Alaska, November Elections | featured news

Alaska's bitterly contested Senate election went to state court Monday when Republican Joe Miller sued the state over the way write-in ballots ...

As Senator Lisa Murkowski flew home to Alaska on Wednesday, The Associated Press declared her the winner of her long-shot write-in bid for re-election. Neither the Murkowski campaign nor the campaign of her competitor, Joe Miller, a Tea Party favorite who was backed by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, made an immediate comment.

Rows of gray plastic tables fill a sprawling room that overlooks the snow-covered peaks of this port town, where America will begin to learn the answers Wednesday to the final pressing questions of the elections of 2010: Do the people of Alaska know how to color, and do they know how to spell?

The big money battle in the US Senate race, which had been tilted in Republican Joe Miller's favor, evened out some on Tuesday with a big advertising push from a coalition of unions and Alaska Native corporations.

Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller says his family benefited from Medicaid and a state-run health care program for low-income children and pregnant women.Miller previously acknowledged receiving federal farm subsidies for land he owned in Kansas in the 1990s, as well as low-income hunting and fishing licenses for him and his wife in Alaska.As a conservative candidate, he's criticized certain entitlement programs. Sitting Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who's running for re-election as a write-in candidate against him, called Miller a hypocrite.