Alaska-- Bernie Country-- Has A Senate Race Heating Up Rapidly

As we've mentioned before, a homophobic and hypocritical DSCC refuses to acknowledge that Utah even has a Senate race this year because they are so freaked out that a ultra-progressive, working class, transgendered woman, Misty Snow, beat their preferred conservative Blue Dog candidate in the primary 59.4-40.6%. So they've given GOP radical Mike Lee a free re-election pass. Neither Misty nor the state of Utah is even mentioned on the DSCC website. On the other hand, the site does acknowledge that Alaska has a Senate race this cycle. On the page touting the candidates, they have this statement about Alaska: "Lisa Murkowski faces a tough reelection fight in Alaska-- earlier this cycle, Alaska’s other Senator, Dan Sullivan, refused to back her for reelection despite her support for him last cycle. Democrats won the Senate race in Alaska in 2008 and despite the GOP wave in 2014, came within a few points of winning again in this traditionally red state. Democrats are poised to run another strong race this time with a candidate who will put Alaska first."

What the DSCC doesn't mention is that the populist Democratic Party in the state-- which gave Bernie a 81.6% to 18.4% landslide over Hillary and massive victories in every single electoral district (numbers that beat Trump too)-- also nominated Ray Metcalfe, a former Anchorage state Rep who was one of the state's original Bernie for President organizers. Although he won the party nomination, 15,198 to 10,074, Metcalfe is not a Schumer kind of candidate. To start with, he's Alaska's best-known anti-corruption crusader, something that upsets the business model of the political establishment in both Alaska, where corruption is a way of life, and in DC, where politicians like Schumer would never/could never rise to the top without it. "When I was in the legislature," Metcalfe told me yesterday, "people around me were taking bribes." He worked with the FBI to expose the biggest political corruption case in contemporary America. This is the front page of Metcalfe's Senate website (you can easily see why it would freak out an establishment hack like Schumer):

If elected, Ray Metcalfe will be Bernie Sanders closest ally in the US Senate. Ray’s platform is Bernie’s platform. Following four years of service in the Alaska Legislature, Ray Metcalfe made a career of exposing political bribery. Ignoring the threats of Alaska’s rich and powerful, Metcalfe spent years helping Federal Investigators and Prosecutors connect the dots between dirty money and political favors.

Corruption exposed by Ray Metcalfe lead to the conviction of six Alaskan legislators, two oil lobbyists, (VECO owner Bill Allen and VECO manager Rich Smith) two lobbyists for the private prison industry, and the indictment of former Alaska Governor Murkowski’s Chief of staff.

America’s political machine has deteriorated into a system of mutual dependency between elected officials and large donors seeking financial rewards. After contributing, large donors send paid lobbyists to remind the beneficiaries of their contributions and what financial rewards they are expecting in return, creating an endless cycle of trading campaign contributions for appropriations and other financial benefits from Congress. Bernie’s climate agenda would get more attention from Congress if it did not have to compete with the fossil fuel industry’s ability to trade campaign contributions for profit protections and subsidies. Ray Metcalfe has an established track record of ending such vote buying schemes. If you want open, honest, ethical government, please contribute to his campaign.

The DSCC continues to throw away money on the loathsome conservative candidates with no chance of winning that it foisted on Democratic primary voters in Florida and Ohio. Forget Patrick Murphy and Ted Strickland. Please consider contributing what you can to progressives like Russ Feingold, Misty Snow and Ray Metcalfe by tapping on the thermometer on the right. The DSCC (and Alaska's grotesquely corrupt Democratic Party establishment) are worried that-- with teabagger and Trumpist Joe Miller in the race as a Libertarian and tearing Murkowski apart from the right-- Metcalfe could actually win. Worried that a progressive Democrat could beat a conservative Republican! That's how Schumer's reptilian mind works. So he's encouraging a proven corruptionist buddy of his, Mark Begich, to mount a last minute write-in campaign to draw votes away from Metcalfe and throw the election to Murkowski! (Before the Begich chatter got going, the violently anti-Bernie Alaska Democratic Party establishment decided to back independent candidate Margaret Stock as a way to derail Metcalfe.)

Begich beat Senator Ted Stevens in 2008, eight days after Stevens was convicted on 7 felony corruption counts. Six years later Begich, who supports drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and who has been tied to myriad corruption scandals from his time as mayor of Anchorage, was defeated in his reelection bid by GOP crackpot Dan Sullivan. Rollcall reported last week that if Begich does run-- and he has to decide this week-- he'll have some big challenges to overcome.

For one, the Democratic Party has a nominee, former state legislator and good-government activist Ray Metcalfe.

Metcalfe, who won his August primary with 50 percent of the vote, made it clear in an interview that he would not step aside for Begich, whom he considers corrupt.

“I tried to get Mark Begich indicted,” Metcalfe said.

In addition to the logistical difficulty of persuading voters to back a candidate whose name isn’t on the ballot, Begich would also face fierce resistance from the entrenched Murkowski.

We're hoping to get Metcalfe to tell us in his own words why he tried getting Begich indicted and what happened with that. This is an old ad from 8 years ago... stay tuned.