I feel good about Senator Mark Begich (D. AK).
The Daily Caller saw this Tweet from Donna Brazille and immediately started crapping their pants:
http://dailycaller.com/...
Democrat Mark Begich leads in early voting in the Alaska Senate race against Republican Dan Sullivan, according to Democratic operative Donna Brazile. Begich has been gaining in recent weeks, as demonstrated by his surprising lead in the latest Hellenthal and Associates poll.
With a four-hour time difference between Alaska time and East Coast time, Alaska could be the last state to have its results come in Tuesday. The race is expected to come down to the wire. Sullivan is riding the momentum of a recent Ted Cruz endorsement rally. - The Daily Caller, 11/3/14
Now Brazille wouldn't Tweet that if it wasn't true. And if you want proof that early voting is up big time in Alaska, Alexandra Gutierrez, a reporter for Alaska Public Radio News, Tweeted this today:
I think I might know why early voting is up in Alaska:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/...
In the past, badly translated ballots, referendum language that was more legalese than plain English, uncooperative election workers and more conspired to make voting a difficult, unhappy and even humiliating process for Alaska Native people. For decades, the state was under special Department of Justice scrutiny for the poor education offered to Native people, resulting in depressed election turnout.
Since this past spring, the state’s Native leadership has worked to fix the problems. They’ve set up early voting sites in villages, most for the first time, and appointed lively and caring AVOs like Franklin and Wassillie. They’ve sued the state to improve language assistance for voters who aren’t proficient in English. Lead plaintiff in the suit, Mike Toyukak, is a Manokotak elder.
The trio’s enthusiastic sales pitch worked, and Manokotak villagers lined up to cast early ballots. Elders said they were grateful for the women’s encouragement.
Franklin explained that early voting is critical in a subsistence community like Manokotak, because hunters and gatherers can’t necessarily drop everything to go to the polls on Election Day. She described the demanding yearly round of fishing, berry picking and bird hunting in spring, summer and fall, then seal, moose and walrus hunting as winter sets in. “As we speak, my son is headed for the lake to fish and to see if there are any ducks,” said Franklin. “Our hunters go out several times a week, and the rest of the time we’re processing what they bring in. Our freezers are filled with our Native foods.”
Interest in the 2014 election is high, and anecdotal reports indicate more Alaska Natives than ever have already voted this year, said Mulipola. The hot issue for them is subsistence hunting rights and turning out for candidates who support them, notably Senate candidate Mark Begich. The influential Alaska Federation of Natives recently endorsed him, and he was the first candidate mentioned by any voter. “If we don’t hunt, we starve,” said Franklin. - Indian Country Network Today, 11/3/14
The Alaska Native vote is looking like who will decide this election:
http://america.aljazeera.com/...
Back at the AFN forum, moderators asked the candidates to weigh in on hunting and fishing rights for Alaska Natives who rely on wild foods for survival, conflicts between tribal government rights and the federal government and the federal government’s options to support poorer areas of rural Alaska. Sullivan often found himself on the wrong side of issues important to the room, occasionally eliciting boos. Hours after the forum concluded, AFN delegates voted to endorse Begich. Support from corporations, however, wasn’t so cut and dried.
Like tribes outside Alaska, especially those with gambling interests, Native corporations have the potential to flex serious political muscle. In 2010 they poured more than $1.7 million into a super PAC to support Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an incumbent Republican, in her write-in campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. Murkowski had lost the Republican primary to Joe Miller, a tea party candidate whom many Natives saw as unfriendly to their interests. The Democratic challenger, Scott McAdams, was seen as unlikely to win.
The corporations supported get-out-the-vote efforts in rural communities that year. In some places, every single vote went to Murkowski. Alaska Natives have been credited with delivering her win.
This year the AFN made a big push to increase Native voting, including playing a recorded message from President Barack Obama encouraging people to walk to a nearby early voting location.
Alaska Natives tend to vote Democratic, but in the last decade, an increasing amount of corporate money and money from corporate employees has gone to Republicans, according to Sarah Bryner, research director at the Center for Responsive Politics, who also grew up in Alaska. That trend has more to do with strategy than ideology, she said. Native corporations spend a lot on lobbying, she said, and they want to maintain relationships that they have invested in. In Alaska there are more Republican politicians than Democratic ones.
“This is a community — or at least this is an industry — that really seems to favor the incumbent,” she said.
Campaign donations by Native corporations in Alaska are smaller than from some tribes in other states, especially those with gambling interests, Bryner said. Compared with 2010, the year Murkowski ran, spending by Native corporations was down.
Jim Lottsfeldt, a political strategist advising the pro-Begich super PAC Put Alaska First, said that the Murkowski race helped Native corporations see their political power more clearly. He said that the corporate donations in the Senate race are not what they were in the Murkowski race because not all corporations support one candidate. The Arctic Slope Regional Corp., which has interests in oil development in the Arctic, endorsed Sullivan. - Al Jazeera America, 11/3/14
Even PPP, which gave Sullivan a one point lead, said that Begich's ground game could help Begich win a second term. Click here to help out with GOTV efforts for Begich's campaign and Walker-Mallot ticket:
http://www.markbegich.com/
http://www.walkerforalaska.com/