Begich Takes Lead in Alaska Senate Race

Alaska's division of elections counted about 60,000 of the absentee, early and questioned ballots yesterday, and they broke heavily in Democrat Mark Begich's favor.

Before yesterday's count, Begich (left) trailed Sen. Ted Stevens by 3,353 votes. But now, Begich leads Stevens by 814 votes--132,196 to 131,382.

And according to FiveThirtyEight.com, "the remaining votes come from Begich-friendly districts." State elections chief Gail Fenumiai confirmed this by saying that the state's most populous region, based in Anchorage, won't count its ballots until either Monday or Wednesday. Begich is currently the mayor of Anchorage, so he is expected to do very well there, further boosting his chances of winning the seat.

The state still needs to count at least 15,000 questioned ballots and an estimated 25,000 absentees, so this thing is far from over. But it is safe to say that Begich is the overwhelming favorite to win the contested Alaska Senate seat.

It is unclear whether the Republican Party really wants Stevens to win reelection. They want a clean break from the Bush administration as well as corruption, and many Republican Senators do not want their party to be associated with the man. One of the most conservative members of the Senate, Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina has said that he will vote to expel Stevens from the Republican caucus if he wins reelection. On the other hand, a Stevens loss does get the Democrats one step closer to that 60-seat filibuster-proof majority.

If Begich does end up winning this thing, it effectively shuts the door on Sarah Palin's chances of becoming a U.S. Senator, thus helping keep her out of national politics until 2012. If Stevens was expelled from the Senate, she could have ran for the seat in the 2010 special election that would have taken place, and could have boasted that she had executive and legislative experience. But then again, she would lost her credibility as a Washington outsider. And we all know how much she loves to tote that title.

Meanwhile, the Senate race in Minnesota is getting ugly and bitter. Republican Sen. Norm Coleman leads Democrat Al Franken by 206 votes but the vote total has changed drastically since last Tuesday. Coleman was up by about 700 votes at one point, but that lead has shrunk considerably. Minnesota election officials are still counting votes.

An automatic hand recount of nearly 3 million vote will start on Nov. 18, and both Coleman and Franken have hired literally hundreds of lawyers each to deal with the inevitable legal debacle. The recount is expected to stretch into mid-December. Coleman's people have already started accusing Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who is a Democrat, to be biased. They are also tying him to acorn in attempt to try and invalidate him. Expect this thing to get really ugly over the next month.