Alaska’s Murkowski to seek reelection
WASHINGTON >> Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, announced Friday she would seek reelection, formally entering what is expected to be the most expensive and challenging race of her political career after voting to impeach former President Donald Trump.
Of the seven Republicans who found Trump guilty of incitement of an insurrection after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Murkowski is the only one facing reelection in the 2022 midterms.
A moderate who has never won a majority of the general election vote in her Republican-leaning state, she is seen as the GOP’s most vulnerable Senate incumbent at a time when there is little tolerance among the party’s core supporters for criticism of the former president or cooperation with President Joe Biden.
The race sets up a proxy battle between Trump, who has endorsed a Republican challenger, and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other Republican leaders, who are backing Murkowski in her bid for a fourth full term.
In a campaign video announcing her reelection bid, Murkowski made no mention of Trump, instead highlighting her work on behalf of the state and offering a pointed warning that “lower-48 outsiders are going to try to grab Alaska’s Senate seat for their partisan agendas.”
Murkowski, first appointed to the Senate in 2002 by her father after he became governor and resigned from the seat, is the second-most-senior Republican woman, after Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who won her own costly reelection bid last year.
Murkowski has established herself as a crucial swing vote with strong relationships in both political parties, most recently helping negotiate the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that Biden is expected to sign into law next week.