Tea Party-Backed Joe Miller Received Subsidies

Alaska Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller received federal farm subsidies for land that the fiscal conservative owned in Kansas in the 1990s.

Miller won the GOP primary with more than $550,000 in support from the Tea Party Express and campaigned in opposition to out-of-control spending by incumbents in Congress, including GOP primary opponent Lisa Murkowski.

The acknowledgment by the Miller campaign that he accepted farm subsidies follows a story by the Alaska Dispatch, which discovered through a Freedom of Information Act request that Miller received more than $7,000 in subsidies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1991-1997.

A blog last week reported Miller, an attorney, received subsidies for land in Alaska, a story the campaign called manufactured.

Miller spokesman Randy DeSoto said Tuesday that Miller is not against all federal spending, and some crops on his Kansas land were eligible for aid.

Desoto said none of this has to do with Miller's belief - more than a decade later - that the nation must find ways to address its deficit.

Steve Wackowski, a spokesman for Murkowski, who is mounting a write-in campaign, said Miller should have spoken up and acknowledged the subsidies earlier. Wackowski said it speaks to Miller's character that he did not.