Op-Ed: Murkowski, with McConnell's Money, Picks a Democrat Over the Alaska GOP
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, censured by the Alaska Republican Party 18 months ago, is giving the state party’s grassroots leaders the back of her hand.
Or maybe it’s her middle finger. Murkowski is not only battling back against her own state party, which supported her in 2016 but not this year; she’s now going rogue on her Republican donors, who cannot be terribly happy with her move to try to keep House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in power.
Instead of supporting Nick Begich III, the Alaska Republican Party’s only endorsed candidate for Congress, Murkowski said the quiet part out loud: She will vote for Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who was ushered into office via the same open primary and ranked-choice voting system that helped Murkowski get to the Nov. 8 general election.
You read that right: Rather than publicly support Republican-endorsed Begich or even the unendorsed Republican Sarah Palin, Murkowski has gone to the other side.
Through Peltola, Alaska’s senior senator is supporting Pelosi, President Joe Biden and the failed policies of the Democrats. If Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is supporting Murkowski at this point, then McConnell himself is sending Pelosi another foot soldier.
For Murkowski and the Republicans in Alaska, it’s all over but the shouting.
Murkowski’s valentine to the Democrats came over the weekend when the Alaska Republican Party polled its district officers to decide whether to censure McConnell and his Senate Leadership Fund over the air-bombing campaign ads attacking the state party’s endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate, Kelly Tshibaka.
The vote was 49-8 in favor of a strong resolution telling McConnell to cease and desist his attacks on the Alaska Republicans’ candidate. News of Murkowski’s endorsement of the opposing team cannot have helped her with any sympathetic Republican committee officers.
Now, the Alaska Republican Party is not only fighting Murkowski, who has been in office since 2002; it’s fighting McConnell.
Even without the Republicans, Murkowski may have hacked a win out of a tight race. Alaskans have ushered in a new open primary and ranked-choice voting system designed by Murkowski’s top supporters. Since most Alaskans are not aligned with any party, the plan from Camp Murkowski was always to sweep up enough Democratic and unaligned votes to win in November, and her endorsement of Peltola will help her in that effort.
Murkowski and Peltola represent a state that gave Donald Trump solid wins in 2016 and 2020. This is the black magic of ranked-choice voting combined with Murkowski now riding Peltola’s populist coattails.
Over the weekend, the state’s largest native political group, the Alaska Federation of Natives, endorsed both Murkowski and Peltola. Normally, the Democrat-leaning group would endorse the farthest-left candidates running, but in this case, AFN has skipped over the Democrat — Patricia Chesbro — and stuck with middle-left Murkowski, pairing her with progressive Peltola as the champions for AFN’s interests.
Murkowski seems determined to put Alaska in the minority in Congress, which is moving almost certainly to Republican control in the November election. With just one at-large seat representing a Republican-leaning state, it seems almost impossible that Alaska could elect Peltola, but that’s the ranked-choice way. Murkowski has done the math. She knows how this works.
For the 49th state, much is at stake. If the Senate stays under the control of Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and if the House flips to GOP leadership but Peltola wins for the Democrats, Alaska will be in the minority in both the Senate and the House.
Murkowski doesn’t appear to care. She’ll be 66 in May, and 71 during what would be her next election cycle. Chances are this election is her last, no matter which way it goes.
This scenario is a first for Alaska, but it may also be a first for Republicans at the national level: The highest-ranking elected Republican in the country — McConnell — is doing battle with a state party 3,500 miles away to prevent a state party from determining its own Republican candidate.
McConnell may be hoping for a minority he can control rather than a majority he cannot, and doesn’t seem to care one iota that his candidate — Murkowski — is now openly batting for the Democratic team.
Suzanne Downing is the publisher of Must Read Alaska.
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