August 25, 2010

Alaska Senate Race Gets Complicated

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Well, this could make things even more interesting in Alaska. Tea party candidate Joe Miller looks likely to unseat incumbent Lisa Murkowski, but now the Daily Beast is reporting that the state’s senior senator is mulling a third-party run.

While the deadline for independent candidates to file has passed, “a source within the Murkowski campaign says they know of one possible legal option to pursue a third party run.”

And then it gets even more complicated, as rumors fly that Democrats might substitute former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles for Scott McAdams, the winner of yesterday’s primary, on the November ballot.

Oh, Alaska. Let no one ever say you don’t give us plenty of stuff to write about.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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