Aug 26, 2010, Thursday, Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal: Palin Ally Upends Politics In Alaska

By JIM CARLTON And JONATHAN WEISMAN
A little-known favorite of the tea-party movement appeared close Wednesday to ousting Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the scion of a political dynasty in Alaska, leaving former Gov. Sarah Palin poised to draw more blood in a long-running feud with the Murkowski family.

Former state and federal judge Joe Miller, who is 43 years old and Ms. Palin's candidate, clung to a slim lead of 1,668 votes. Mr. Miller had 50.9% of the vote to Ms. Murkowski's 49.1%.

Final results in the primary aren't expected for as long as two weeks, and Alaska state-election officials said they didn't know the number of absentee GOP ballots yet to be counted.

Pollster Dave Dittman of Anchorage put the number at about 5,000.

Still, political observers said the senator would have a difficult time erasing Mr. Miller's lead. Ms. Murkowski would have to win about 70% of the remaining absentee ballots to take back the lead, according to Mr. Dittman. "It would be difficult for her to close that gap," he said.

Patti Higgins, chairwoman of the state Democratic Party in Anchorage, said she had already begun plotting a fall campaign between Mr. Miller and the little-known Democratic nominee, Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams.

If Mr. Miller prevails in the primary, Alaskans will be the latest voters to side with an outsider candidate over an establishment figure. But in Alaska, that narrative comes with a twist. In 2006, Ms. Palin ran an insurgent candidacy against Ms. Murkowski's father, Gov. Frank Murkowski, whom she labeled a corrupt politician, beating him in the Republican primary.

Ms. Palin had clashed with the governor after he appointed her to the commission that oversees the petroleum industry in Alaska and then named the state Republican Party chairman to the same body.

Ms. Palin, who considered the latter appointment an ethical conflict, resigned in protest over that and other issues. She later credited the episode with helping to put her on the road to higher office.

"It was confirmation for me that governing was more than just being a good administrator," Ms. Palin said in a 2006 interview, when she was running for governor. "It was confirmation that state government needed to be cleaned up."

Ms. Murkowski, 53, remained Ms. Palin's foe. When Ms. Palin resigned as governor in 2009, Ms. Murkowski said she had chosen to "abandon the state and her constituents." Ms. Palin then backed Mr. Miller this summer in his long-shot campaign against the senator.

Mr. Miller, a West Point graduate who earned a Bronze Star in the first Gulf War, has assailed Ms. Murkowski for being "one of the go-to senators for a Republican swing-vote on liberal issues," accusing the senator of failing to join other Republican senators in backing repeal of President Barack Obama's national health-care plan soon after it was passed in December 2009.

Ms. Murkowski has denied that and other accusations, saying she has backed a repeal from early on.

Mr. Miller also calls himself pro-life and opposes the TARP banking bailout and a cap-and-trade energy policy, arguing that his positions set him apart from those of Ms. Murkowski.

Ms. Murkowski campaigned on a record of what she calls fiscal conservatism while taking actions to protect oil and gas, fisheries and other Alaskan industries. She has also gone to pains to distance herself from her unpopular father, using campaign signs showing her first name much more prominently than her last.

In Washington, Ms. Murkowski holds seats on the appropriations committee and energy and natural resources committee, both of which are key for Alaska.

But Ms. Palin cast the role differently, writing on her Facebook page in June: "Unfortunately, Lisa Murkowski and much of the political establishment have recently evolved into being a bigger part of the big-government problem in Washington, and they've strayed from the principles upon which they had espoused."

That criticism entangled the Palin-Murkowski feud with the larger political narrative of 2010, which Ms. Palin has helped to drive on a national level.

If Mr. Miller is victorious, it will mark the seventh establishment-backed candidate this primary season to lose. In addition to Sen. Murkowski, the GOP Senate campaign committee backed Florida Gov. Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio, only to see Mr. Crist defect and declare himself an independent once Mr. Rubio, the more conservative candidate, built a large lead in the polls.

The GOP committee backed Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson over libertarian ophthalmologist Rand Paul; former Nevada State Republican Party chairwoman Sue Lowden over Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle; former Colorado Lt. Gov. Jane Norton over Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck; Utah Sen. Robert Bennett over insurgent lawyer Mike Lee; and former Connecticut Rep. Rob Simmons over wrestling executive Linda McMahon. In each case, the committee's favored candidate lost.

Republican victors appear to be tapping the mood of an electorate that has repeatedly rejected the pleas of veterans such as Ms. Murkowski, who have told voters they helped secure funding for home states and who argued they were best suited to win the general election.

Of the seven sitting lawmakers who have been unseated in primaries, five have sat on the House or Senate appropriations committees, positions coveted because they allow lawmakers to bring "earmark" largesse home, noted Steve Ellis, vice president of policy at the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

The question remains whether the dissatisfaction of Republican primary voters will be reflected in the larger electorate this fall. Several contests that early in the year seemed primed for Republican victories, such as the Senate contests in Kentucky, Nevada and Colorado, now are neck and neck.

In Alaska, Democrats insist a Miller victory would give them an opportunity in the fall. "It's a totally different race against a high-ranking Republican incumbent" from a race between two relative unknowns, said Ms. Higgins. Republicans scoffed. "As we await the final outcome of the Republican primary in Alaska, one thing is clear: This seat will remain in Republican hands this November," said National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn of Texas.