Joe Miller, Lisa Murkowski, and the Alaska Senate race

One thing is for sure about my first year in Alaska: The Senate race here sure is interesting. In the Alaska Senate Republican primary, Tea Party candidate Joe Miller defeated incumbent Lisa Murkowski. While some people claim Murkowski didn't run hard enough against Joe Miller, I contend it was all about her advertising signs. The signs have "LISA" in very large letters, and "Murkowski" in very small letters, so when uneducated voters go to vote, if they don't see "LISA", they're not going to know who to vote for.

A little more seriously, after Murkowski lost the Republican primary to Miller, she decided she wasn't done running, and is now running as an Alaska Senate write-in candidate, and seems to be campaigning much more furiously against Joe Miller. Unfortunately with a long last name like Murkowski that seems like an uphill battle, but it has been interesting.

Who is Joe Miller?

In the meantime, everyone is trying to figure out who Joe Miller is. He doesn't seem to talk much about his past or private life, and won't even let reporters near his home, so presumably news reporters and the Murkowski campaign are trying to find out and reveal all they can about Joe Miller's past. All we really know is he served in the military, went to Yale, became a lawyer, eventually moved to Fairbanks, worked with the Palin family, and is a Tea Party candidate.

In the meantime, Alaska is in the United States -- which means there is a Democrat running against Miller and Murkowski -- but I'd be hard-pressed to tell you his or her name. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Democrats aren't really popular up here, which probably helped fuel Murkowski's decision to run against Miller again.