Third of three Senate candidate profiles

One after another the national conservative stars appeared by video Wednesday night to laud Joe Miller, saying he's what's required to cut federal spending, roll back the health care reform and fight President Barack Obama. Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma drew cheers at the Miller rally when he said he wished combat vet Miller had been by his side in Washington, D.C., to defend Inhofe's belief that global warming is the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Rep. Michelle Bachmann and Sen. Jim DeMint all heaped praise on Miller. Then came the biggest star of the show, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose endorsement of Miller led to the Tea Party Express money crucial to his upset defeat of Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary. Palin told the crowd that the nation is headed toward insolvency and the only way to turn that around is to change the leadership in D.C.

"And that's what Joe Miller's campaign is all about. And that's why they cannot stand to hear what he stands for," Palin told the cheering crowd.

Miller's rise to national tea party stardom and, potentially, to the U.S. Senate, has been fast and rough. He wasn't well known in Alaska before announcing in April that he was running for U.S. Senate. Even in his hometown of Fairbanks, where he narrowly lost a 2004 race for the state House, Miller wasn't a prominent figure.

He is well known now, both for his views that programs from unemployment benefits to Social Security are unconstitutional on the federal level, and for a campaign that he concedes has made missteps. Miller at one point took the position that he would answer no questions about his past, and drew national headlines when his private security team handcuffed a journalist pressing him for answers. Miller has maintained the journalist was acting inappropriately, and he has never disavowed the handcuffing, but he says that other issues in his campaign were the result of naivete.

"Alaskans get to understand that, hey, they're electing someone like them. I've gone through trials, I have not always had a silver spoon, I've had challenges in life," Miller said at a recent debate.

Miller admits he has flaws but says the intense scrutiny of his past is clouding what's important in the race: the issues he's running on.

'SOVEREIGN DEBT CRISIS'

Miller was briefly in the news in 2008 when he joined with then-Gov. Palin in an unsuccessful effort to oust Randy Ruedrich as chairman of the state Republican Party. He appeared at an anti-Obama rally in Anchorage in September of last year, saying the president wants to turn the U.S. into a "bastion of socialism."

Miller had been thinking about running for lieutenant governor, but he was urged by legislative aides for conservative state legislators to go after Murkowski instead. Murkowski has always been unpopular with elements of Alaska's conservative wing. Particular sore points are her position on abortion (she does not oppose abortion but also declines to describe herself as pro-choice) and the fact that she was initially appointed to her Senate seat in 2002 by her father, then-Gov. and former U.S. Sen. Frank Murkowski.

Murkowski won re-election on her own in 2004, but the Miller team thought her positions in the Senate gave them a shot at upsetting her in the Republican primary, which tilts toward more conservative candidates.

Miller supporters tend to have strong views against abortion. Miller opposes it in all cases, including rape and incest.

The centerpiece of Miller's campaign is that federal spending is completely out of control. During the primary in particular he warned of a "sovereign debt crisis" and said the economic riots and street deaths that rocked Greece could be coming to the U.S.

A message of slashing the federal appropriations that have historically been a crucial part of Alaska's economy has never worked in a general election, though, and Miller has been emphasizing that he also would fight for federal dollars but that there will inevitably be a reduction as a result of the national debt crisis.

He's also maintained that federal entitlement programs, including unemployment benefits, are unconstitutional and that the nation is suffering from an "entitlement mentality."

Murkowski called him a hypocrite when it came out that Miller had received federal Medicare and state Denali Kid Care, which is largely funded by the federal government, to provide benefits for his family of eight children. His wife had also received unemployment benefits after federal nepotism rules required Miller to let her go as his clerk when he was working as a magistrate in Fairbanks.

Miller's response was that he doesn't oppose such programs that provide a transition for people to become economically independent, he just wants them to be completely controlled by the states. People currently on Social Security should keep getting it, he says, but the program should eventually be privatized or shifted to the states.

KANSAS ROOTS

Miller has declined repeated requests for interviews about his life story. Bits have emerged over the last few months, but gaps in his personal history remain. He has posted some documents about his military and legal career on his website, joemiller.us. Recently, he answered a few questions posed to him by the Daily News on his military career and parts of his biography. His campaign staff, unlike the campaigns of Democrat Scott McAdams and Murkowski, insisted the questions be submitted and answered in writing.

Miller's life before he came to Alaska at age 27 was rooted in central Kansas. With the exception of his time at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., virtually every place he lived was within a 75-mile radius of Salina, Kan., population 45,000, including the Army base where he served his career as a tank officer.

Miller was born on May 10, 1967, in Osborne, a tiny county seat in northern Kansas farm country. His family moved to Glen Elder, which with 400 people is half the size of Osborne, and then, when he was 4, to Salina, he told a reporter for the Salina Journal. He participated in debate at Salina Central High School and graduated in 1985.

A friend from high school, Tom Hemmer, told the Salina Journal in August that he found it surprising that so few people in the area knew Miller was running for the Senate. Miller's parents, who are in Alaska working on his campaign, now make their home in Manhattan, Kans., His father, Rex, once owned a Christian book store, according to the Hutchinson (Kan.) News.

Miller's attendance at the U.S. Military Academy and his subsequent service in the Army is a central pillar of his biography. He talks about his military service at virtually every campaign appearance.

"We'll do everything we can to make sure that the defense stature in Alaska remains strong," Miller told a town hall audience in Soldotna two weeks ago. "And what better person could you have in Congress to do that than somebody's that's served, that's had combat experience and understands the need."

In high school, Miller received a congressional nomination to the U.S. Air Force Academy, the Hutchinson News said. Miller told the Daily News he also received a vice presidential nomination to the U.S. Naval Academy.

"I received an early admission to West Point," Miller said in a written response to a question. "I chose West Point because I was not pilot-qualified at either Annapolis or the Air Force Academy." He didn't explain what disqualified him from flight training.

Moller graduated from West Point in 1989, in the top 1 percent of his class, he said, of about 1,000 cadets. Miller received his commission as a 2nd lieutenant and was soon leading a tank platoon, consisting of four M1 tanks and 15 crewmen, in the Fort Riley, Kan.-based 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor.

In the first of what would be four consecutive glowing evaluations, Miller's supervisors described him as an officer who stood far above his peers.

TANK COMMANDER

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, set the stage for America's last major tank engagement. Now a first lieutenant, Miller and his platoon deployed with the rest of the 2nd Battalion in December 1990, about a month before the start of the ground campaign to remove the Iraqis from Kuwait, according to Miller.

"My platoon was defending the neutral zone on the border of Saudi Arabia and Iraq," Miller said. "A patrol (of Iraqi soldiers) began to probe our line and my tank engaged and destroyed that patrol with machine gun fire. We also called in mortars to assist."

Then-Capt. Richard Orth said in his evaluation of Miller that he was a "true warrior leader tested under fire." Orth, now a colonel, said Miller turned in a superior performance in combat, destroying the Iraqi patrol on Feb. 18, 1991, and then leading a 95-mile road march.

Orth and later reviewers described Miller, who received the Bronze Star, as a soldier with an unlimited potential for advancement. Yet, with little more than two years of his five-year West Point obligation completed, Miller began taking steps to quit the Army, applying for admittance to at least three civilian law schools.

Miller said his supervisors knew he was applying because they recommended him for the Army's Funded Legal Education Program, which provides full scholarships to law school in return for the officer joining the Judge Advocate General corps. But the program wouldn't pay his expenses at any of the three out-of-state schools he wanted to attend, two of them in the Ivy League.

Miller's Army discharge certificate, posted on his website, was dated Sept. 1, 1992. It gives his time of service as three years, three months and seven days. It was an honorable discharge under a regulation providing for "unqualified resignation," a miscellaneous category for an officer in good standing.

"The Army went through a significant downsizing during the early and mid '90s, dropping from 18 to 10 active duty divisions or from about 800,000 troops to about 500,000," Miller said. "To make the transition, the Army instituted a voluntary early release program."

When he appears before public gatherings, he'll often ask people to speak up. "I'm hard of hearing because I'm a tanker from Desert Storm," he told the crowd in Soldotna.

In a radio appearance last week, Miller said he never tried to get disability payments, though he said he has been treated through the Veterans Administration for "a service-connected hearing loss."

The final military review posted on Miller's website covers the period ending March 22, 1992.

That was also the year Miller married Kathleen Tomkins. He told the Hutchinson News that she was from a military family and grew up near Fort Riley in Junction City. She had two children from a previous marriage and reported receiving child support payments from Gregory Higgins as late as 2008.

The month of his 1992 discharge, Miller entered Yale Law School. Over the next two years, according to a later job application, he clerked at law firms in New Haven, Conn., where Yale is located, and in Kansas City and Wichita, Kan.

Former Alaska Lt. Gov. Loren Leman, who was in the Alaska Legislature at the time, met Miller about that time at a conference in Washington, D.C. Leman couldn't recall the details of the conference but said it involved delegations from various states. Miller happened on the room where the Alaskans were.

"I think he was looking for Kansas but saw "Alaska" on a name tag and said, 'Alaska! I want to move to Alaska,' " Leman recalled. "He said, 'Can we talk?' "

Leman said Miller asked him if he knew of any law firms where Miller might clerk, and Leman named some.

In July 1994, after his second year in law school, Miller came to Anchorage with his wife, her two children and a third they had together. He worked for a month or two as a law clerk at a local law firm representing the state in oil tax matters, then in August, interned at the Alaska Department of Law.

ROAD TO POLITICS

That fall, on Sept. 22, the Millers purchased a modest Hillside ranch home valued by the city assessor at $98,500, taking out a $92,000 mortgage. Miller returned to Yale to finish his law degree, and Kathleen remained in Anchorage. Miller said he flew back and forth to Anchorage several times over the next spring.

Miller received his law degree that May and in June began work as an associate attorney at an Anchorage law firm, Condon, Partnow & Sharrock. He has reported his salary as $70,000 a year.

On July 31, 1995, three months after spending $1,320 on building permits for a $110,000 addition to the home, Miller obtained a $5 low-income resident fishing, hunting and trapping license. Kathleen did the same on Aug. 4. They each saved $50 off the regular license charge. His opponents in the Senate campaign criticized him for claiming to be a low-income, but Miller maintains he legitimately qualified for it.

Miller left the Anchorage firm in 1998 and has had government jobs for most of the time since, beginning with a $58,000-a-year position as full-time state magistrate in Tok. Magistrate positions are overseen by the judiciary and don't require executive appointment or legislative confirmation. State magistrates can deal with traffic offenses, issue warrants and hear small civil and domestic violence cases. They can hold state misdemeanor trials if the defendant agrees in writing to be tried by a magistrate rather than a state judge.

Four years later, on June 13, 2002, the federal U.S. District Court in Alaska hired Miller as a part-time magistrate judge in Fairbanks. Not long after he opened a lone private practice and became a part-time attorney for the Fairbanks North Star Borough.

Miller's tenure at the borough started well, according to evaluations from his supervisors. He ran for the state House in 2004, in a district that included the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Miller listed education and public health as his top two priorities on a university candidate survey, saying he favored using state funds to increase the university budget by 5 percent a year.

He narrowly lost to Fairbanks Democratic Rep. David Guttenberg in a district where it's hard for a Republican to win. Six days after the election, he applied for a Superior Court judgeship in Fairbanks, then withdrew his application in the middle of January.

Miller's wife, Kathleen, meanwhile, had been home-schooling their eight children. She also helped her husband at the law office and was a part-time home economics teacher for five months in 2002 and an elementary teacher at Fairhill Christian School in Fairbanks from August 2007 to July 2008. Then-Gov. Palin appointed her last year to the Alaska Judicial Council, which decides what applicants for state judgeships a governor can consider.

Miller himself became the Interior regional chairman of the state Republican Party. In 2008 he joined with Palin to try to get rid of Ruedrich as party chairman. Palin and Ruedrich were antagonists inside the party, and she had successfully accused him of unethical conduct as an appointed state official.

Miller said in a March 8, 2008, interview with the Daily News that the state Republican Party faced a crisis of confidence. "The public needs to be assured that this is not the party of corruption and influence but the party of limited government, of Lincoln, of state's rights" Miller said.

Miller noted in that 2008 interview that Ruedrich had admitted breaking ethics laws for doing party work at his state job and improperly disclosing a confidential document to a lobbyist. Just four days after that interview took place, though, Miller himself got in trouble for using Fairbanks North Star Borough computers for partisan purposes.

Documents released last week after a lawsuit by media organizations showed that Miller, who had been left alone in the office, went on three of his co-workers' computers at the borough to vote in a poll. Miller was hosting the poll on his own website, and the poll question was about whether the party needed new leadership. He apparently needed to use different computers because the poll software wouldn't count multiple votes from the same computer. He cleared the caches on his co-workers' computers in an attempt to erase his tracks.

The documents released by the borough show Miller lied when caught, but then confessed and apologized. He was suspended for three days, put on probation, and required to go to the Employee Assistance Program for an evaluation.

'I AM ONE OF YOU'

Miller, while acknowledging that he's "flawed," has called the incident a petty distraction from important issues. He complains that the other candidates in the race haven't received the same scrutiny.

"I am one of you, warts and all," Miller told viewers at the close of the KTUU television debate on Sunday. "You've got me, and you know exactly where I've been and you know where I'm going."

Miller said at his Wednesday night rally that he's the target of special interests that desperately want to hold on to power in Washington, D.C. "Instead of getting us down it has solidified our resolve, it has motivated us to go out and convince others to support this movement that starts right here in Alaska," he said.

Miller's message was that people are fed up with government and the future of the nation hangs in the balance. "They're sick and tired of government being a burden, not being a help. They're sick and tired of government growing beyond the bounds of what the Constitution authorizes."

Miller ended the rally by telling his supporters they have prayer in their arsenal.