How insurgent Joe Miller toppled GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski

In an interview with The Daily Caller earlier this month, Alaskan insurgent candidate Joe Miller suggested poll numbers showing him down 30 points in the GOP Senate primary were just not right.

Fast-forward to today, and it appears he may have been on to something that most pollsters and reporters were not, as he’s poised to pull off a major upset if he’s able to hold onto his lead when all the votes are finally tallied from Tuesday’s election. If that happens, Miller will replace incumbent GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski on the ballot as the Republican Party’s Senate nominee in November — no small feat.

The tabloid antics of another Alaskan, Levi Johnston, may have received more attention in recent weeks from the national media— who largely missed the fact that the Alaska primary was as competitive as it turned out to be — but the Sarah Palin-backed lawyer from Fairbanks has their attention now.

So who is Joe Miller, the bearded lawyer who has never been elected to office, who says he’s an Alaskan by choice and who grew up in a working class family in Kansas, but “headed to the Last Frontier sixteen years ago because of his love for the outdoors”?

“Joe Miller is one of the most capable Tea Party-backed candidates we’ve encountered in the entire country,” said Joe Wierzbicki, who leads the Tea Party Express, a group who spent a considerable amount of money on his behalf attacking “Liberal Lisa.”

Throughout the primary, Miller attacked Murkowski as just that — a Republican who supports government
bailouts, doesn’t oppose President Obama’s health care law and is pro-choice. His pro-life stance may have helped him win over anti-abortion voters Tuesday as a parental notification initiative was also on the ballot. “I think the [Proposition] 2 measure certainly helped us,” a campaign spokesman for Miller said.

“Joe Miller turned Lisa Murkowski into a Democrat, a Tony Knowles Democrat,” Alaskan political writer Michael Carey told The Washington Post. “This was either brilliant or dumb luck. He just rolled her up in the most conservative areas of the state. Those voters always, always, look for the most conservative candidate, and they sure found him.”