NO WONDER MILLER WANTS TO AVOID HIS RECORD…. Just two weeks ago, Alaska’s extremist Senate candidate, Joe Miller (R), announced that his background would be off limits for the rest of the campaign. He was willing to talk about all the things he’d do in the Senate — oppose the minimum wage, oppose unemployment aid, oppose Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — without all these pesky questions about his skills, background, qualifications, and professional history.
It turns out, Miller wasn’t just being obsessive about privacy. He didn’t want to talk about his background because it happens to be pretty embarrassing. The headline in the Anchorage Daily News reads this morning, for example, “Miller admits to lies about his actions.”
Republican U.S. Senate nominee Joe Miller admitted in 2008 that he lied after being caught using Fairbanks North Star Borough computers for political purposes while he was working as a part-time borough lawyer.
“I lied about accessing all of the computers. I then admitted about accessing the computers, but lied about what I was doing. Finally, I admitted what I did,” Miller wrote in a March 17, 2008, e-mail to Fairbanks North Star Borough Attorney Rene Broker.
Miller’s admission and a disciplinary letter were among his employee records released by the Fairbanks North Star Borough on Tuesday as a result of a lawsuit by media organizations. Miller initially fought release of the documents, but state Superior Court Judge Winston Burbank ordered most of the records sought to be released, and Miller decided not to appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court.
After his dishonesty and ethical lapse was discovered, Miller was suspended and reprimanded. Facing likely dismissal from the job, he abruptly resigned.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s statement on this happens to be accurate: “The bottom line is Joe cheated, he lied, tried to cover it up, lied again, then finally got caught and had to admit it, just as he lied to Alaskans when he initially denied any problems with his employment at the Borough, claiming his record was ‘exceptional’ and ‘second to none.’”
These revelations come a week after another report on Miller’s three-year tenure at a top Anchorage law firm. His supervisor at the firm was limited by the firm’s personnel policies and wouldn’t go into specifics*, but he conceded last week, “We at this firm were not eager to have him stay, and so when he announced he was leaving, we were relieved.”
Looking back, Miller hasn’t held that many positions in Alaska since moving to the state, and those jobs he held didn’t go well at all.
That this guy, largely unknown to voters up until very recently, is poised to win a U.S. Senate seat is more than a little bizarre. Miller’s pitch to voters is, in effect, “Never mind my background, never mind my qualifications, never mind my record, never mind my inexperience, never mind my record of professional misconduct, and never mind my scandalous campaign tactics. Vote for me anyway, because I’m really right-wing.”
* edited for clarity
