Can that ‘Joe Miller Magic Strike’ for Marc Scaringi in PA US Senate Race?

(By Randy DeSoto)  I was Joe Miller’s Communications Director during his Primary Campaign in last year’s U.S. Senate race in Alaska, and now I’m holding the same position for Marc Scaringi, who’s running for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. I see some interesting parallels between the two races. The first is that Marc, like Joe, is undaunted by the challenge of taking on an incumbent Senator with a big family name, who appears to many unbeatable. That is how Lisa Murkowski looked heading into and throughout most of the primary election season last year. Originally, the seat had been given to her by her father in 2002, Alaska’s then newly elected governor Frank Murkowski. He had held the Senate seat the previous 20+ years and decided his daughter was the best person to take his place. Two years later, she managed to pull off a narrow victory when she ran for a full term, while her father remained sitting Governor of the state.

Up for re-election in the 2010, she had the requisite over 50% approval rating statewide, and over 70% among Republicans that should have made her a shoe-in for re-election. Those numbers did not deter Joe Miller. He saw that her voting record, despite her party affiliation, was liberal. In fact she had voted with the Democrats and against the majority in her party more than any other Republican Senator up for re-election: over three-hundred times on issues like government bailouts and other vast spending bills, and against the pro-life position. Joe decided no one should be automatically elected to office because of family name or position, especially when her votes were so contrary to the best long-term interests of the country, so he announced his candidacy on Lexington-Concord Day, April 19.

Joe then set about tirelessly campaigning all over our country’s largest state making the case that Lisa Murkowski was part of the Big Spending, Big Government problem in Washington. Though not someone of great means, he seeded his campaign with $50,000 to get the campaign off the ground. Donations were slow at first, so Joe reached down in June and put another $50,000 of his own money into the campaign. Steadily momentum built, then came Governor Sarah Palin’s endorsement, and the Tea Party Express jumped in on Joe’s side too. The Tea Party Express would spend about a half a million on the race in independent expenditures. The entire Joe Miller of U.S. Senate campaign would come in at just over $300,000 for the primary race. Lisa Murkowski meanwhile had $3 million in her campaign war chest, and she still enjoyed an over 30 point advantage in the polls in early July.

The Senator looked to be cruising to an easy re-election, but Joe’s campaign caught fire. We could feel his support growing, and there was a deep-seated faith among the staff that Joe could win this thing. By early August, Joe was just 11 points down. During the week heading into the August 24 Primary, everything seemed to click: commercials we produced with Murkowski in her own words giving contradictory statements on her position on Obamacare and others in which she sounds just like President Obama on the need for government spending aired on TV and radio throughout the state; Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin cut robocall ads for us, which went out to thousands of voters; meanwhile, our volunteers waved signs and canvassed Alaska for Joe. We got wind of an internal poll days before Election Day that had us just 1 point down. We knew the election may well be ours. The rest was history with Joe pulling off perhaps the upset of the whole primary season, “shocking” the political world, Rocky-style.

It’s interesting for me to see the same sort of race shaping up here in my home state of Pennsylvania. Joe Miller sees it too, and decided to endorse Marc last month.

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Read more at Redcounty.com HERE.