Saturday, September 18, 2010

An Alaskan Woman Who Won't Quit!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist


The mud and one-liners are flying in Alaska!  Incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski, who was defeated by teabagger Joe Miller in the state's Republican senate primary last month, has decided that she will not go quietly into that dark night.  Murkowski announced today that she will run as a write-in candidate for the senate seat that she currently occupies.

The race is now a three-way between the petulant Ms. Murkowski, Republican candidate Joe Miller, and Democrat Scott McAdams who is the current mayor of Sitka.  (McAdams has got to be loving Murkowski's ego right about now as  she moves to split the Republican vote.  Many in the Delaware Democratic party would also be overjoyed if newly defeated Mike Castle would run as a write-in!)

But running as a write-in is a very expensive process.  True, Murkowski still has over a million dollars of campaign cash in the bank (much of which was supplied by her lobbyist friends in the oil and gas industry), but it will take more if she is to blanket Alaska with her "speech" (a Republican term meaning "money"), while, at the same time, educating voters on how to spell her name and cast a legal write-in vote.

Nearly eight years in Washington D.C. has taught Senator Murkowski where the campaign cash is stashed.  Today just before she made her big announcement, her chief of staff, Karen Knudson, sent  out an email appeal for support to every lobbyist in the senator's Rolodex - including representatives of Chevron, Conoco Philllips, and Marathon Oil.  Yup, Lisa knows where to find the real the campaign cash.

Sarah Palin, America's favorite nitwit and former half-term governor of Alaska, is a big supporter of Joe Miller, the teabagger and official Republican candidate - and a long-standing nemesis of the Murkowski family.  (Palin had the bad manners to oust Murkowski's father from the governor's throne in Alaska after he had given her a cushy job with great money contacts on the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission.)  This morning Palin hit Twitter with a couple of stinging tweets aimed straight at Senator Murkowski.  In one, Palin encouraged her to do what any sensible person would do when encountering a Grizzly in the woods:  "Don't run!"  Palin was also big on her "people have spoken" crap and the importance of not screwing with "the will of the people."

Ms. Murkowski is a bit of a Mama Grizzly herself.  In her announcement this morning she referred to herself as "one woman who would not quit on Alaska!"

Ouch.  That's gotta hurt.

Ladies, to your corners!





1 comment:

Xobekim said...

Roll Call is reporting the Murkowski camp claiming they have K Street backing. There's your corporate money run amock in politics. Miller, the Tea Party candidate will have the you betcha crowd backing him with all their angst and anger bellowing in the wind.

The Democratic candidate is a big burly football coach named Scott McAdams. He is Alaskan enough to run through the seam Miller and Murkowski are opening as they divide the Republican side of the pie. This fellow has a chance.

The opposite of a K Street backed candidate is the nominee for Congress in Kansas' Second, Cheryl Hudspeth. She refuses to take a dime of corporate cash.

Maybe we don't need a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. Maybe we just need candidates like Hudspeth, and then vote for them!