Subscribe to this Feed by Email
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski is on the cusp of vindication after waging a high stakes - and long shot - write-in campaign to keep her job.
Initial returns show write-in ballots holding a 13,439-vote edge over GOP nominee Joe Miller, and though it's not clear how many of those are for her or will be counted as valid, she's confident enough in her winning to tell supporters that they'd "made history." The write-in count starts Wednesday in Juneau.
Murkowski needed broad-based support - from fellow Republicans, Democrats, independents - to be successful in what was a three-way race (Democrat Scott McAdams has conceded). And while a win would return her to Washington, to the colleagues and party leaders who turned their backs on her after her humiliating primary loss to the Sarah Palin-backed Miller, it also raises questions about how she would legislate.
"I think so much about representation is trusting me to do what I think is the right thing," she said.
Expectations are high.
Many conservatives see the support she won from labor, Alaska Native groups and Democrats as an indication she will be less likely to push for less federal spending, an overhaul of federal contracting that gives Native corporations preferential treatment and an anti-abortion agenda.
And some, like independent Bethany Marcum, feel marginalized because Murkowski labeled Miller an extremist - and Marcum shares many of Miller's limited-government views.
"I don't think I'll be heard," Marcum, 44, said.
Bob Poe, a nonpartisan who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor this year, hopes the last few months have been a wake-up call for Murkowski and that she'll reclaim her mantle as a moderate.
Murkowski, who shifted right after President Barack Obama took office and as her star within the GOP rose, maintains she will approach issues as they come to her. Though she plans to caucus with Republicans, she said she won't be beholden to any special interests or party - an initial sign of that perhaps coming in her decision not to try to reclaim her leadership post within the GOP conference. She voluntarily resigned it in deciding to make her outsider run.
She said she plans to listen to Alaskans "and hopefully you will recognize that I'm using intellect and judgment (and) while we may disagree on the final vote you will at least acknowledge that I gave due consideration."
During the hotly contested campaign, Miller and tea party-minded surrogates like Palin sought to paint Murkowski as an out-of-touch liberal, a Republican in name only. McAdams, meanwhile, called her dangerously conservative, willing to put party over policy and apt to veer farther right if elected, out of fear of losing another primary.
View the original article here
0 comments:
Post a Comment