Vote 2010 Election: Joe Miller's Bodyguards Cuff Blogger, Spark Backlash in Alaska

Oct. 19, 2010 -- A reporters' rights group blasted the campaign of Alaska Republican senate candidate Joe Miller on Monday after a liberal blogger was handcuffed by the candidate's private security guards before being set free by police.

"It strikes me as virtually incomprehensible that anyone would have to rough up and handcuff a reporter who's just trying to do a story," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press.

"It seems to me that they didn't like this guy, so they just decided to take him out," Dalglish said of Tony Hopfinger, editor of the Alaska Dispatch website.

Click here to watch ABC's Jonathan Karl interview Joe Miller on the minimum wage and the 17th Amendment.

Hopfinger was detained Sunday by Miller's hired guards -- men wearing dark suits and earpieces -- after he chased the candidate with a video camera down the hallway of a public school, following an hour-long town hall meeting in the school's gym. Hopfinger was reportedly trying to ask Miller about his time as a part-time attorney for the Fairbanks North Star Borough, amid allegations that he used government computers there for partisan political activity.

But the blogger "was surrounded by Miller's private detail and told that he had to leave," a statement from the Alaska Dispatch reads. The guards then accused Hopfinger of trespassing.

"Hopfinger asked why he was trespassing, as the event was at a public school. Seconds later, he was handcuffed and sequestered at one end of a hallway for at least 20 minutes," according to the website.

As they tried to document what was happening to Hopfinger, other reporters were confronted by Miller's guards and also accused of trespassing, a video posted on the Anchorage Daily News website showed, but none was detained. One of the guards was heard to say the trespassing claim was legitimate because the school had been rented by the campaign for a "private event."

Police released Hopfinger from the handcuffs and filed no charges.

Miller's campaign responded to the incident with a news release headlined, "Liberal Blogger 'Loses It," accusing Hopfinger of "a publicity stunt" and calling him "irrational, angry and potentially violent."