Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, November 16, 2010, 14 days after the 2010 election day, Alaska's Republican

Senator Lisa Murkowski finally surpassed fellow Republican Joe Miller in the vote count in their bid for the Senate

seat.

Okay, that's fine.

Our senator wins re-election.

It's a close race.

That doesn't seem that special.

But the very weird thing about Murkowski's win, which she ended up seem that she

she ended up winning by just about 1500 votes

is that she was not on the ballot.

Murkowski had lost the primary

and decided to launch a write-in campaign in the general election.

So some 92,000 people did indeed write-in Murkowski's name and she was re-elected.

It was the first write-in Senate victory since

1954 and the last in a long time until actually this year there was a sort of

notable writing campaign but it was uniquely Alaskin in that it involved Sarah Palin and the late Senator Ted Stevens,

but I think it also shows in a very interesting way how a party has to navigate the primary process and navigate frankly some of the fringe elements of its party,

which I think has a lot to make us think about today.

So here to discuss and think about that are, as always, Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter

Jackson of Wellesley hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there. We'll get into the

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