From a press release from the Parnell Campaign:

Parnell Defeats Berkowitz in November

Republican Seat Maintained Only One Way: Parnell in Primary

August 18, 2008, Anchorage, Alaska – Three recent polls show the Republican Primary Election is close. Two of three recent political polls show Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell ahead of the incumbent Don Young. Hays Research and Basswood Research each show Parnell polling ahead of Young by four percentage points. And in the Basswood Research poll, two-thirds of the undecided lean favorably toward Parnell.

In another recent poll, conducted by Ivan Moore Research (IMR), the results differ in that Young polls ahead of Parnell by six percentage points in the primary.

But for the first time, we have a look at the General Election and IMR poll results show a very clear distinction: Sean Parnell is the only Republican who can defeat Democrat Ethan Berkowitz in November. Parnell is the only choice for the Republicans to keep Alaska`s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Ivan Moore Research General Election poll numbers:

Ethan Berkowitz 51.3% versus Don Young 40.6%

Sean Parnell 46.0% versus Ethan Berkowitz 41.7%

The numbers are pretty clear. Both Young and Stevens are going to doom us in Alaska if they don’t get tossed in the August 26th primary election. It looks like Parnell has a decent shot at winning and we’d better keep our fingers crossed. Stevens I am more concerned about because he has several opponents who I am afraid will split the anti-Stevens vote between them and cause us to lose the election in November.

The fault here lays with the Alaska Republican Party for standing up for the old boys’ club instead of the grassroots of the party. They should have demanded that both these crooks drop out of their races and refuse any support to them if they stayed. Instead their selfishness is going to hurt us all in November if they are not defeated. This reminds me exactly of PA-10 in 2006 where we lost a very safe seat because the party powers-that-be rallied around a tainted incumbent instead of his challenger, much to our doom.