AK Sen: Why Is the National Media Ignoring Scandal Roiling Tea Bagger Joe Miller’s Campaign?
The campaign for the Alaska U.S. Senate seat has taken a dramatic turn in the past days. Joe Miller, the candidate chosen by Sarah Palin to take out her enemy, GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, has been accused of ethical violations that may have led to his forced resignation as a part-time local government lawyer last fall.
He has also been accused of using other people’s computers without their permission to vote for himself by proxy when he ran (unsuccessfully) for chairman of the Alaska Republican Party in 2008. A job he sought, he said, in order to weed out corruption in the party.
Miller, a rookie in major league politics, has reacted to the controversy by stonewalling the media, a move that has had the predictable effect of bringing the local media’s interest in the story to a rolling boil.
Alaska Dispatch, which took an early lead in the investigation, recently sued Miller’s former employer, the Fairbanks North Star Borough, in an attempt to discover whether Miller was forced to resign or was fired outright. Over the weekend, the Dispatch framed its pursuit of information this way:
