On the same day last November that Alaska voters pulled the lever for former President Donald Trump, they backed an initiative overhauling state election law that is poised to rescue Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s career.
The former president has vowed to do everything possible to oust the Republican senator in 2022, revenge for her vote to convict him on one article of impeachment approved by the House in the waning days of his White House tenure. And Trump’s opposition to Murkowski’s reelection probably would have been enough to sink her under Alaska’s old system of closed primaries and a general election pitting the Democratic and Republican nominees against each other.
But under the new rules, Republican insiders in the state are pegging Murkowski as the favorite over Kelly Tshibaka, who has been endorsed by Trump and the Alaska GOP, and any other candidate who might run. In 2020, as 53% of voters in GOP-leaning Alaska supported Trump, 51% approved Ballot Measure 2. The initiative instituted an all-party primary that advances the top four finishers to the general election, with that contest decided by ranked-choice voting.
“I think this system will allow Lisa to do very well,” said Eldon Mulder, a Republican lobbyist based on the Kenai Peninsula who was a member with Murkowski in the Alaska Legislature and is a longtime supporter. “Without ranked-choice voting, it would have been a challenge.”
Murkowski was appointed to the Senate by her father, then former senator and Gov. Frank Murkowski, in 2002. The Republican then proceeded to win three full terms, including in 2010, when she waged a successful write-in campaign in the general election after losing in a closed primary to Tea Party Republican Joe Miller. On Friday, Murkowski announced plans to seek a fourth term next year. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is backing her.
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A poll conducted in late October by Ivan Moore, a Democratic pollster in Alaska, showed the incumbent Republican in first place in three rounds of ranked-choice voting in a hypothetical general election matchup with Tshibaka and two others. The Tshibaka campaign, pointing to a similar survey from late May conducted by a different pollster, is confident Alaska’s jungle primary and ranked-choice general election would fail to save Murkowski.
Between Murkowski’s opposition to Trump for his alleged role in fomenting the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and her support for key elements of President Joe Biden’s agenda, especially her vote to confirm Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a climate change hawk, Tshibaka advisers are predicting Murkowski is headed for a major rebuke in the midterm elections. Tshibaka’s top political consultants were senior aides in Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.
“Lisa Murkowski was anti-Trump from the beginning — she voted to remove him from office after he was already gone, and this is the first time she’s been on the ballot since Trump was president and all of that happened,” said Tim Murtaugh, a top strategist for the Tshibaka campaign and former Trump adviser. “Biden has declared war on Alaska, and Lisa Murkowski has allowed the people who are doing it to be in place.”
Murkowski cruised to renomination and reelection in 2016, the same year Trump won the state with 51% of the vote.
But over time, her standing with the Republican base and grassroots conservatives generally eroded, a development fueled by tension with Trump and her increasingly centrist voting record on legislation and executive branch confirmations. This raised doubts about Murkowski’s 2022 viability, given how much the Republican Party has come to dominate state politics in recent years. And yet, simultaneously, the senator’s support among independent voters and centrist Democrats and Republicans improved and solidified.
That dynamic and Tshibaka’s perceived weakness outside of conservative circles have led many Republican insiders to conclude Murkowski is in the pole position in this race — even if the Democrats field a credible candidate who advances to the ranked-choice general election. However, some Murkowski supporters are cautioning against overconfidence, emphasizing that Trump’s opposition to her reelection and the broad voter support for his agenda are both significant challenges for her to overcome.
That the midterm elections mark the first federal contest with the open primary and ranked-choice voting is another variable that must be accounted for, some GOP insiders say.
“Lisa has a lot of advantages for reelection, but there’s also some looming unknowns that could spell trouble,” said a Republican in the state who backs Murkowski, requesting anonymity to speak candidly. “The ranked-choice system is more of an unknown … I see a strong possibility for confusion by voters in the ballot booth and a potential for unpredictable outcomes.”
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Beyond systemic advantages, Murkowski’s initial edge over Tshibaka and others is about money and political infrastructure.
The senator has won three statewide contests and is politically connected in every corner of a sprawling state, enjoying close ties to politically influential Alaska native communities. Meanwhile, Murkowski closed the third quarter fundraising period with $3.2 million in cash on hand, while her GOP challenger entered October with just over $294,000 in the bank. Tshibaka’s burn rate has been high, spending $931,000 of the $1.2 million she has raised this year.
