Confusing Tea Baggers with the Facts Again: Like Murkowski, O’Donnell Ran Write-In Campaign in 2006

Tea baggers hurling the “sore loser” insult at Sen. Lisa Murkowski for announcing she will be a write-in candidate this fall should remember 2006, according to NPR’s “Political Junkie” Ken Rudin. That was the year Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell did the same thing.

An e-mail from the Tea Party Express on Sunday said that by waging her write-in effort, Murkowski “showed utter contempt for the people of Alaska who rejected her candidacy in the Republican primary.”

O’Donnell was the “sore loser” in 2006

Levi Russell, the communications director of the TPE, added, “Senator Murkowski is a sore loser. Not all the hanging chads in the world can undo the fact that she lost…

Chuck DeVore, the conservative California assemblyman who lost the GOP Senate primary this year, had this to say on Friday: “Blatantly disrespecting voters in Alaska, Murkowski decided that primary results didn’t matter.”

Amy Kremer, the chairman of the Tea Party Express, said this… “She was fired by the people of Alaska. They said it was time for her to go…”

And Sarah Palin, a Murkowski foe whose backing for the ultimate primary winner, Joe Miller, was seen as crucial, Tweeted this: “Primary voters spoke. Listen to the people, respect their will; w/a 40-pt incumbent lead & $2.8 million war chest, voters chose Joe instead.”

It’s worth noting just how small the vote counts in Alaska are, and how much of the electorate is not represented by the Republican primary. Murkowski lost to Tea Party favorite Joe Miller by 2,006 votes, or a margin of 1.82 percent. A total of 109,750 Alaska Republicans voted, but there are 74,844 registered Democrats, 127,408 registered Republicans, and a whopping 178,684 “undeclared,” and another 78,684 who registered themselves “nonpartisan.” There are also splinter parties, like the 2,864 Moderate Republicans, the 9,336 Libertarians, and 2,367 Green Party members.

So those who claim that Miller’s 55,878 votes represent the clear majority of Alaska’s 489,960 voters are way off. Or at least, that’s how O’Donnell saw it in 2006.

Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell did the very same thing after she lost the Republican primary for the Senate in 2006: she ran against the GOP nominee as a write-in candidate.

O’Donnell, in fact, finished LAST (with 18 percent) in the three-way 2006 primary, which was won by Jan Ting, a law professor at Temple University. But she felt that Ting was not sufficiently dedicated to the issues she cared most about: abortion, pre-marital sex and pornography.

Ultimately, her entry as a “sore loser” write-in candidate had no effect on the race; Democratic incumbent Tom Carper won easily. But O’Donnell, like Murkowski today, felt that the primary results were not necessarily the final say.

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One thought on “Confusing Tea Baggers with the Facts Again: Like Murkowski, O’Donnell Ran Write-In Campaign in 2006”

  1. Palin is the ultimate hypocrite and sore loser who doesn’t take her own advice. For the last 19 months since Obama took office, she’s been ignoring the fact that when he was elected, “the people spoke,” and has been doing everything she can to make her supporters believe that he was not elected by a majority of the voters in 2008. She has no real respect for the people’s will. Encouraging one’s supporters to “take your country back” every time you open your mouth shows that she has no respect for election results she doesn’t like.

    Senator Murkowski has the same right to seek re-election as a write-in candidate as Palin has to seek election for those whom she endorses, but I’ve noticed that Palin really seems to believe that she can say/do anything and that no one should challenge her on anything she does/says.

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