Challenger Dan Sullivan declared victory Wednesday in his campaign to oust incumbent U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, and he flew to Washington, D.C., to help select leaders of the new Republican-controlled Senate.
Sullivan, a Republican, made the declaration after maintaining a significant lead over Begich with the counting of some 17,000 ballots on Tuesday, and The Associated Press called the race in his favor.
Begich, a Democrat, on Wednesday refused to concede. His campaign stressed that tens of thousands of votes remain to be counted, with ballots in key areas that traditionally trend Democratic relatively undercounted so far.
That includes 128 rural villages where early voting locations were established this year and where Begich campaigned hard.
"Those who had historic access to early voting locations for the first time should have their voices heard," said Max Croes, Begich's spokesman.
Begich hammered Sullivan in those remote villages in Western Alaska and the Arctic, receiving three votes to every one for Sullivan. But the known quantity of votes remaining to be counted in those areas and others, and district-by-district voting trends so far, suggest that Begich won't pull off a surprise victory like he did in 2008 against Sen. Ted Stevens.
The Associated Press declared Sullivan the winner after more votes were counted Tuesday, a week after the Nov. 4 election.
"I am deeply humbled and honored to serve my fellow Alaskans in the United States Senate," Sullivan said in a statement early Wednesday. "Our campaign was about opportunity -- because I truly believe that there is nothing that is wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with Alaska."
After the AP called the race late Tuesday, Sullivan's team hurried to get him on a plane to D.C. so he could be there to participate in Senate Republican Conference meetings on Thursday, where votes for leadership positions for the new Senate Republican majority will take place, said Mike Anderson, spokesman for the campaign.
"Once the race was called late last night, we made arrangements to ensure that Dan made it to Washington, D.C., by Thursday morning to vote in the GOP conference elections," Anderson said in an email. Sullivan could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
Begich turned down requests for an interview.
The vote-counting in Alaska will resume Friday and should continue over the weekend. A winner may not be officially declared for days, aggravating voters in what has been the costliest race in Alaska's history. Between Sullivan's and Begich's campaigns and the groups supporting them, more than $50 million poured into the state, much of it in the form of a massive advertising blitz that filled mailboxes with fliers and crowded answering machines with pre-recorded messages. The stakes were high, and not just in Alaska. In Washington, D.C., Republicans had long ago targeted Begich's seat in the hopes of flipping control of the Senate out of the hands of Democrats.
"This was a hard-fought race," Sullivan said in a statement. "As we move forward, I want to emphasize that my door will always be open to all Alaskans."
Sullivan is a former state attorney general and natural resources commissioner who served in the U.S. Department of State under President George W. Bush.
Begich had been the first Democrat from Alaska to serve in the Senate since Mike Gravel, who served between 1969 and 1981. A former two-term Anchorage mayor, Begich won his Senate seat in 2008 just one week after the long-serving incumbent, Republican Ted Stevens, was found guilty of federal corruption charges that were later invalidated.
As Sullivan and his campaign celebrated, Begich still saw a chance to overcome a large deficit. Begich has chipped away very slightly at Sullivan's lead since Tuesday morning but he is still down about 8,000 votes.
Elections officials said late Tuesday that more than 33,000 votes remain to be counted, a number that will grow because more absentee ballots continue to arrive. A new update was expected sometime Wednesday night.
Focusing on that known quantity, Begich would have to receive close to two votes for every one received by Sullivan to overcome his deficit, an unlikely scenario. Begich so far has received 45.4 percent of about 245,000 votes for senator, while Sullivan has received 48.6 percent.
Still, Begich is pinning some of his hope on rural Alaska.
The four remote districts represented by the Nome offices did relatively little counting on Tuesday. Of the roughly 20,000 ballots counted statewide, a few more than 200 were counted in Nome.
But totals as of Tuesday night showed a relatively small number of ballots remained to be counted there, with only 3,500 absentee and questioned ballots waiting to be tallied in those regions.
Croes also said chunks of Southeast that typically vote Democratic have not had a lot of second-round counting. But again, the numbers to be counted appear too small to help Begich.
Mathematical possibilities, however, aren't Begich's only focus.
"The focus is making sure every ballot is counted and every voice heard," Croes said.