Trump-backed Senate challenger Tshibaka says Murkowski has finally ‘become clean’ of intentions in 2022

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EXCLUSIVE: Republican Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka says she is well prepared for Sen. Lisa Murkowski announced the re -election in Alaska last week.

Tshibaka, who was pleased with former President Trump’s support and backing as he challenged Murkowski, told Fox News in an exclusive interview that longtime senators have been “campaigning for months. It is and he has been clean in saying he’s actually running for the Senate. “

The former Alaska administration commissioner stressed that “we expect Murkowski to run because he is really committed to maintaining Murkowski’s political dynasty. I don’t think it changes anything for our race or how people feel. Alaskan. “

TARGED BY TRUMP, ALASKA MURKOWSKI ANNOUNCES 2022 SENATE REELECTION BID

That dynasty that Tshibaka emphasized began a long time ago when Sen. Frank Murkowski, who was two decades later in the Senate, won the 2002 election as governor of Alaska. The elder Murkowski in a controversial move at the time appointed his daughter Lisa, who serves as the majority leader of the Alaska House of Representatives, to fill the last two years of his term in the Senate.

Tshibaka stressed that “Alaskans are ready for change.”

Former Alaska administration commissioner Kelly Tshibaka is backed by former President Trump as he primarily challenges GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in the 2022 midterm elections. (Tshibaka Senate campaign)

Murkowski, a moderate Republican with a history of working across the aisle to achieve bipartisan agreements, was one of seven GOP lawmakers in the Senate who voted to convict the former president in his impeachment trial in February in cases of impeachment. incited the deadly insurrection on January 6 at the US Capitol. And he is only one of seven to run for re -election in the next few years in the midterms.

Trump promised to go to Alaska to campaign against the senator. Earlier this year he endorsed Tshibaka, and the two top members of Trumps 2020 presidential reelection inner circle work as senior advisers on the Tshibakas team.

Tshibakas headed to the presidents ’former Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, in February, where Trump is scheduled to face a fundraiser for his campaign.

Murkowski called on Trump to resign following the deadly Jan. 6 insurgency in the U.S. Capitol and his vote to convict Trump on the allegations he incited the attack was not the first time he has raised his anger. The senator voted against a Republican-backed plan in 2017 to repeal the national health care law known as Obamacare, and a year later he opposed the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by Trump.

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Tshibaka told Fox News that Trump “said he was fully committed to helping go to Alaska next year and doing a campaign rally for us.”

The candidate wants to call Murkowski as President Bidens ’“ Chief Enabling Officer ”. Tshibaka charged the senator with “continuing to align himself and enabling and supporting the radical Biden administration.”

His campaign points to Murkowski’s important Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee vote earlier this year to confirm Bidens ’nomination for Interior secretary, then-Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico. Murkowski’s support has helped Haaland make history as the first Native American to serve as Interior secretary, but nominees who have gone through opposition to new leases for oil and gas drilling on federal lands have been extremely upset. in a carbon -rich state like Alaska.

The Tshibakas campaign says “Haaland leads the bill on the anti-Alaska environmental agenda.”

Republican Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka toured the Fairbanks Rescue Mission with CEO Pete Kelly in Fairbanks, Alaska, in October 2021.

The candidate also focused on the extensive $ 1.2 trillion infrastructure package signed into law by the president on Monday. The proposal, America’s largest infrastructure investment in decades, garnered bipartisan support for passage in the Senate in August and in the House earlier this month. Murkowski and two other members of Alaska’s all-GOP congressional delegation voted in favor of the bill.

Tshibaka clarified that he would not have voted for the proposal if he had been in Congress.

“I didn’t see any infrastructure bill. I saw the Green New Deal,” she said. “A part of this bill goes to any so -called infrastructure. In Alaska, we desperately need infrastructure. It’s the Green New Deal. It punishes anything that has to do with carbon. Carbon is synonymous with oil, gas, Alaska coal.And when it penalizes carbon, it’s the anti-Alaska bill.We don’t want to support bills that penalize our workers, that penalize our businesses, that penalize our families, that penalize to our residents. “

And Tshibaka stressed, “I’ve talked to a lot of businesses above hoping because of this bill they’ll close by the middle of this decade and they’ll have to leave Alaska.”

ONE YEAR UNTIL MIDTERMS, PREDICTED BY REPUBLICANS, BACK HOME AND SENATE MAJORITIES.

Murkowski, a leading author and negotiator of the bill, attended the signing ceremony Monday at the White House. His office in the Senate stressed that the measure would “provide approximately $ 3.5 billion in highway funding for Alaska over five years, to build, rebuild and maintain its roads and highways” as well. provide “$ 40 billion in funding for the construction, maintenance, and repair of the bridge..” The senators ’office also directed funding to the measure for Alaska’s airports, buses and ferries, ports, railroads, water and wastewater projects, and broadband.

Murkowskis called the package a “historic infrastructure measure that will deliver enormous benefits to our state.”

While being targeted by Trump, Murkowski has the support of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the reelection arm of the Senate GOP, which has long supported Republican incumbents running for re-election. And longtime Senate GOP leader Sen. Mitch McConnell and his political group have vowed to support Murkowski as he runs for re -election. The McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, the leading outside super PAC supporting Senate Republicans, endorsed Murkowski earlier this year.

Si Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, asks during the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing to discuss the reopening of schools during coronavirus disease on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, Sept. 30, 2021. (Greg Nash/ Pool via REUTERS)

Ten months removed from the White House, Trump remains very popular and influential among Republican voters and politicians as he continues to play as kingmakers in GOP primaries and repeatedly courting another White House run in 2024. And his targeting Murkowski and support for Tshibaka makes the re-election of senators challenging.

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But this is not the first time Murkowski has faced a challenging re -election.

The senator lost the GOP primary in the 2010 re-election to Tea Party-supported challenger Joe Miller. Murkowski then launched a write-in campaign and successfully won the general election. He again led Miller in 2016 in a three-way tournament. But in all three of his successful Senate elections and re -elections (2004, 2010 and 2016) he did not get a majority of the vote.

Although he did not announce for re-election until last week, Murkowski has raised funds throughout the year. He pulled in nearly $ 1.1 million in the July-September third quarter of fundraising, with nearly $ 3.2 million in cash on hand. Tshibaka brought in $ 465,000 in the third quarter, with nearly $ 300,000 in his campaign coffers.

But Tshibaka argued that “I’m raising four to five times more money than Lisa Murkowski in the state of Alaska” and promised that “I’ll have enough money to beat Lisa Murkowski.”

He noted that “so many Alaskans are funding and supporting my campaign” and pointed out that “at the event held in Mar-a-Lago, so far almost all of those tickets have been sold to Alaskans. Really proud that’s not it. “

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The 2022 Senate showdown in Alaska will have some new rules. Alaskans, in a ballot measure last year, changed how they conduct their elections. The party’s discarded primary, and the forward four top voters in a nonpartisan primary will advance to the general election, where the ranked voting option will be used to determine the winner.

While experts think that might help Murkowski, who enjoys strong name recognition, Tshibaka’s campaign theorized that Murkowski will come in third next November in the ranks selected in the general election, behind Tshibaka and finally nominated to the Democrats. That would remove Murkowski from the ranking-choice tabulation, where Tshibaka’s campaign predicts that its candidate will lead the Democrats in the final tally.

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