Murkowski’s ouster a big boost for Tea Party

Joe Miller, backed by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Express, became the latest newcomer to the national political stage to take down an incumbent in 2010 amid deep dissatisfaction with the Washington establishment.

Miller’s win was a major victory for the Tea Party movement and marked the first time it had defeated a sitting senator in a primary. Tea Partiers had knocked off Utah Senator Bob Bennett at a state convention in May. Emboldened Tea Partiers have now set their sights on Delaware, where they are backing Christine O’Donnell against the more moderate Representative Mike Castle in the GOP Senate primary Sept. 14.

Murkowski trailed Miller, a Fairbanks attorney, by 1,668 votes after the Aug. 24 primary. Election officials began counting absentee and outstanding ballots yesterday and Murkowski made slight gains. But after more than 15,000 ballots were counted, she remained 1,630 votes behind.

“We all know that this has been a long week, a terribly long week,’’ she said at campaign headquarters while conceding. Murkowski said that while there were still outstanding votes, “I don’t see a scenario where the primary will turn out in my favor, and that is a reality that is before me at this point in time.

“And for that reason, and for the good of the state of Alaska . . . I am now conceding the race for the Republican nomination.’’

Miller, 43, is an Ivy League-educated lawyer, West Point graduate, and decorated Gulf war veteran who cast Murkowski as too liberal and part of the problem in an out-of-control Washington. It is a campaign strategy that has helped oust other incumbents this year and that Republicans will employ again in November as they look to take back Congress.

— Associated Press

The independent House Office of Congressional Ethics recommended that the member-run House ethics committee pursue potential rules violations by Republicans John Campbell of California and Tom Price of Georgia, and Democrat Joseph Crowley of New York.

The ethics office recommended no further investigation of five other lawmakers in the same probe: Democratic Representatives Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota and Mel Watt of North Carolina, and Republicans Jeb Hensarling of Texas, Chris Lee of New York, and Frank Lucas of Oklahoma. The recommendations were released yesterday after the panel had notified the legislators.

President Obama signed the financial overhaul bill into law July 21. It aims to restrain Wall Street excesses by clamping down on lending practices and expanding consumer protections to address failures that precipitated the 2008 economic meltdown.

The Democrats — Crowley, Pomeroy and Watt — voted for the final bill. The Republicans — Campbell, Price, Hensarling, Lee, and Lucas — voted against it.

Campbell said he was “perplexed by OCE’s decision, as they have presented no evidence that would suggest wrongdoing.’’ Price had a similar reaction, saying, “There being no evidence of any wrongdoing or any inconsistency in my policy position, one can only guess as to the motive behind their decision or even why they chose to initiate a review in the first place.’’

Crowley’s office said in a statement that he “has always complied with the letter and spirit of all rules regarding fund-raising and standards of conduct.’’

— Associated Press

“My roommates and I had lots of jokes about the Romneys, who seemed doomed to join the campaign any second. They were all so handsome, in a tooth-whitener commercial kind of way, and so seriously wholesome,’’ Meghan McCain writes in the memoir, released yesterday.

McCain, 25, now a columnist for the Daily Beast website, was a campaign surrogate and author of an insouciant election-year blog during her father’s second run for the presidency, in which he won the GOP nomination over Romney.

Despite her treatment of the former Massachusetts governor as a foil in the Republican culture wars, she expected her father would choose Romney as his running mate to bolster the ticket.

“We wondered whether the Five Brothers, the nickname for the Romney sons, could handle the constant drinking and swearing that went on in our campaign — the press corps included,’’ she goes on. “Not to mention all the tawdry stories about crazy-sex you never read about.’’

Despite enmity between the two camps during the primaries, Romney quickly endorsed McCain’s candidacy after his own withdrawal and worked hard on the Arizona senator’s behalf, earning a place on the eventual nominee’s short list for the vice presidential nomination.

“It was hard to adjust to nice thoughts about Romney,’’ McCain writes, “or to stop laughing at him.’’

Her distaste for the Romney campaign even led to some questionable behavior. On the day her father won the New Hampshire primary in 2008, she feared she would be arrested for removing Romney campaign signs from a Nashua street corner.

“Stealing campaign signs is technically illegal, but I never thought anyone would enforce this. Nor did I expect we’d get caught,’’ McCain confesses.

McCain writes that she “had gotten pretty sick’’ of seeing Romney’s signs, particularly a cluster she and friends suspected had been strategically placed outside the McCain campaign’s hotel. After stashing several of them in a car trunk, McCain was confronted by a passerby.

“Anybody who was lame enough to pull over and harass people on election day for stealing signs was probably lame enough to follow up and bring some New Hampshire state troopers to arrest me,’’ she writes.

McCain said she never heard from law enforcement about the signs, or any of the other not-entirely-shocking behavior she recounts in the book.

— Sasha Issenberg