Sen. Lisa Murkowski declared victory last night after a nearly unprecedented write-in campaign for Alaska Senate, beating out Republican nominee and Tea Party favorite Joe Miller. “I think we can say our miracle is here,” Murkowski said at a rally in Alaska last night.
And when making the rounds on the cable news shows last night and this morning, Murkowski was confident that though Miller is not giving up yet, “you just can’t convince me that a recount is going to change the outcome of this.”
Miller has said that he “may actually ask for a hand count of our ballots as well,” arguing that Murkowski has an advantage because write-in ballots for her were counted by hand.
“It’s not that we believe necessarily that we’re going to come out on top,” Miller told the Anchorage Daily News, it’s just that they want to make sure the process was fair. He added “I don’t think it’s impossible” that he could still win.
Murkowski, meanwhile, was skeptical in her TV appearances. “Joe is trying to blame this, that, or the other thing,” she said on The Last Word Wednesday night. “But the fact of the matter is, even if we were to throw out every one of the ballots that he has challenged, he still loses by the count.”
On Fox and Friends, she was also confident. “Maybe the reality of the numbers has not quite hit him yet,” Murkowski said, but “the numbers are just not adding up for Joe Miller.”
Murkowski also said that though she did not win as the Republican nominee, she is still a Republican. “I will conference with the Republicans,” she said. “But I will always keep in mind that I will be sent back to the United States Senate because all Alaskans came together.”
She also told the Fox and Friends gang that she would not support an earmark moratorium, and thinks Congress just needs to make sure the federal dollars that are spent “are spent wisely and are spent fairly.”
