee ballots put him over the top.

If Murkowski does lose she’ll join the ranks of Utah Republican Bob Bennett and Pennsylvania Democrat Arlen Specter. This would be the first time since 1980 three Senate incumbents lost their primaries, underlining voter unhappiness with the establishment on both sides of the aisle. Murkowski’s loss would be a particular blow to the party as she is the only woman on the Senate leadership team: she was elected unanimously by her colleagues to serve as vice chair of the Senate Republican Conference in 2009. She’s often been a maverick: conservative on economic issues but more moderate on social issues. She’s pro-choice, supports using federal money for embryonic stem cell research and was part of the Gang of 14 that headed off the nuclear option in the Senate.

Murkowski’s loss would also be a feather in the cap of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin whose endorsement of seeming long-shot Miller had many scratching their heads. Palin forced Murkowski’s father, Frank Murkowski, from his gubernatorial perch when she beat him in the GOP primary in 2006 after accusing Murkowski of corruption. Many had assumed her endorsement of Miller was the product of lingering bad blood between Palin and the Murkowskis, especially since Palin has rarely endorsed against a sitting incumbent.

Miller, 43, a graduate of West Point and winner of a Bronze Star for his service in the first Gulf War, is a Fairbanks lawyer who has never won an elected office. He won a contested GOP primary for a State House seat in 2004 but lost the general election to Democratic incumbent David Guttenberg.

In other races, Rick Scott shocked the Republican Party establishment in Florida by beating out the Sunshine State’s Attorney General Bill McCollum for the GOP nomination for governor. McCollum had the support of Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuilani and Dick Armey. Republican Governor’s Association Chairman Haley Barbour had been expected to fly down for to Florida to be with McCollum on election night and had planned to headline a Republican Party “Victory Committee” fund-raising dinner Wednesday night in Orlando for McCollum if he won. Instead, the RGA issued a rather terse statement on Scott’s victory. “The primary is over, Rick Scott is the nominee, the general election has begun, and our party now looks forward,” wrote RGA spokesman Tim Murtaugh. Scott, a former health care CEO, spent more than $50 million on the primary and could spend millions more in the general, though Dems are now liking their chances of picking up Florida’s governorship with their candidate, Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Adelaide “Alex” Sink.

Also in Florida Kendrick Meek, the Dem establishment candidate, beat out real estate billionaire Jeff Greene, whose associations with Mike Tyson and Heidi Fleiss drew the wrong kind of headlines, in the Senate primary. Meek’s victory, though, puts Democrats in a tough spot. Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, once a Republican who left the Party to run as an Independent after it became clear former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio would win the GOP primary (which he did easily last night), has hinted that he might caucus with Dems if he wins. Crist is leading in most polls. So do Dems throw their full throated support behind Meek or hedge their bets with Crist?

In Arizona, Senator John McCain cruised to an easy, if expensive, win over former Rep. J.D. Hayworth. McCain spent $20 million on the primary. But McCain’s coattails didn’t help his endorsed candidates in two Arizona House races. Ben Quayle, son of former Vice President Dan Quayle, won a surprising victory, given recent revelations that he’d written racy posts on a local porn website, over former State Sen. Jim Waring in Arizona’s Third Congressional District. And McCain’s pick, former State Sen. Jonathan Paton, lost to Tea Party darling Jesse Kelly in Arizona’s Eighth CD.

In Vermont, there’s another race still to close to call. With 229 of the state’s 260 precincts reporting three candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for governor were only a few hundred votes apart: Secretary of State Deb Markowitz had 15,681 votes, State Sen. Doug Racine had 16,255 votes and Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin leads with 16,600 votes.

The Phony War: Obama and Romney Are Debating Character, Not Policy

More than five months from Election Day, the back-and-forth about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain already feels played out. Unfortunately, there’s good reason to expect the campaign continues in this vein indefinitely. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are terribly interested in dwelling on policy platforms. Romney’s plan to slash spending and keep taxes low on the wealthy isn’t especially popular, at least not at any level of detail beyond a blithe promise to shrink the deficit. Meanwhile, Obama’s signature first-term achievements, like health care, the stimulus and Wall Street reform, are all unpopular or tricky to sell. (The Dodd-Frank bill is the most popular of these, but hyping it means offending wealthy donors.) So what we’re getting instead is a superficial duel about character–and, worse, one that’s based on the largely false premise that the better man can better “manage” the economy back to health.

Paul-no not that one

As Murkowski is pro-choice I would think the parental notification before a girl under the age of 18 could have an abortion initiative on the ballot may have had more than a little to do with her troubles.
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Perhaps more than Palin.
Ivy_B

Paul beat me to it. I also think that the abortion initiative brought out a lot of voters who would be less likely to vote for Murkowski.
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Heard that Todd did a fund raiser for him and all Sarah did was endorse him on her Facebook page. It wasn’t as though she was headlining events for weeks for him.
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As far as being the third Senator if she loses… heard on NPR that Larry Sabato pointed out that 97% of incumbents at all levels have been renominated. They had to reshuffle their “anti-incumbent fever sweeping the country” as they were speaking.
http://www.ghostnote.com Cookie Puss

Begins countdown for victory tweet from Mooselini …
nflfoghorn

Dang. I’m sick and tired of Miss Prissy ‘tweeting’ about her reign of error. Why can’t she sit down and answer questions like normal people?
newfreedomblog

Amazingly point blank bland reporting for a change. Good job Ms Newton-Small.
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See, keeping your personal biased opinions out of your reporting does work.
kjk28

I also heard Sabato on NPR this morning and “97%” is a statistic that doesn’t tell the real story in the Senate. 37 Senate seats are up for grabs. 14 Senators are retiring: some were forced into retirement by political realities, such as Dodd and Bayh. So now you have 23 sitting Senators who are running for re-election this year. Of those, 2, possibly 3, have already lost, and you still have more primaries and the general election to go.
3xfire3

kjk28,
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Good Post.
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Facts are nice to know. It helps understand reality.
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Sabato is practicing the dark art of lying by telling only part of the truth which is always a lie.
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As the old saying goes.
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“Figures Don’t Lie But Liars Use Figures.”
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My experience is that 75% of Reporters and Politicians lie by telling partial truths.
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Comments or video clips taken out of context are used to push their positions by deceptive means promoting their personal agenda.
grape_crush

I’m in agreement with that…Good rundown of yesterday’s primaries, Jay.
Ohg Rea Tone

Corporate leaders have used the Tea Party to effectively brainwash the Redneck class of hard working people.

http://thefiresidepost.com/2010/08/24/inside-the-minds-of-rednecks-and-consequences/
gwbc

perhaps a more meaningful post would be about the amount of money from personal wealth that is influencing primary results .
53_3

After watching the primaries for a while, it is becoming apparent that the Palin and the teabaggers are really hothouse flowers.
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They do well in the reddest of red states, but not so well as the spectrum moves toward shorter wavelengths.
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I think the only thing that is to be gleaned from all of this is that polarization in the GOP is a continuing process and that when we get to the real elections, the results anticipated by the GOP might be somewhat less than desired.
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I think that due to GOP propagandizing, the possibility that they are shouting in an echo chamber cannot be ignored…
Kevin in Chicago

Specter losing his primary isn’t evidence that “both sides of the aisle” are in revolt against their elected representatives. Specter switched parties to run as a Democrat specifically because he knew he couldn’t win the Republican primary, and openly admitted as much.

Even if it was, one Democratic incumbent losing his seat is hardly a trend. Two Republican incumbents losing their seats is also not really a notable trend. There were 37 seats up for contention, 12 of which (divided evenly on both sides of the aisle) had retiring incumbents. Democratic incumbents retained 12 seats. Republican incumbents retained either 10 or 11, depending on Murkowski.

So the fact is that Democratic incumbents who ran in the primaries retained 92% of their seats and Republican incumbents who ran in the primaries retained 91%. That’s not a wave of anti-incumbent sentiment on either side of the aisle, just an attempt to fit things into a preconceived narrative.
stuartzechman

I also concur.
3xfire3

Dumb comment from a dumb source.
3xfire3

Ohg,
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Dumb comment from a dumb source.