With thousands of absentee ballots still left to be counted in Alaska and the outcome of the GOP Senate primary looking increasingly unclear, Joe Miller, the Tea Party and Palin-backed candidate -- and slim leader -- is already seeing signs of friction with the GOP establishment.
Miller said on CNN on Monday that there might be a certain amount of resentment toward him within the Republican Party if he won the election.
"Well I think the die was kind of cast, in the sense that the [NRSC] brought a team of lawyers to Alaska against our campaign," Miller told CNN. "But frankly, I don't make enemies with anybody."
Miller has been consistent in his opposition to what he perceives to be agents of the national GOP interfering in the election to try to give his opponent, incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an advantage.
"We're very disturbed over the fact that the National Republican Senatorial Committee has chosen to send a group of high-powered lawyers up here to Alaska to interfere with our election process. It appears they're trying to steal an election," Miller told Politico's Mike Allen over the weekend. "The fact of it is, is that they only have one [goal], and it certainly is not the integrity of the election. It's to skew the results against Joe Miller."
Miller first voiced concerns of the NRSC's involvement in the vote-counting process on Friday when news broke that the Committee had dispatched a lawyer to the state. Murkowski responded to Miller's suggestions of GOP intervention by calling Miller "paranoid".
On Sunday, Politico reported that, in the wake of Miller's comments, NRSC lawyer Sean Cairncross was returning from Alaska despite the ongoing tallying of absentee ballots.
NRSC Communications Director Brian Walsh later clarified that their attorney had not been sent to Alaska to help decide a winner.
"While I'm sure Sean appreciates the compliment to his legal skills that anyone could think he would be able to affect an election, the reality is that only the people of Alaska will decide this election," Walsh said, according to Politico.
Miller himself responded to the withdrawal of NRSC operatives on ABC's "Top Line" Monday, saying that NRSC Chairman Sen. John Cornyn "gave me his word that he is pulling his team out."
Even so, the Senate hopeful maintained in his appearance on the ABC Webcast that there "certainly is an effort still underway to skew the results in favor of the opponent."
Watch Joe Miller on ABC News: