Security guards for Joe Miller, the Republican Senate candidate from Alaska, handcuffed and detained the editor of an online news site at a campaign event in Anchorage on Sunday.
A statement by the Miller campaign described the editor, Tony Hopfinger of Alaska Dispatch, as a “liberal blogger” who was trying to create a “confrontation” with Mr. Miller. The campaign also accused Mr. Hopfinger of assaulting someone after the event, a question and answer session with voters, and of “making threatening gestures and movements towards the candidate.”
The Anchorage Police responded to the incident, which took place at a public middle school. The police released Mr. Hopfinger from the handcuffs. It is unclear whether anyone involved will face charges.
Mr. Hopfinger, a longtime Alaska journalist who has written for prominent national news outlets, told the Anchorage Daily News that he had been trying to question Mr. Miller about reports that he had been disciplined in a past part-time job he held as a lawyer for the Fairbanks North Star Borough, the equivalent of a county government. ...NYT
In the same edition of the New York Times, columnist Ross Douthat complains that tea partyers get a bad rap from libruls and that they aren't really a racist rabble. They're really nice people!
Well, by gum, their treatment of a member of the media is a little at odds with Douthat's rosy claims.
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Poor Joe. According to the latest report from Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight, Joe Miller is not a surefire winner. Long cold night predicted in Alaska on November 2.
Those of us hoping to get a good night’s sleep on Nov. 2 might not be pleased with the latest developments in the Alaska Senate race, where polls suggest a drop in support for the Republican nominee, Joe Miller. That could enable either Lisa Murkowski — the incumbent who lost the Republican primary to Mr. Miller but is running a write-in campaign as an independent — or perhaps the Democrat Scott McAdams, to win the race instead.
Alaska has tended to do its own thing, give analysts a hard time.
Even if Republicans win key Senate races like those in California and Washington that might otherwise allow them to claim a majority of the chamber, Alaska could at least potentially be a spoiler. And Alaska has some history of bucking national trends. In 1994, for instance, a strong year for Republicans, it was the only state to switch from a Republican governor to a Democrat, narrowly electing Tony Knowles. But in 2008, a good year for Democrats, it re-elected its Republican incumbent to the House, Don Young, in spite of polling that had showed him behind.
