If you’d passed reading comprehension you might have seen all the warnings I’d posted to Erick and his puppies that Miller was a nutjob who might well cost the seat when they were backing him in the primary. Miller’s narrow win in the primary was a fluke brought on by a very low turnout in an otherwise almost uncontested Primary. There were only a couple of seats in the Legislature at issue, the was no real contest for either Party’s nominee for Governor, and Murkowski was safely ahead in double digits by most accounts two weeks out, so nobody paid any attention and nobody much voted. Except that there was a ballot initiative on parental notice to parents of underage females seeking an abortion and the SoCons were paying attention. Alaska has a Bible Belt that roughly runs along the roads from Wasilla to the Fairbanks suburbs, east to Tok, south to Glenallen and west back to Palmer Wasilla; if you’re driving there, once you lose the ANC or FAI radio stations, you’d best like to listen to Gospel and religious talk or have an iPod. Miller carried all the districts on those roads and a couple in ANC proper and Murkowski won all the other districts but not by enough to overcome the 4000 vote lead he carried out of the interior districts. The bulk of Alaskans woke up the next morning saw what had happened and said, “Oh, my God!”
I didn’t pitch a fit. I told them that if the Ds substituted someone with statewide name ID for their unknown candidate, they would win the seat and once again “true conservative” backing would cost Alaska a Republican seat as well as all of its accrued seniority as had been the case when RS endorsed Begich over Stevens despite my warnings that the prosecution was a sham and the “true conservatives” here went to the Constitution Party. The 10K votes that went to the Constitution Party candidate would have kept the seat in Republican hands. You might recall that the conviction of Sen. Stevens was overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct.
When Lisa announced the write-in run, I posted a diary in which I told them that I couldn’t follow RS’ policy of only supporting the Republican nominee and consequently I was not going to post there any longer. Erick’s puppy Leon decided to be a big man and make a big show of banning me. You can search their archives for diaries and posts by “achance” and see for yourself. My diariers there routinely had 20-40 reccomenders and went to the top of the recommended list and had dozens and often hundreds of comments. They’ve now banned practically every popular diarist most of whom gather at “United Patriots” and at a Google group we the banned along with a few of our friends have.
As to Murkowski, I think appointing her destroyed Frank’s administration and I know it dictated our labor relations policy from the outset through the ’04 General Election. We really had only one policy goal and that was to keep the unions under contract so they wouldn’t have thousands of State employees whipped up to a frenzy to go vote for Tony Knowles for the Senate seat AFSCME had spent millions to try to get. We would have wanted to do that anyway but it would have been one Helluva lot easier had Frank not made such an unpopular decision. In Frank’s defense he was confronted with appointing probably John Binckley or Sarah Palin and whichever one he didn’t appoint was going to hate him and spur their supporters to do so as well. He gave Sarah one of the cushiest patronage jobs the State had to try to keep her quiet again bringing down all sorts of heat on himself because she was so unqualified for the AOGCC the Republican controlled Legislature passed a bill, known by all around the Capitol as the “No More Sarah Palins Bill,” setting qualifications for AOGCC Commissioners. Then, as the World knows, she pulled her stunt of ratting out Randy Ruedrich over alleged political activity on Commission time and became every Democrat and the Anchorage Daily News’ favorite Republican. Along the way she’s tried unsuccessfully both personally and through her proxy Miller to take over the Republican Party of Alaska and ran her proxy Miller against Lisa Murkowski. Suffice it to say that there’s not a lot of love in Alaska Republican circles for Sarah Palin and the “true conservatives” that like her.
