Campaign Diaries

This was a day of resolutions in some of the congressional drama we have been following as of late. First came news that the disgracefully slow ballot counting in Alaska’s House primary is finally over. There were still about 350 ballots to be counted - more than the margin between incumbent Rep. Don Young and Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell - but they only increased Young’s winning margin. With all ballots counted, Young was certified the winner with a 304 vote lead, and Sean Parnell (who could have asked for a recount) chose against it and conceded the race.

And just like that, Alaska’s lone House seat becomes one of the most vulnerable seats Republicans are defending this year. The GOP’s main hope of retaining the seat seemed to rest in a primary defeat for Young, but the incumbent who is under investigation now enters the general election as the clear underdog. The latest poll has him trailing Democratic candidate Ethan Berkowitz by double-digits (Parnell led Berkowitz by double-digits), and while he has been in office for decades, Young lacks the stature of a Ted Stevens. That much of late September-early October will be devoted to coverage of Stevens’ trial will only complicate Young’s re-election bid.

Young’s path to salvation is clear: he has to ride whatever coattails Palin proves to have, and relentlessly insist that he has enough clout to bring money and attention back from Washington, explaining that Alaska cannot give up on his seniority.

Meanwhile, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled today that the Senate race between Wicker and Musgrove had to be at the top of the ballot (background on the controversy here). The ruling said, “We find that the special election for United States Senator must be listed in the first category of the ballot, along with all other national elections, and the law assumes the Governor and Secretary of State will follow the law.” Even though a lower court had come to the same conclusion, this was a somewhat surprising decision as the state Supreme Court had invalidated a lower court ruling earlier this spring over whether the special election should be held in March or in November.

In fact, it appears that the Supreme Court was torn between its need to follow the law and its unwillingness to challenge Gov. Barbour, as the majority declared that the down-ballot placement was illegal without ordering Barbour to move the race. A dissenting judge wrote in response, “Given the governor’s recent success at convincing seven members of this Court that a year is sometimes not a year, see Barbour v. State ex. reL Hood, 974 So. 2d 232 (Miss. 2008), one cannot fault him for daring to return to our chamber and insisting that the top is sometimes not the top.” Anyone who followed the early 2008 controversy over the election’s timing will understand what this is referring to (some background here).

This could have further prolonged the confusion if Barbour had refused to comply, but his office announced today that the race would be moved to “near the top” of the ballot. If that is confirmed (and we still have to see what Barbour’s definition of “near the top” is), this seems to put an end to the debate and takes care of one question mark we had about this race. Most reports about the GOP’s scheme assumed that the down-ballot placement would hurt Democrat Ronnie Musgrove because it would lower the participation of low-income voters and African-Americans, but I had argued the other day that it could very well backfire on Republicans.

I had said that Mississippi voting patterns at the federal level are almost entirely based on race (rather than on class) and that the GOP might be depriving itself of the white electorate’s reflex to vote Republican on federal races (at the top of the ballot). So since I did not think the down-ballot placement was a huge threat to Musgrove, I do not think the Supreme Court’s move is a huge victory for him either. But it certainly removes a major element of uncertainty that would have made any prediction about this race impossible (and any polling mostly unreliable).