RE: Murkowski being primaried.
SHE WAS ALREADY REMEMBER? AND SHE SURVIVED IN AN AMAZING WAY.
In 2010, Murkowski was in a jam.
She’d lost her primary to tea party candidate Joe Miller — and with it, the support of the Republican leadership in Washington.
But she went on to do what only one other senator had done before: win a general election through a write-in campaign. She squeaked through by 4 points.
She was then RE-ELECTED in 2016 (with Trump ).
We’ll have to wait a long 4 more years for her to be primaried.
The Alaska Voters really want her. Otherwise, how did she survive a lost primary and STILL win in a write-in campaign?
This may be why:
Miller meltdown
Miller was soon being grilled about a range of issues. Farm subsidies. Low income hunting and fishing licenses. A state agricultural loan for farmland he never farmed. His tardiness in filing a mandatory Senate financial disclosure statement. A mysterious hideaway he owns near Willow.
In early October, serious questions emerged about trouble Miller had gotten into when he was a part-time attorney with the Fairbanks North Star Borough. Former borough mayor Jim Whitaker publicly revealed Miller had been disciplined for using borough computers to conduct political business, specifically an attempted overthrow of the state Republican Party chairman, Randy Ruedrich.
Alaska Dispatch filed a public records lawsuit to break free Miller's personnel file from the borough. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner sued as well, and other media outlets joined in.
Miller's response was to clam up. He told reporters after a debate in Anchorage that he would no longer answer questions about his background. A few days later, Alaska Dispatch’s editor was handcuffed and “arrested” by Miller's private security team when he tried to ask the candidate a question after a public town hall.
The Murkowski team reveled in Miller's missteps. Press releases, mailers and TV spots were cranked out underscoring Miller's questionable behavior. When his personnel file was finally released, revelations about the disciplinary action against him were nearly overshadowed by his admission in the file that he'd repeatedly lied about inappropriate use of the borough computers.
The news stories were like political manna from heaven for the Murkowski campaign. Local Alaska news reports were immediately sent on to national press contacts. The Nerdery made sure they went viral.
“We made him wear anything bad that came out about him,” Wackowski says. “We made sure people knew about it.”
“Whitaker coming out was huge,” he says. “We sometimes called Joe our sixth man. His campaign was going 60 miles an hour and the wheels just started falling off.”
The final two weeks of the campaign were dominated by Miller's borough troubles. The Murkowski camp let him “self destruct,” and changed its own advertising message for Murkowski to a soft and hopeful one, tagged simply as, “I believe.” https://www.adn.com/politics/article/alaska-senate-race-murkowski-gets-boost-miller-meltdown/2010/11/14
Sad isn’t it....