Alaska’s Libertarians freeze the state’s U.S. Senate race.<\/p>\n
With the GOP primary between Sen. Lisa\u00a0Murkowski and Joe Miller\u00a0headed into overtime, Alaska’s Libertarian Party suddenly found their own Senate prospects switching from irrelevant to relevant.\u00a0 Between D.C. rumors of Murkowski courting the LP for ballot access <\/a>and the willingness of the party’s own Senate nominee to step aside <\/a>should Alaska’s senior senator come up short in the absentee race, Libertarians found themselves\u00a0needing to make a\u00a0familar choice between principle and politics.<\/p>\n By that definition, the outcome<\/a> should never have been in doubt:<\/p>\n On Sunday morning, over coffee and donuts, the ExComm voted unanimously, 5 to 0 to deny the Senator the ballot line. There was no malice intended. ALP Chair Kohlhaas has repeatedly stated that she is a nice lady, and the ALP was flattered by the offer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n While the decision\u00a0guarantees Lisa Murkowski won’t become a political footnote as the first Libertarian U.S. Senator, it also likely guarantees that short of a near landslide of Murkowski absentee ballots, Joe Miller will be the GOP’s nominee.\u00a0 Despite the race closing to just over 1,600 votes and talk of tens of thousands of absentee ballots left to be counted, only 5,801 absentee ballots were sent to Republican voters<\/a>.\u00a0 Thus Murkowski needs to win those remaining ballots with totals around 60% – a possible but not particularly probable outcome.<\/p>\n Should she lose any recount attempt, Murkowski’s options are few other than simply conceding.\u00a0 No other party can give her ballot access (other than the Democrats), meaning Murkowski’s last hope to return to Washington lies in a longshot write-in candidacy.\u00a0 Although polling showed Murkowski competitive in a 3-way race<\/a>, the hurdles of a successful write-in campaign are taller than Yao Ming on stilts.\u00a0 Strom Thurmond\u00a0managed to win a U.S. Senate race as a write-in candidate in 1954<\/a>,\u00a0and a handful of others have won U.S. House general or primary elections as write-ins.\u00a0 But in almost all cases, the victory came because the opposition was either completely unknown and unmotivated to run, or because there simply wasn’t any opposition at all.\u00a0 Neither could be said to be true in Alaska.<\/p>\n Murkowski’s likely forthcoming disappearance from the race makes Alaska’s senate\u00a0race\u00a0– at least for the moment – look mildly competitive.\u00a0 In a two-way battle, Miller leads Democrat Scott McAdams only 47% to 39%, perhaps partially explaining\u00a0why Miller’s ill-tempered tweet <\/a>comparing Murkowski’s possible party switch to prostitution has garnered as much lower 48 media exposure as it has.\u00a0 Or maybe because it had the media wondering if the analogy made the Libertarians\u00a0the pimp or\u00a0the john.<\/p>\n