WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Norm Coleman, who himself lost a bitter recount for a U.S. Senate seat, says Alaskan Joe Miller should call it quits in his bid for the upper house of Congress.
Both men are Republicans. Coleman was a sitting U.S. senator from Minnesota who lost to Democrat Al Franken in 2008. Miller, was a Tea Party-backed, upset winner in Alaska's GOP primary, but now is the apparent narrow loser to Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski, who ran a write-in campaign as an independent, after NBC declared her the winner.
"I think that race is over," Politico quoted Coleman as saying in a C-SPAN interview to air Sunday. "I think the counting's been done. I'm not sure there's anything that would change that."
Miller has gone to court, seeking a hand recount of his votes and arguing votes shouldn't count for Murkowski unless her name is spelled correctly. Murkowski leads Miller by about 10,300 votes, including about 8,100 votes challenged by Miller's campaign.
Coleman spent seven months pushing his recount and legal challenges, only to lose by 225 votes.
"I made a decision in my race with Franken at a certain point in time to say, 'Let's not go any further,'" Coleman said. "I think at a certain point in time, you have to have some finality to these things. It should be time to move on. There's not much that you can gain by extending the process.
"I understand Joe's frustration. I had some of those concerns in Minnesota on a much, much, much closer race."
