Incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Begich has a lifetime American Conservative Union score of eight. Yet, NPR qualifies the Alaska politician as a "conservative" on many issues. The October 2 All Things Considered segment featured no mention of Begich's widely condemned campaign ad that accused his Republican opponent of being indirectly responsible for a horrible crime.
Instead, NPR reporter Martin Kaste insisted, "The left-right-and-center thing is hazy here because the Democrat, Begich, has picked the conservative side on a lot of the usual litmus tests, such as drilling for oil in the Arctic and gun rights." The "conservative" Begich may promote the Second Amendment (common in Alaska), but he also supported ObamaCare, both of the President's liberal Supreme Court judges and new government spending. This is conservative to NPR?
Kaste made no mention of what Real Clear Politics referred to as "Begich's Willie Horton-syle ad." In September, the website explained:
The highly competitive Alaska Senate race turned vitriolic over the holiday weekend after Democratic incumbent Mark Begich's campaign released a brutal new TV ad that tied Republican challenger Dan Sullivan to circumstances surrounding a horrific Anchorage murder case.
On Friday, the Begich campaign began airing the ad -- now pulled from the airwaves --which featured a retired Anchorage police officer recounting the circumstances of a 2013 crime. In that case, a man named Jerry Active stands accused of murdering an elderly couple and sexually assaulting their 2-year-old granddaughter and the girl’s 91-year-old great-grandmother.
Active had been previously convicted of the attempted sexual assault of a minor in 2009 -- a crime that should have led to an eight-year-minimum prison sentence, due to an earlier felony conviction -- but he was released early because of a faulty plea deal in 2010 that did not take into account his previous record.
The Begich ad suggested that Sullivan deserved some of the blame for the sentencing error, since he was state attorney general at the time that the plea deal was made. The Sullivan campaign has said that a failure to place the prior conviction in the court system database occurred before the Senate candidate became attorney general.
To see how the Washington Post has spun the midterms, go here.
To read how the networks are yawning at Democratic scandals during the 2014 midterms and touting GOP problems, go here.
A partial transcript of the October 2 NPR segment is below:
ROBERT SIEGEL: Republicans stand a good chance of taking back the Senate this November. And if they do, it may happen very late on election night when the returns come in from the Alaskan time zone. The incumbent senator is a vulnerable first-term Democrat and Alaska is a Republican-leaning state. Millions of dollars' worth of ads have been dumped into the state's small media market. And NPR's Martin Kaste went to Alaska and sent us this story.
MARTIN KASTE: Politics in Alaska is an intimate business. People expect to reach their senators on the phone. And they refer to the candidates by their first names. Pollster Marc Hellenthal grew up in Anchorage. And he remembers helping his dad run for the legislature in the ‘60s.
MARC HELLENTHAL: I had a group of friends in Anchorage that had paper routes. And we put his little legislative card in all the papers that we delivered. That was his mass media effort.
KASTE: The mass media part of Alaska politics is no longer so quaint.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Meet politician Dan Sullivan.
KASTE: Outside money has turned this race into an advertising slugfest. The current Senator is Democrat Mark Begich. Feeling his own vulnerability, he's gone after his challenger for not spending enough time in Alaska.
SENATOR MARK BEGICH: Now we learn Dan Sullivan had a non-resident Alaska fishing license like every other outsider.
KASTE: But two can play that game. When one of Begich's ads showed him riding a snow mobile - sorry, Alaskans, a snow-machine - the Sullivan campaign responded with mockery - mockery delivered by a guy in a backwards baseball cap.
[Ad]
CORY DAVIS: I'm Cory Davis. As a four-time X-Games medalist, I know something about snow machines. That's why I had a good laugh when I saw Mark Begich pretending to ride one.
KASTE: If you tell Art Hackney that that ad seems silly, he shrugs.
ART HACKNEY: Yeah, well, you're an outsider. I mean, all they used it for was a metaphor for Mark in general.
KASTE: Hackney's a prominent Republican strategist here with ties to Karl Rove's political money organization. Hackney didn't produce that ad. But he likes it, because he says it makes sense to Alaskans.
HACKNEY: Because Alaskans don't understand a lot of the issues that one can argue, left, right and center, on who's better on this issue or that issue. And both sides sound convincing when they say them.
KASTE: The left-right-and-center thing is hazy here because the Democrat, Begich, has picked the conservative side on a lot of the usual litmus tests, such as drilling for oil in the Arctic and gun rights. In the absence of simplistic distinctions, the ad-makers have resorted to personality attacks. But out in the state, you find those ads are getting on people's nerves. Kodiak Island, sometimes called the Rock, is the kind of place with limited roads and a big fishing industry. If you don't run into a bear around here, they say you're not looking. Stephen Knowles is prepping a boat for a codfish run.
KASTE: He says that kind of attack ad has been popping up every time he tries to watch YouTube.
STEPHEN KNOWLES: It makes me think I don't want to trust either of them really because the ad wasn't about anything substantial.
...
KASTE: But like many Alaskans, McRobert sees himself as a conservative. And he says he has a hard time forgiving Begich for the votes that he's cast for Democratic policies.
MCROBERT: Obama Care, a lot of that stuff, really kind of gave me a sour taste for where Begich was out on that.
KASTE: Attitudes like this have given Sullivan an edge over Begich in the polls, though the race is far from decided. Polling is notoriously unreliable in this state. And there may still be some more ads in the pipeline that question the candidates' credentials as real Alaskans. Martin Kaste, NPR news, Kodiak Island.
