U.S. Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka says Sen. Lisa Murkowski, by voting for a Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress, shows she wants to keep Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in power. On Friday at Alaska Federation of Natives, Murkowski said she will vote for Mary Peltola, the Democrat, for U.S. Congress, rather than either of her fellow Republicans who are running for the seat.
“Lisa Murkowski will vote to send Nancy Pelosi another foot soldier to help push the radical, leftist agenda that is battering Alaska every single day. The only people who want Pelosi to be Speaker are those who like the Biden war on Alaska’s energy workers, high gas prices, runaway inflation, and the Lower 48 taking away Alaska’s freedoms and gun rights. This isn’t some principled position – Murkowski has clearly made a political calculation that her only chance to save herself is to go full Biden enabler,” Tshibaka said.
“This is the same senator who warned everyone that dark money from the Lower 48 would try to buy this Senate seat, yet is accepting millions from Mitch McConnell to lie about me, the official, endorsed candidate of the Alaska Republican Party. With her support of Pelosi and Biden, and her support from McConnell, Lisa Murkowski has shown that she’s wearing the jersey of the D.C. establishment, rather than the home colors of Alaska,” Tshibaka said.
The Alaska Republican Party has tried for years now to divorce itself from Murkowski. In 2021, the party censured her and asked her to leave the party. Later that year, the party endorsed Tshibaka, even though Murkowski did not relinquish her Republican membership.
Further fracturing the matter is that Sen. Mitch McConnell, who controls the Senate Leadership Fund for the Republicans, is spending $7 million to bash Republican Tshibaka, who is the state party’s candidate.
Murkowski needs the support of Democrats to win, and solidified her rural support by announcing at AFN that she will support Peltola, who is Alaska Native and the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.
The move to endorse a Democrat is especially troubling to Republicans since the U.S. House of Representatives will almost certainly come under Republican control after the November election, and Peltola, who holds Alaska’s only seat in Congress, will be a freshman in the minority, leaving Alaska in a weak position, especially if the Senate remains in Democrat Party hands.
Murkowski and Peltola have also been featured together on campaign literature left on people’s doors. That pairing was produced by the dark money behemoth Sixteen Thirty Fund, which has been part of creating ranked choice voting, and which support Democrat candidates.
