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Alaska GOP Asks Joe Miller To Concede Senate Race To Lisa Murkowski

Melissa Dempsey |
November 17, 2010 | 6:38 p.m. PST

Staff Reporter

The Republican Party of Alaska released a statement Wednesday asking Tea Party candidate Joe Miller to concede the U.S. Senate race to Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Creative Commons)
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Creative Commons)

Murkowski was declared the winner earlier in the day by the Associated Press. She is the first Senate candidate to win a write-in campaign in more than 50 years.

“At this point we are comfortable calling this race,” said Alaska Republican Party Chairman Randy Ruedrich. “Lisa has won. We congratulate Lisa on her victory."

A write-in candidate has never won an Alaskan election, and Murkowski won by a large enough margin that her opponent has decided to abstain from taking legal action against her campaign. The latest numbers showed Murkowski with 92,715 write-in votes, and her opponent, Joe Miller, with 90,448 votes.

Miller, the Tea Party candidate who won the Republican primary election against Murkowski, had previously expressed wishes that require Alaskan election officials throw out any vote which misspelled “Murkowski.”

Murkowski's win was a “remarkable comeback for the Republican after her humiliating loss in the GOP primary to Joe Miller,” according to the Associated Press, the first media outlet to declare her the winner.

Her decision to embark on her long-shot write-in campaign journey came from her desire to offer Alaskans an alternative and less extreme candidate than Miller and the Democratic nominee Scott McAdams, who conceded the race the day after the election.

Murkowski is a well-known name in Alaska, since Lisa’s father was a long-time politician in the state.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who fervently endorsed Miller throughout the election cycle, was extremely unsupportive of Murkowski’s write-in campaign and the two have not hidden their dislike for one another.


Reach staff reporter Melissa Dempsey here.

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