Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, beat challenger Kelly Tshibaka to secure her fourth full Senate term.
Murkowski is considered to be one of the more centrist Republican voices in Congress, and her win could help President Joe Biden pass his agenda as well as extend her clout in the closely divided Senate.
Neither Murkowski nor Tshibaka, the top two candidates in the four-person race, reached the 50% threshold needed for an outright win, which meant the winner was decided by ranked choice tabulation that was announced on Wednesday.
Under that system, instead of picking a single candidate for office, Alaskan voters were allowed to rank whom they wanted to fill a particular position. In the first round of counting, if no candidate makes it to the 50% mark, it goes to a second round, which starts with the candidate who got the fewest votes in the first round being eliminated. If the eliminated candidate was a voter’s top pick, their next choice would get their vote in the round. This continued until Murkowski was declared the winner. She defeated Tshibaka 54% to 46%.
Murkowski has held the Alaska Senate seat since 1981. Before Murkowski, who was first elected in 2002, her father, Frank, had served as Alaska’s senator.
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Murkowski was one of seven Republican senators who crossed party lines to impeach Trump on charges related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. She called on Trump to resign and also expressed doubt when asked if she would vote for him should he run for office again in 2024.
In retaliation, Trump vowed to use his political weight to unseat her, making her one of the most vulnerable Republicans seeking reelection in the midterm elections.
“I will not be endorsing, under any circumstances, the failed candidate from the great state of Alaska, Lisa Murkowski,” Trump said. “She represents her state badly and her country even worse.”
He also called her “disloyal” and a “very bad senator.”
Instead of backing Murkowski, Trump went all-in on Tshibaka, a former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration. He even flew to Anchorage to stump for Tshibaka and former Gov. Sarah Palin, who ran for the state’s at-large House seat.
“Murkowski’s opponent, Kelly Tshibaka, is a true ‘America First’ patriot who will never stab Alaska voters in the back,” Trump told thousands of Alaskans attending the rally.
At an event in late October, Tshibaka, a 43-year-old Harvard-educated lawyer, told a packed crowd that the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that Murkowski helped write was nothing more than an expensive boondoggle and insinuated Murkowski’s campaign was funded by special interest groups and “dark money.”
Tshibaka told the Anchorage Daily News she decided to run for Murkowski’s seat after the senator voted in February 2021 to confirm Deb Haaland, Biden’s nominee for secretary of the Interior Department. Tshibaka called it “a punch in the gut” and said Haaland’s views on scaling back oil and gas development in favor of environmentalism angered Alaskans who view the development of natural resources as a vital part of the state’s economy. Haaland, however, was backed by Alaska’s entire congressional delegation and supported by Alaska’s Indigenous community.
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Admittedly, Murkowski’s relationship with Alaskans has been prickly at times, with Republicans claiming she’s too liberal and Democrats demonizing her for being too conservative. According to FiveThirtyEight, Murkowski is among the Republicans who voted against Trump the most, though they still saw eye to eye about 72% of the time. Under the Biden administration, Murkowski’s votes have been in line with the Democratic president’s positions 67% of the time.
Murkowski and Tshibaka were virtually tied in the polls leading up to Election Day. Democrat Patricia Chesbro and Republican Buzz Kelley came in a distant third and fourth.
The three Republicans and one Democrat faced off against one another in the general election as part of Alaska’s ranked choice voting system. The new system, approved by voters in 2020, changed how the state administered the primary and general elections. During the primaries, voters had the option to choose among all candidates in the Senate rate, regardless of party. Each eligible Alaskan got one vote, and the four candidates who received the most advanced to the general election. That worked in Murkowski’s favor since she appealed to centrist voters, independents, and even some Democrats.
Alaska GOP leaders voted in October to censure Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for supporting Murkowski. The 49-8 vote came after the Senate Leadership Fund, a McConnell-aligned super PAC, spent $5 million in attack ads against Tshibaka.
Tshibaka came under fire for ditching the Kodiak fisheries debate, which has been a staple of Alaska politics for more than 30 years.
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Instead, she headed to Dallas, where she attended a fundraiser with Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters.
Tshibaka posted pictures on social media from a Dallas Cowboys football game, prompting Murkowski’s campaign to say her absence spoke “volumes about how she feels about Alaska’s fishing industry and the Alaskans who support it. Not only is Kelly out of touch with Alaska — she’s not even here.”
