The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner is reporting that former Alaska state Senate President Mike Miller is dropping his bid against Fairbanks Sen. Click Bishop. Miller told the paper that he withdrew because the race would be a “‘distraction” for the Republican party at a time when the party needs cohesion. He told the paper that he had been talking to Bishop over the past few weeks, and that the two “agree on a whole lot more issues than we disagree on.” Bishop is considered a moderate, union-friendly Republican. Miller was likely to draw conservative votes in the race.

Mikse Willoya-Marx, the Wasilla Democrat in Senate District E, has also dropped out of the race. Willoya-Marx was challenging state Sen. Mike Dunleavy, who will now face former Mat-Su Assemblyman Warren Keogh, who’s running as an independent, in the general.

Below is Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan’s response to a question I asked about if he plans to fight APOC’s staff decision to fine him $187.50 for a campaign violation. APOC said that a statement that Sullivan sent from his official office was “election related” and therefore should not have been sent from his office. The statement in question was an apology for comparing union membership to slavery at a lieutenant governor’s forum. Read the back story here:

I am going to present a reasoned response that suggest that when something of this nature is so ‘de minimus,’ a cautionary warning to try and avoid candidate/elected official conflicts might be more appropriate than an arbitrary $187.50 penalty. The headline generated is completely out of proportion to the actual event, probably punishment enough.

From Slate’s Amanda Marcotte on why politics is so male-dominated:

After performing 45 interviews with experienced candidates and officeholders and holding multiple focus groups with other politicians and staff members, the [Institute for Women’s Policy Research] found that women had smaller networks than men to access for funding, faced sexist nonsense while campaigning, and had far less support on the homefront than male candidates, who can often depend on a wife who devotes herself to his career full time. One thing the researchers did not find is that women lack ambition. “Ambition is not an issue or a deficit with these women,” Denise L. Baer and Heidi Hartmann, the study’s authors, write. “Most women self-recruited for their first office or campaign, and only one in four say others recruited them for their first office.

In the upcoming races in Alaska, nine women are running for state Senate, compared to 16 men who are doing so. Twenty-six women and 56 men are running for state House.