The Big Lake-Anderson-area District 30 Republican Committee met on Monday and passed a resolution of reprimand, telling U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to butt out and stop his attacks on Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka.
The resolution is similar to ones passed by GOP District Committees 6, 9, and the Anchorage Republican Women’s Club. All of the groups, which are official subdivisions of the state party, have stated that Sen. Lisa Murkowski was prohibited by the party from being an endorsed Republican candidate, and that she violated the conservative values and desires of Alaska Republicans.
McConnell has started an airwaves war against sitting Sen. Murkowski’s Republican opponent, Tshibaka, who is the party’s endorsed candidate.
“Whereas, the consensus of District 30 is that Senator McConnell tends to Kentucky and Washington, D.C., and we will tend to our own business in Alaska!” the resolution says.
Similar to the resolution approved by District 9 Republicans, District 30 has gone a step farther and asked the Kentucky Republican Party to take action against McConnell “for his unacceptable and grossly inappropriate behavior against your fellow Alaska Republicans and in their Republican endorsed candidate, Kelly Tshibaka.”
Tshibaka won the endorsement of the Alaska Republican Party in 2021 after the party had voted overwhelmingly to censure Murkowski and demand that she not run as a Republican, since she doesn’t reflect Republican values. Tshibaka is being vastly outspent by Murkowski, who now also has a $7 million boost from McConnell and his Senate Leadership Fund, which has been running harshly negative campaign ads against Republican Tshibaka.
McConnell has been inconsistent in his rationale for supporting candidates. To CNN earlier this year, McConnell said, “I don’t have a litmus test. I’m for people that get the Republican nomination, and for winning, because if we win we get to decide what the agenda is, and they don’t.”
McConnell may have said that, but he didn’t actually adhere to the philosophy when he snubbed the Alaska Republican Party endorsed candidate Tshibaka, and went with the candidate that the party clearly stated it didn’t want – the sitting senator, who the party has formally censured and attempted to boot from the party.
The party chairwoman Ann Brown has also issued a very tempered statement telling people that if they want to know about Kelly Tshibaka, they should go to her website and not listen to the ads opposing her.
