One of the advantages of going on sabbatical for most of a month is that WC was spared the tedious circus of Joe Miller’s briefing in his legal challenge to the voters’ will. Instead, WC could simply read the briefs and read Superior Court Judge Bill Carey’s decision, announced yesterday in Ketchikan.
As WC predicted two months ago, Miller went down in flames. His argument that Alaska’s election write-in rules were to be strictly construed was rejected as contrary to everything the statutes, regulations and earlier decisions of the Alaska Supreme Court have ever said. Mark this well: Miller’s only hope of winning his lawsuit was to persuade the Alaska Superior Court to disenfranchise, to disallow the votes of several thousand Alaska voters. Judge Carey wasn’t having any of it. All of Miller’s claims, everyone one of them, was carefully and methodically rejected. Most of them were rejected on multiple grounds.
A prudent litigant would conclude the lawsuit is over, the election is over and Lisa Murkowski is Alaska’s U.S. Senator. But Joe Miller has already established he isn’t a prudent litigant. Certainly he has no financial incentive to be reasonable: someone else – Senator Jim DeMint’s political action committee – is funding his silly lawsuits. Joe Miller and his lawyer, Tom van Flein, can probably carry out their threat to litigate all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. It costs Miller nothing and van Flein will have no objection to serial losses, as long as he is being paid.
So, absent the unlikely event of someone suddenly being overcome by reasonableness, Alaska faces the prospect of having a single U.S. Senator for the first months of the next Congress. Miller will elevate his interests over those of Alaska and Alaskans. The only bright spot is that eventually Alaska voters, even his hard-core of supporters, may get as sick of Miller and his antics as WC is.
Wickersham's Conscience 
Welcome back, WC, I missed you.
Just because Miller is dishonest does not make him irrational, even if his actions can be called unreasonable because they take no account of the common good.
Perhaps Miller hopes to divert some of the money sent to pay his legal expenses, or he may be hoping to be given an AK government job by establishment Republicans in exchange for dropping his suit. IIRC, the federal court has ordered that the election not be certified until the state-court proceeding is final and the federal court has reviewed the state court’s ruling. If money is no object, couldn’t the appeal to the AK Supreme Court and petition for certiorari to the US Supreme Court, followed by Alaska federal district court review and appeal to the 9th Circuit take at least a year?
A threat to paralyze Murkowski that long might be worth buying off, although Miller may be calculating more rationally than AK Republicans, who by now must hate his guts. Maybe a Murkowski backer will pay him off outside the political system. I’m also wondering whether DeMint is trying to apply leverage here. Please keep your eye on it.
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You may be right that it’s about a skim or about extortion. It’s not about the chances of winning. Or DeMint may be using Miller as a stalking horse against Murkowski.
One thing all three possibilities have in common: Alaskans lose.
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Whether Alaskans lose depends upon your view of their intentions in voting for Lisa Murkowski. If their primary intention was blocking Joe Miller, and not electing Lisa, they’re not losing.
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