An Alaskan Republican who questioned the results of the presidential election will challenge Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
Kelly Tshibaka, who has been Alaska’s commissioner of the Department of Administration since 2019, announced her candidacy to replace Murkowski in 2023 on Monday. She will be resigning from her position to pursue the Senate seat.
“We know what Washington, D.C., thinks about Alaska: We’re here for their benefit, and we won’t put up much of a fight. After nearly 20 years in D.C., Lisa Murkowski thinks the same way,” Tshibaka said in a campaign video. “But you know what? Nothing scares those D.C. political insiders more than the thought of a strong, independent Alaskan leader in their ranks: one they can’t bully, one they can’t control, one they can’t silence.”
In November, Tshibaka published an op-ed for Must Read Alaska, days after the media projected Joe Biden to be the next president. In the piece, published on Nov. 11, she said the election’s result “remains undetermined,” and she referenced a handful of debunked claims questioning the integrity of Biden’s victory.
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Murkowski has not declared whether to run for a fourth term after being appointed to the position when her father, former Gov. Frank Murkowski, left the Senate to fill the governorship in 2002.
She is one of the few Republicans willing to be critical of former President Donald Trump during his time in office and was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial. The trial came after he was accused of inciting the riot that descended upon the Capitol in January as Congress was certifying the election.
The Alaska GOP overwhelmingly voted to censure her for the vote on Trump’s guilt, and the former president vowed to campaign against her.
“I will not be endorsing, under any circumstances, the failed candidate from the great State of Alaska, Lisa Murkowski. She represents her state badly and her country even worse,” he said earlier this month. “I do not know where other people will be next year, but I know where I will be — in Alaska campaigning against a disloyal and very bad Senator.”
Despite Trump’s disdain for the Alaska senator, she has the support of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
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Last year, Alaskan voters approved a voting measure to create a top-four primary system in which all candidates running for a given office will face off against each other regardless of party affiliation. That will likely have the practical effect of giving Murkowski another Senate term, as her political fate won’t be decided in the primary solely by the Trump-loving Republican base but also with Democrats and independents, to whom she’s proven to have significant crossover appeal.
