Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been meddling in the Alaska Senate race by supporting incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski over Alaska’s official Republican Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka.
After much pushback from Republicans in the state, the voting members of the Alaska Republican Party State Central Committee asked the Republican Leadership to poll its members on whether Sen. Mitch McConnell should be censured for supporting someone other than the official Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.
The result of the poll was 49-8 voting in favor of censuring Sen. Mitch McConnell and his Senate Leadership Fund for supporting his favored candidate, Sen. Lisa Murkowski by launching attacks against Alaska’s official candidate.
Because of the groundswell of support for Kelly Tshibaka, many districts in the State requested a party vote which triggered a statewide vote to censure McConnell.
Since Labor Day, McConnel and his Senate Leadership Fund have ran anti-Tshibaka advertisements pushing for Murkowski to be reelected. Murkowski is not the chosen candidate of the Republican party in Alaska, in fact she was censured in March 2021 and asked to leave the Republican Party.
The resolution adopted reads,“the Alaska Republican Party State Central Committee condemns the divisive and misleading statements from the Senate Leadership Fund and the inappropriate use of millions of dollars from the Senate Leadership Fund to oppose our endorsed candidate, Kelly Tshibaka. Finally, be it resolved that we request the Senate Leadership Fund immediately stop the attack ads against Kelly Tshibaka and discontinue the support of all other opposing candidates.”
In 2021, the party overwhelmingly voted to censure Murkowski because she did not represent the party platform causing Murkowski ineligible to be a candidate in the Republican primary.
An adviser to the Tshibaka campaign, Mary Ann Pruitt, responded to the censure by releasing a statement which read in part “No one from Alaska wants big shots from the Lower 48 meddling in our elections, and they certainly don’t want D.C. Republicans lying about the candidate who’s been endorsed by the Alaska GOP. Alaska Republicans are telling Mitch McConnell to stay out of it. But this goes to show you who Lisa Murkowski is aligned with. She’s wearing the jersey of the Washington establishment of Biden, Pelosi, and McConnell, and she’s not on Alaska’s team.”