Tea Party

Murkowski Announces Write In Bid

By Jay Newton-Small | @JNSmall | September 18, 2010 | +

En route to Anchorage

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski announced last night that she will be seeking a write in bid for reelection two and a half weeks after losing her GOP primary to Tea Party darling Joe Miller, a Fairbanks attorney.

At an Anchorage rally, Murkowski acknowledged she’d made mistakes in the primary but said she’s ready for the uphill battle. “The gloves are off,” she said to chants of “Run, Lisa, run!”

No senator has won election as a write in since South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond managed it in 1954.

Murkowski was swayed by a recent poll showing that if she ran as an independent, she’d beat Miller by 6 percentage points and Democratic candidate Scott McAdams, the mayor of Sitka, by 18 percentage points, Andrew Halcro, a former Republican candidate for governor, told Fox News.

Murkowski has $1.4 million cash on hand to spend on her independent bid, and she will be the only seasoned politician in the race.

Republicans reacted to the news with dismay. “Listen to the people, respect their will,” tweeted Sarah Palin. “Voters chose Joe instead.” At a dinner in Iowa Friday, Palin added that she believes Murkowski’s effort is “futile.” Murkowski “certainly has the right to do so, but Joe Miller is the right person to lead the state and this country,” Palin said.

Alaska GOP Chairman Randy Ruedrich, a former loyalist to Murkowski’s father former Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski, said he regretted the situation but that did not change the will of Alaskan Republicans. “Lisa has chosen to run against the Republican Party and its primary voters,” he said. “We will treat her candidacy as we would anyone who chooses to oppose our party’s nominees.”

The last time an Alaskan made a serious bid at a write in candidacy was Ernest Gruening in 1968. Gruening lost his primary to Mike Gravel. In the general election Gravel won 45% to Gruening’s 18% (a Republican candidate garnered 37%).

If Murkowski draws 17% in this race, she could help Democratic candidate Scott McAdams to her Senate seat. In 2008, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, a Democrat, eked out a narrow victory over incumbent Republican Senator Ted Stevens by just 3,953 votes. A third candidate, conservative Bob Bird, split the GOP vote, drawing more than 13,000 votes from Stevens and handing Begich victory.

“The race is really between Joe Miller – an extremist candidate funded by outside organizations – and me,” McAdams said. “I remain focused on Alaskans and the difficulties and opportunities we face.” If McAdams doesn’t sound very excited, it’s because Murkowski, as the more moderate Republican in the race, has the potential to draw votes from conservative Democrats as well, though observers say she’s far more likely to hurt Miller than McAdams.

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Related Topics: alaska, joe miller, lisa murkowski, scott mcAdams, Democratic Party, Republican Party, Sarah Palin, Senate, Tea Party

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  • Ivy_B

    The people who are complaining about her running as a write-in are the same people who were cheering loudly for Joe Lieberman to run when he was defeated in his primary. Of course hypocrisy has never stopped them.

    I don’t think Lieberman should have run as he did. I don’t think she should either.

  • arapaho415

    Nate Silver at the NYTimes says that Murkoski can win as a write-in, which I think is true. Although I’m a native Californian, I was fortunate enough to visit Alaska several years ago. Alaska is unlike any place in the lower 48, and I think that Lisa, with her name-recognition & political clout can rally key constituents in the populated & isolated communities alike.

    Anchorage & Fairbanks comprise about ½ of the state’s population, and aside from towns between them and the towns on the Kenai peninsula, the other communities are not like those that we know. To get to any place else you need to hop on a boat or plane, or else in some cases travel for hours (and hours) by car. Alaskan communities are so close-knit that people exchange (landline) telephone numbers by offering just the last 4 digits of their number because everyone’s prefix is the same. Organizing a write-in campaign under these circumstances seems doable if misspellings & abbreviations are permissible.

  • gwbc

    Go, Lisa , Go. It is time somebody tried to stop the hijacking of the GOP by Palin and her followers. . It is time reasonable Republicans stood up to the extremists.

  • blossom38

    I, too, am a native Californian, and I was lucky enough to visit Alaska for most of the summer this year. I find your observations to be spot-on. The people I visited are very politically astute; some made their living on gas/oil, but didn’t let that rule their every voting instinct; kind and generous; tough, quirky, artistic.
    Every place there was a Lisa Murkowski sign, there were two Joe Miller signs. My friend told me they just started appearing overnight. At that time my friend and his group of friends didn’t even know who Joe Miller was—I think they know now.
    They liked the extra $$ Sarah brought to them when she temporarily increased the Permanent Fund amount, but they were embarrassed and resentful of her resignation (even those who had initially supported her). They were also resentful of the media’s and the public’s generalizations about Alaskans and Alaskan lifestyle.
    Wasilla is a small city outside of the largest city (but not what you would traditionally think of as a “suburb”); there are plenty more voters in extremely remote areas who most likely did not vote in the primary. And I don’t know enough about it to be an expert, but just wondering which candidate has the most appeal to native voters.
    Just my thoughts and insights.
    (Apropos of nothing for the rest of you, but funny as heck for any Southern Californian readers: there is a Cal Worthington dealership in Anchorage!)

  • mfbattle

    Jay,

    could you link the poll that shows she is winning? I have looked and cannot find it.

  • constantweader

    I sure hope Scott McAdams becomes Sen. McAdams while Republicans are battling for/looking for the soul of their fractured party. With two Democratic Senators, Alaska will become known for something besides Sarah Palin here in the lower 48.

    The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com

  • liberalmeltdown

    Jay Hyphenated, what is up with the media used the phrase “Tea Party darling”? You all get a memo from above to use that when discussing a candidate? Let’s try it with Democrat darling Hillary Clinton, or Nancy Pelosi, or darling Barbara Boxer. Drop the stupid darling.

  • mfbattle

    Jay,

    can you please show the poll. I have seen one poll which puts Miller ahead (http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_AK_829.pdf), but no poll that puts Murkowski ahead. If she is running because of the support of so many people, I would like to see the poll.

  • Ivy_B
  • Ivy_B

    Sorry, I meant Nate has the complete evaluation not that he had a poll showing her ahead.

  • mfbattle

    Ivy_B,

    I have some doubt if she can win (unless the Dems effectively pull out as the GOP did in the CT 2006 election), but the only chance she has is if she can show that she is ahead and/or the Dem is out of it (so Dems will flock to her, and some GOPers will think that a vote for her will not let the Dem in). Part of that would be an opinion poll showing she is ahead, with the Dem far behind. So if Jay is going to reference a poll which shows that I would like to see it.

  • apr2563

    Amen Ivy.

  • apr2563

    http://firedoglake.com/2010/09/01/while-tea-party-candidate-joe-miller-complains-about-federal-government-alaska-swims-in-federal-dollars/
    .
    http://messageboards.aol.com/aol/en_us/articles.php?boardId=529805&articleId=900616&func=6&channel=Member+Guided+News&filterRead=false&filterHidden=true&filterUnhidden=false
    .
    A little information about the Federal money that Alaska receives and the money that Joe Miller received as a gentleman farmer.
    .
    Except for the money that goes to native Americans in Alaska, I would be happy if Joe and all the other hypocrites in Alaska that decry the big, bad government return the money they have received.

  • liberalmeltdown

    Jay, you also left out that an out of control prosecutor in Alaska got a conviction against Ted Stevens right before the election, giving the democrat the election.

    That has to be one of the dirtiest politcal stunts that I have heard of. The democrats want that Alaska seat bad.

    April 08, 2009|James OliphantWASHINGTON — A federal judge Tuesday ordered a highly unusual criminal inquiry of prosecutors in the case against former Sen. Ted Stevens, delivering a blistering rebuke of the Justice Department’s actions and asserting that its failures extended beyond the inability to give the Alaska Republican a fair trial.

    In dismissing the public corruption case against Stevens, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan railed against a government agency that he said had committed unprecedented missteps in a feverish quest to secure the senator’s conviction.

  • apr2563

    Let’s look at the Steven’s case more closely.
    .
    Began in Feb of 2007 under the Bush DOJ. Lead attorney William Welch who kept lead until dismissal.
    .
    Case dismissed in 2009, requested by Atty Gen Holder after reviewing.
    .
    Welch resigned.
    .
    A Federal Judge dismissed. Imagine that.

  • mfbattle

    liberalmeltdow…

    Are you an idiot? The DoJ is normally apolitical. However, there are some political appointments. Political appointments are made by the President. And in 2007 that was Pres. Bush. I know that Republicans want to make out that Obama was president then (blaming him for the recession that started under Bush, blaming him for the war in Afghanistan that started under Bush, and blaming him for TRAP which was signed into law by Bush), but really, how stupid are you?

  • http://www.twitter.com/jnsmall Jay Newton-Small

    I think it was an internal poll.
    JNS

  • mfbattle

    Thanks, but shouldn’t you report it as an internal (i.e. bullsh*t) poll?

  • kathy

    me too

  • kathy

    Mudflats is still the place to get an assessment of what’s going on in Alaska. Not so much just in the posts, but in the comments. It’s clear that lots of people who would have voted for McAdams are going to vote for Murkowski, as having the better chance of knocking off Miller. There isn’t ordinarily a lot of public polling in Alaska, but if there is this time the race will be pretty volatile as those left of Miller (which is just about everybody; he’s said he doesn’t want to bring any more money back to Alaska) try to think strategically. This is not necessarily good news for the Democrats.

    http://www.themudflats.net/

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  • allthingsinaname

    Why? I see nothing wrong in it.

  • sacredh

    I was reading where Lisa is going at it with DeMint. She says he’s trying to start a civil war in the party for personal gain. Here’s a thought. Lisa runs and wins as an independent. Who does she caucus with? How many moderates are left in the republican party?

  • sacredh

    High Sheriffs, can one of your tech guys log onto their site and infect their computers with a really fun virus? Something that would annoy them more than they annoy us?

  • apr2563

    Sacredh: Twould be nice. I don’t see why they can’t put them in moderation and then delete.

  • mfbattle

    I think this is a real problem for her, as she campaigns on pork. If the GOP won’t give her good committees she is useless to Alaska.

  • sacredh

    It could be a temporary problem. If they would deny her a decent committee, she has a ready made reason to switch to the democratic side. She’s not any more conservative than the bluest of our blue dogs. She’d still be in office until 2016.

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