Alaska GOP Declares War On Mitch McConnell For Backing Lisa Murkowski

Alaska GOP Declares War On Mitch McConnell For Backing Lisa Murkowski

Arjun Singh on October 25, 2022

The Republican Party of Alaska has voted to condemn the actions of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for his “direct contradiction of the party,” owing to his support for Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s re-election campaign in the state.

The party wrote that McConnell’s allied Super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, has “been used for malicious political attack ads” against Republican candidate Kelly Tshibaka, which are “gross distortions of the facts,” according to the resolution posted on Facebook. It was published Monday night after a 49-8 vote of the party’s Central Committee on Sunday.

Under Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting systemr and jungle primary, adopted in 2020, Murkowski advanced to the general election along with three other candidates, including Tshibaka. The prospect of two GOP candidates in the general election has caused alarm among some Republicans, who fear that attacks on Tshibaka and her low ranking on ballots by voters will cause the Democratic candidate, Pat Chesboro, to win the race.

An independent group working to re-elect Sen. Lisa Murkowski raised $2.4 million in the past three months — four times as much as rival Republican Kelly Tshibaka, the target of the group’s attack ads.https://t.co/wLri5ASG9N

— KTOO (@KTOOpubmedia) July 21, 2022

Tshibaka was endorsed by former President Donald Trump and the state party over Murkowski, who has held the seat since 2002. The effort to remove Murkowski by Republicans stems from her moderate position on issues in the Senate as well as her opposition to Trump’s presidency and his agenda, which involved her voting to impeach him in 2021 and voting against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, according to earlier reporting by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Murkowski also, recently, announced that she would vote for the Democratic candidate, incumbent Rep. Mary Pelota, in the election to Alaska’s at-large Congressional district in November, over Republican candidates Nick Begich III and former Gov. Sarah Palin, per remarks she delivered at the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention on Friday. Pelota, a longtime friend of Murkowski, later cross-endorsed her.

However, McConnell, who has a bitter ongoing feud with Trump, has endorsed Murkowski’s re-election, seeing her as a friend and bulwark against Trump’s influence in the upper chamber, per The New York Times. Murkowski has also been endorsed by Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, as reported previously by the DCNF.

Among the attack ads cited by the state party’s resolution include a segment claiming that Tshibaka wishes to “ban birth control by mail.” Though Tshibaka has supported a ban on selling emergency contraceptive pills online, she has not said she would ban all forms of birth control, according to FactCheck.org, a fact-checking website.

Murkowski has given “her middle finger” to Alaska Republicans, wrote Suzanne Downing, the publisher of Must Read Alaska, a state-wide blog, in an op-ed published by The Daily Caller News Foundation. 

Murkowski’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.