Run Lisa Run

Tonight we take a respite from Mississippi politics at the suggestion of our esteemed professor, Kristie.

I will talk about Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the senior senator from Alaska, and her re-election.In November she pulled off a feat that is nothing less than amazing -- for the first time in 56 years -- only the second time in history, Lisa won a senate race as a write-in. She lost the Republican Party primary to Joe Miller, darling of Sarah Palin (also a big name is Alaska politics) and the Tea Partiers. She said she didn't want to run in the general election as an independent because she always has considered herself a good Republican, so at the urging of some friends and probably more than a little fire in her belly, she launched a write-in campaign. That means that in order to win the election, more people had to write her name down on the official ballot than voted for either of the other candidates.

There were enough plots and subplots in that Alaska senate election to keep "Days of Our Lives" in scripts for another 40 years. I am sure we will start seeing books on it by this summer.

As you can imagine, she really had to work. Not only did she have to convinve people to vote for her, she also had to go to the trouble of getting them to write her name in on the ballot, and Murkowski isn't the world's easiest name to spell. That also involved educating the voters about how to write-in her name and to make sure they knew how to spell it. To make matters worse, Alaska is a very big state, and the population centers are scattered.

 Luckily, everyone in Alaska already knew her. But that didn't mean the way was easy. A friend of Lisa's, Mary Deming Barber who is also a public relations professional, talked about the campaign in her blog http://barbergp.com/374/this-election-was-personal-for-me/.

Suffice it to say, Lisa had a pretty strong social media presence. You would think that social media is a godsend for Alaska -- a way to connect with people in a large, sparsely populated area. Four Twitter accounts carried her name -- one is her official senate page, one is her campaign page, one "Write-in Lisa" was put up by supporters without an official affiliation with her, and one "Murky Murkowski" was put up by Joe Miller. Joe, of course, put it up to discredit her record and it had some links to websites pointing out their differences. Her Twitter accounts each have hundreds of followers.

She has two facebook pages. Her senate facebook page has more than 5,000 likes. She has two websites, http://lisamurkowski.com/main/ and http://murkowski.senate.gov/public/.

She is also on Flickr and YouTube.

I didn't find a blog, but one that I just couldn't find may exist.

All of these have connections and announcements and discussions of her stands on the issues and all of the media reports of her work in the Senate and her record and her campaign. Anyone who wanted to see her during the campaign could certainly find her public appearances. She even posted a calendar. She had to get out her message, and she couldn't afford to miss anyone. While I wasn't in Alaska during the race, my guess is that she took advantage of every medium available.

 According to Mary Deming Barber's blog, there was a lot of social media in this race. I think you can see that from the "Murky Murkowski" Twitter account. In another of her blog posts, Mary Deming Barber
http://barbergp.com/394/liar-liar-pants-on-fire/says that they monitored Twitter and
Facebook comments and had to pick whichcomments needed responses.

My opinion on the campaign: Lisa won because the people knew her and liked her and because she campaigned hard and because she mobilized all those people who liked her but were too complacent to vote in the primary. She said that she lost the primary because she took it for granted and didn't campaign hard. But the key was that the people love her. People will not vote for someone they dislike. They may vote for a person they don't know very well, but they won't vote for someone they dislike. Social media is great for connecting with people, but it has limits. At some point you have to be who you are, and social media can't help if people know who you are and don't like you.

So for all you Alaskan office seekers: don't run against Lisa Murkowski and try to be friends with her because the people in Alaska like her.

Next time I will get back to Mississippi. I have just started looking at Phil Bryant's presence, and I still want to take a look at Billy Hewes. I also need to check back on Dave, and Haley has stirred up a lot of hate and discontent on Twitter. There is lots to talk about. Besides you have some pretty interesting Democratic Gubernatorial candidates as well.