The Alaska Senate Race Could Go Anywhere

The Scott McAdams campaign decided Wednesday evening to initially feed the results of the Hays Research poll, the first to show Joe Miller in dead last place, to the blogosphere. Influential Alaska media outlets have openly declared for Lisa Murkowski, and the campaign felt it would be better to give initial spin to new media than to outlets who might spin the poll results adversely to McAdams' campaign, which gained new wind in its sails Thursday as a result of the fresh breeze.

Very early Thursday, the results were announced first by the Alaska blog, The Mudflats, then a few hours later, in a front-page post at Daily Kos by Kos.

The poll, as related here earlier, shows Miller now in third place, with Sen. Murkowski in the lead, and Scott McAdams within margin of error: Murkowski - 34%, McAdams - 29%. Miller - 23%.

The Hays poll was commissioned by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, who are supporting McAdams. A few hours later, a poll funded by the Murkowski supporting PAC, Alaskans Standing Together, came out with markedly different results: Murkowski - 43.5%, Miller - 29.1%, McAdams - 22.5%.

Both of these polls were taken just before the most damning information yet to emerge on Miller had been digested.

A lawsuit filed in mid-October by The Alaska Dispatch (Murkowski), The Anchorage Daily News (Murkowski) and The Fairbanks News-Miner (uncommitted), seeking disclosure of the parts of Miller's personnel file at the Fairbanks North Star Borough as an attorney, ended with publication of voluminous information on Miller's duplicity while working there. The facts that came out also contradict many recent Miller statements about what such a disclosure might reveal about his job performance.

The plain, bare truth of what Miller did, attempting to influence an election for the chair of the Alaska Republican Party, in early 2008, is this:

He checked before he came in that day, to make sure everyone in the office would be gone. Then he hacked four borough computers, used by his colleagues in their work as attorneys. After he was done trying to influence the scenario in which he hoped to take control of the Alaska Republican Party by creating fictitious input sources, her realized that he had to cover his tracks. So he tried to delete the record of his hacking. doing this screwed up caches involving ongoing legal work by his colleagues on cases he wasn't part of. When he was caught, this is what happened:

In the short span of time the employees were trying to get to the bottom of what had happened, Miller lied no less than four times:

He told them he'd had to use another computer because he couldn't access the website he needed to get to on his.

He claimed he had to clear the cache or the website might block his access.

He initially denied being on more than one computer.

And he claimed he was visiting a professor's website at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

In a written account of events offered by one of Miller's co-workers -- identifed in an earlier records release as "employee 3" but now known to be Jill Dolan, Miller's acting supervisor at the time -- Dolan states that the office staff felt none of what Miller was saying made any sense and that he was acting bizarre.

Miller had also been talking about threats he had recently received, but wouldn't offer specific details. Dolan also didn't trust his stories about the computer use because he had, some time earlier, been asking a lot of questions about accessing the computer servers and wanting to make sure they were safe from hackers.

He insisted his colleagues were "overreacting" and even attempted to shift the blame to them.

"He maintained the whole time he did not violate the computer use policy and that actually all of us did for not securing our computers," Dolan wrote.

In the short span of time the employees were trying to get to the bottom of what had happened, Miller lied no less than four times:

He told them he'd had to use another computer because he couldn't access the website he needed to get to on his.

He claimed he had to clear the cache or the website might block his access.

He initially denied being on more than one computer

And he claimed he was visiting a professor's website at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

In a written account of events offered by one of Miller's co-workers -- identifed in an earlier records release as "employee 3" but now known to be Jill Dolan, Miller's acting supervisor at the time -- Dolan states that the office staff felt none of what Miller was saying made any sense and that he was acting bizarre.

Miller had also been talking about threats he had recently received, but wouldn't offer specific details. Dolan also didn't trust his stories about the computer use because he had, some time earlier, been asking a lot of questions about accessing the computer servers and wanting to make sure they were safe from hackers.

He insisted his colleagues were "overreacting" and even attempted to shift the blame to them.

"He maintained the whole time he did not violate the computer use policy and that actually all of us did for not securing our computers," Dolan wrote.

I was angry enough after reading the documents released, I called in to a right-wing AM radio show Wednesday:

Phil: I read through the sequence of lies he told [his employer], and it's incredible. He keeps on making new stuff up.

I ran the Whittier boat harbor for five years and hired and fired a lot of people. I ran the Cordova Center, the state's biggest halfway house for two years, hired and fired a lot of people. I sent people back to prison from there.

Had any [employee] done what Joe Miller did to me, I would have had him fired. Had they appealed it, they would have LOST. I sent people back to prison for less than what Miller did in Fairbanks.

Stieren: Thank you, Phil.

Phil: Bye.

No polls that take this new information into account have yet been announced. They probably won't be until Sunday or Monday. I suspect no polls will emerge from the Miller campaign between now and the election.

Miller's average between the IBEW and AST PAC polls is 26.05%. His negatives in the Hays poll are extremely high - 68%.

On the other hand, one has to be up here in Alaska to sense the ambience of how the millions of dollars poured onto this guy's campaign might make a difference, even in the face of so many damning episodes, one after another, for weeks. The Tea Party Express-funded ads in all media are slick. Miller talks the talk. Some of what he says, particularly about how awful congress is, resonates. Alaska has been noted for being an extreme low information voter environment. Miller is the only pro-life candidate among the three, and hundreds of pastors will be exhorting the faithful on his behalf this coming Sunday.

But yet, on another other hand, Thursday evening in Anchorage, somewhere between 300 and 1,500 people showed up at a Miller event at the biggest venue in Alaska, the Dena'ina Center. Even with Sarah Palin there in person, and Michelle Bachman (via video feed) in attendance. Why Miller has done this on election eve is bizarre, as Palin is less popular here than is President Obama. This is an extremely interesting video of the event, posted at a conservative web site:



Palin is still the most divisive political figure in Alaska, even as Miller's negatives are higher than hers. Another local pollster did weigh in Thursday morning. Ivan Moore hasn't released a poll on this, but he's tracking trends for The Anchorage Press:

After the reassignment of the 5 percent who can’t be bothered to vote a write-in, the vote changes to Lisa 35.6 percent; Joe 33.5 percent; Scott 30.9 percent. Then after a 10 percent chunk falls off Lisa through invalid write-in ballots (the equivalent of the invalidation of about 9,000 votes), the final result becomes Joe 34.7 percent; Lisa 33.3 percent; Scott 32.0 percent.

OK, we’ve got a real problem here, people. Joe wins.

The crazy thing is this. If the nonpartisans, instead of breaking 50–30–20 to Lisa–Scott–Joe, instead go 50–35–15, then Scott wins. If Lisa, instead of getting 50 percent, gets 52 percent of the nonpartisan vote, she wins. It really is poised on a knife-edge.

I took Ivan up on it and spun a quarter five times. Two tails, three heads.

So this is what we do. We need to engineer a little unity in the No-Joe vote. I’m flipping a coin. No, I really am. Heads it’s Scott, tails it’s Lisa. OK? Is everyone agreed? OK?

OK. I took Ivan up on it.

I spun a quarter five times.

Two tails, three heads.