Alaska Senator May Lose Seat for GOP

[RedEarth]

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Opposed by a popular former governor and beset by nepotism charges, freshman Sen. Lisa Murkowski (news, bio, voting record) of Alaska is the Republican most in danger of losing her seat in the U.S. Senate, one she inherited from her father.

No single race in the GOP's effort to hold its 51-49 majority in the Senate is more tenuous than the one in Alaska, where Republicans outnumber Democrats almost 3 to 2 but represent only one-fourth of the state's 469,042 voters, who tend to register as independents or nonpartisans.


Many voters believe Murkowski, 47, didn't earn her seat, a point of view expressed in offices and coffee shops across the state and on bumper stickers that say: "Yo, Lisa! Who's yer daddy?"


In the final days before the election she is in a statistical dead heat with Democrat Tony Knowles, a two-term former governor, according to polls by both campaigns.


But if Knowles, 61, wins, he would be the first Democrat to hold an Alaska Senate seat in 24 years.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1988&e=2&u=/ap/20041021/ap_on_el_se/senate_alaska&sid=96395317