Twenty-one-year incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has said she will vote for Democrat House candidate Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) over Republican challenger former Gov. Sarah Palin.
“Yeah, I am,” Murkowski responded Friday when asked by the Anchorage Daily News if she would vote for the Democrat.
Alaska uses the ranked choice voting system, which ultimately affords Democrat voters the opportunity to vote for Murkowski on the second and third ballots. Murkowski’s decision to vote for a Democrat is likely intended to attract more votes down-ballot to ultimately defeat Trump-endorsed Senate Republican candidate Kelly Tshibaka, who is leading in the polls by a slim margin.
A recent video exposed a Murkowski aide who said the 2020 ballot initiative to decide whether to institute ranked choice voting in Alaska was pushed by people who “wanted Lisa to get reelected.”
Alaska’s ranked-choice general election and open primary system works like this:
All candidates from all parties appear on the ballot together in the August primary. The top four vote-getters regardless of party then advance to the general election, and their voters are given the opportunity to pick their top choice, as well as their second and third choices. If no candidate in the first round of voters’ first choices gets 50 percent of the vote, the last place candidate’s second choices are distributed across the remaining three candidates to see if someone can get across the majority threshold. If that fails again to produce a majority vote-getter, then a third round is conducted where the third place candidate’s votes are redistributed according to second choices between the remaining two candidates.
In essence, Murkowski is willing to ally herself with Peltola, a House member since September after a special election, to receive help in her own race from Democrats.
In a recent podcast interview, Palin warned that ranked choice voting would “elect Democrats and destroy our country.”
Murkowski’s alliance with Peltola comes as the Republican Party of Alaska voted in March 2021 to censure Murkowski and asked her to leave the party after she voted to impeach former President Donald Trump. Murkowski has refused to leave the party and has, instead, doubled down by working with Democrats. In the last two years, she has voted nine times with Democrats. If reelected, she has pledged to continue to aid the Democrats’ agenda.
Murkowski also has the backing of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund, which has flooded the Senate race with about $9 million. Seven Alaskan Republican committees have issued a public rebuke of McConnell’s financial influence behind the 21-year incumbent Senator in opposition to Tshibaka.
In total, Murkowski has outspent Tshibaka by about $7.5 million, though polling shows Tshibaka is leading. Eighty-five percent of Murkowski’s campaign contributions have come from out-of-state donors. The large percentage of money raised by Murkowski outside the state raises questions about where her interests lie.
Last night, Democrat Mary Peltola defeated Republican firebrand and former governor Sarah Palin in Alaska’s special election for its vacant House seat. Palin should have won. But it was Alaska’s first time using ranked-choice voting in an election, and that spelled the Trump-backed candidate’s doom.
For those unfamiliar with ranked-choice voting, here’s a primer: if a candidate does not receive a majority — i.e., more than 50 percent — of first-place votes, ballots are retabulated, the lowest-vote getter is eliminated, and their votes go to voters’ second choice. This process continues until a candidate clears 50 percent of the vote.
In the first round of voting, Peltola won 40.2 percent of first choice preferences, followed by Palin’s 31.1 percent, and Republican Nick Begich III’s 28.5 percent. This means 59.6 percent of voters initially cast their ballot for Republican candidates.
After Begich was eliminated in the second round of tabulation and his votes reallocated, 50 percent of Begich voters ranked Palin as their second choice; with 29 percent crossing party lines to vote for Mary Peltola. 21 percent of his voters chose not to rank a second choice, a phenomenon otherwise known as ballot exhaustion.
With more than one-fifth of Begich’s voters declining to rank a second candidate, Peltola was given the boost she needed to secure her 3-point victory (51.5 percent of the final vote tally) over Palin (48.5 percent).
In a state Trump won by 10 points in 2020, Palin should have been a shoo-in. Peltola will be the first Democrat to hold Alaska’s lone congressional seat since the early 1970s, despite nearly 60 percent of Alaska voters casting their ballots for a Republican.
Palin’s loss and such extreme voter disenfranchisement can be attributed to Alaska’s adoption of ranked-choice voting, an electoral system Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was instrumental in pushing through.
According to Project Veritas, Murkowski staffers worked to change Alaska’s primary into a ranked-choice voting system so as to ensure Murkowski would defeat Trump-endorsed challenger Kelly Tshibaka. And it worked. After Alaska voters approved Ballot Measure 2 — an initiative that established ranked-choice voting and discarded multiple party primaries — Murkowski beat Tshibaka in the Senate primary. If not for Ballot Measure 2, Tshibaka would’ve likely defeated Murkowski in a traditional partisan primary. Come November, Murkowski will likely beat Tshibaka again — all thanks to her efforts to enshrine ranked-choice voting into law.
In effect, Murkowski just botched her own party’s showing in Alaska. By pushing ranked-choice voting to ensure her own survival — and evade Republican voters’ ire due to her impeachment vote — she disenfranchised thousands of Alaskans and cost Palin her congressional seat. Peltola is only heading to Congress because she picked up nearly 30 percent of Begich’s votes. Under a traditional first-past-the-post system (through which most U.S. House races are decided), this would not have happened.
While Peltola, Palin, and Begich will face off again in the regularly scheduled general election for the same U.S. House seat this November, it’s likely the outcome will be the same — all thanks to Murkowski.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
Unlock commenting by joining the Federalist Community.
Tonight, is one of those primary nights we have all been waiting for. The moment Wyoming voters have the opportunity to dispatch Representative Liz Cheney into the ash heap of republican politics. President Trump has endorsed Harriet Hageman to defeat and remove the horrible Cheney.
There’s also the ranked primary in Alaska, where we will watch to see if Senator Lisa Murkowski can be defeated, at least in position, by Trump-endorsed primary challenger Kelly Tshibaka. We also want to see if Sarah Palin can win the Alaska special election to fill the congressional seat previously held by Don Young.
Voters in Wyoming on Tuesday decide the fate of former House GOP conference chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) as she faces off against challenger Harriet Hageman after her decision to abandon Wyoming values to pursue a crusade against former President Donald Trump in the wake of the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Cheney has aggressively attacked Trump for over a year from her perch on the January 6 Committee in the House, a post to which she was appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi–a Democrat–in an unheard of arrangement that Pelosi engaged in when she kicked actual Republicans off the committee and then House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy withdrew his Party from it altogether. Cheney, who was one of the 10 Republicans to vote to impeach Trump in early 2021 in his second impeachment, has made her crusade against the former president the centerpiece of her time in office and even lost her conference chair position in the process. Trump, meanwhile, has moved to settle the score with her by endorsing Hageman, a rock-solid conservative who is now polling well above double digits ahead of Cheney in every poll conducted in the lead-up to the election.
While Cheney seems destined for embarrassing defeat barring any last second surprises, many in establishment media have done their best to make it appear as though her political career is not finished. What she does next, assuming she loses as expected, will be extremely telling and this whole saga could tell the nation a lot about the future of the GOP as Republican voters move further and further away from the failures of the Bush years–Cheney’s father is literally the former Vice President Dick Cheney–and onto successes of America First economic nationalism.
Also on Tuesday in Alaska voters will decide which candidates will advance to the general election in November in two important races, the U.S. Senate race for the seat currently occupied by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and for the open congressional seat vacated by the passing of the late Rep. Don Young (R-AK). What’s more, a special election for the remainder of Young’s term will take place as well. The state’s former Gov. Sarah Palin is running in both races–the special election and the 2022 election–and she has the endorsement of Trump. Trump has backed Kelly Tshibaka in the race against Murkowski, where the top-four vote-getters, Murkowski and Tshibaka, are expected to be among them, as well as a Democrat and another candidate, likely a libertarian, will advance to the general election for a ranked-choice vote in November.
Polls close in Wyoming at 9:00 p.m. ET, and in most of Alaska at midnight ET. Results are expected in Wyoming tonight, and in Alaska not until at least later this week and they might even take longer, given the complexities of the new ranked-choice voting system. Follow along here for live updates as the results pour in.
UPDATE 10:17 p.m. ET:
As if Cheney’s loss could not get any sweeter for Americans and bitter for the establishment, CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reports that Cheney brought the former ABC News executive who helped choreograph the boring ratings-dull January 6 Committee primetime hearings with her to Wyoming to help produce her “speech” this evening. She still has yet to concede the election, by the way.
The Cheney speech tonight will be delivered in a picturesque spot outside Jackson. Veteran TV producer James Goldston, an adviser to the Jan. 6 committee, and a film crew are on hand here in Wyoming–as “a friend” of Cheney. From our CNN blog: https://t.co/hmtIbHI9Cm
But in all seriousness, bringing this James Goldston character to Wyoming to witness the voters remove her from power–and using him in a campaign role nonetheless even if they claim it is as a volunteer as a friend–raises potential Federal Election Commission (FEC) ethics concerns regarding possible in-kind campaign contributions. It is also puts a wrap on the relevance of anything the January 6 Committee has done all year, bringing it to a final ending (even though Cheney and others insist they plan more hearings in the fall to waste all of our time!).
UPDATE 10:03 p.m. ET:
It’s actually really officially over for Liz Cheney. No, she stands no chance–no matter what some establishment media losers claim–at siphoning votes from Trump in 2024:
The idea that Cheney could be a serious factor in a 2024 GOP primary or would siphon votes from Trump as an independent remains as preposterous as the idea this #WYAL primary would be competitive.
The video, which shows Trump dancing, is sure to be an instant classic.
UPDATE 9:40 p.m. ET:
House GOP conference chairwoman Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who replaced Cheney when her own party rode her out of the conference chair position in the House, lauded Hageman’s victory in a statement on Tuesday night.
“Congratulations to Harriet Hageman on her massive Republican primary victory in Wyoming over Nancy Pelosi’s puppet Liz Cheney. I was proud to join President Trump and Leader Kevin McCarthy in endorsing Harriet,” Stefanik said. “Harriet is a true America First patriot who will restore the people of Wyoming’s voice, which Liz Cheney had long forgotten. I cannot wait for Harriet to join Republicans in Congress so that we can stay laser-focused on our work to save America.”
UPDATE 9:38 p.m. ET:
Donald Trump Jr., former President Trump’s eldest son, reacted this way to the news that Cheney has lost:
The fact that the race has been called within five minutes of the first reported votes and it is clear that Cheney has lost reelection is one of the most embarrassing defeats for the political establishment in American history. Just 14 years ago, Cheney’s father was the vice president of the United States and just two years ago she was a rising star in the GOP as the House GOP conference chairwoman. Now, she lost her race badly in a GOP primary to a political newcomer in a race that was called within five minutes of votes first being reported. No matter what the establishment media says, this is embarrassing and very bad for the anti-Trump wing of the GOP.
UPDATE 9:34 p.m. ET:
Projections are already rolling from credible sources that Hageman has won and Cheney is done and has lost:
I’ve seen enough: Harriet Hageman (R) defeats Rep. Liz Cheney (R) in the #WYAL GOP primary.
Decision Desk HQ projects Harriet Hageman (@HagemanforWY) is the winner of the Republican nomination for Wyoming’s at-large U.S. House congressional district. She has defeated incumbent Rep Liz Cheney (R).#DecisionMade: 9:27pm EDT
The New York Times currently has 4 percent reporting in Wyoming, with Hageman at 53.5 percent and Cheney down at 44.6 percent. That lead is about 9 percent, and expected to grow soon.
UPDATE 9:29 p.m. ET:
The first votes are coming in and Trump-backed Harriet Hageman is way up and expected to go up even more:
One of CNN’s many resident Never Trumpers, Ana Navarro, is lamenting the lack of more Liz Cheneys everywhere including in her state of Florida:
How I wish there was a principled Republican like @Liz_Cheney, who puts country above partisanship that I could vote for in Florida. Sigh. https://t.co/YZMmqoBCri
The disgraced former broadcaster who was fired for making up documents clearly has better judgment than the pesky voters, without question: Clearly, according to Rather, Cheney’s looming loss is a loss for Wyoming, for the GOP, and for America. Clearly.
UPDATE 9:10 p.m. ET:
Here is a picture Liz Cheney sent out of herself voting:
Proud to cast my ballot today. The challenges we are facing require serious leaders who will abide by their oath and uphold the Constitution- no matter what. pic.twitter.com/PcTXUR6Aw1
Republican candidates are slamming the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s unprecedented raid of former President Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Largo estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Former Fox 10 Phoenix anchor Kari Lake, the GOP gubernatorial nominee in Arizona, called the raid an “incredibly horrendous abuse of power.”
This is one of the darkest days in American history: the day our Government, originally created by the people, turned against us. This illegitimate, corrupt Regime hates America and has weaponized the entirety of the Federal Government to take down President Donald Trump.
Our Government is rotten to the core. These tyrants will stop at nothing to silence the Patriots who are working hard to save America. This is an incredibly horrendous abuse of power.
Her fellow Arizonan, Blake Masters – who is the state’s Republican Senatorial nominee – asserted that “[e]everyone knows this was politically motivated,” adding that “that should terrify us all.”
When street crimes go unsolved but opposition leaders are hounded by federal police, you’re living in a third world country
“When street crimes go unsolved but opposition leaders are hounded by federal police, you’re living in a third world country,” he continued.
Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, J.D. Vance, slammed the execution of the search warrant of the former president as “disgraceful and unprecedented.”
Little to add on the details of the raid on Trump’s home: it is disgraceful and unprecedented. The question is what comes next. We either have Republic or we don’t. If we do, the people who’ve politicized the FBI in recent years will face investigation and prosecution.
“The question is what comes next. We either have Republic or we don’t,” he detailed. “If we do, the people who’ve politicized the FBI in recent years will face investigation and prosecution.”
Former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), who is running for Congress in Alaska’s at-large Congressional District, chimed in as well, expressing that she “was outraged but not surprised to learn” of the raid.
“The political establishment is so threatened by the America First movement that they will stop at nothing, including weaponizing law enforcement agencies for partisan purposes, to protect their stranglehold on power,” she noted.
John Gibbs of Michigan and veteran Joe Kent of Washington, both of whom are Trump-endorsed candidates who won nominations over pro-impeachment Republican representatives, voiced their condemnation of the FBI search.
We must bring the national security state to heel or we won’t have a country anymore.
Our top priority in 2023 is dismantling the administrative state and bringing the national security state to heel. To accomplish this we have to win in November; to do that we must unify. pic.twitter.com/RXvBv5Htj0
The Biden FBI just raided Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago, corruptly using the powers of the state against his political rival. Absolutely shameful and a terrible precedent for our Republic. There must be, and will be, accountability. pic.twitter.com/7QdrAYoG5M
Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who is the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Nevada dubbed the raid “another example of the growing weaponization of our federal agencies by the Left.”
We don’t live in a 3rd world country. We live in America.
Today’s raid of Trump’s home is just another example of the growing weaponization of our federal agencies by the Left while people like Hunter Biden live freely.
Starting Nov. 8th, this power grab will come to an end.
Whenever Democrats get desperate & low in the polls they decide to investigate President Trump. The Federal Department of Justice has enough on their plate with our open borders, increased drug trafficking, and rising crime rates without being used for political prosecutions.
Decepticon Senator Lisa Murkowski is the primary target and reason for President Trump’s travel to Alaska for a rally. Murkowski, a leftist in the Republican ranks, must be removed if progress in taking down the UniParty is to continue. President Trump is rallying in support of Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy, Senate candidate challenging Murkowski, Kelly Tshibaka, and candidate for congress Sarah Palin.
The anticipated start time for President Trump’s remarks is 4:00pm in Anchorage Alaska or 8:00pm ET. Rumble livestream links below:
Former President Donald Trump enthusiastically endorsed former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in her run to fill Rep. Don Young’s (R-AK) congressional seat.
Hailing the former Alaska governor as a “wonderful patriot,” Donald Trump praised Palin for her persistence in the face of the Democrats’ attacks on her.
“Wonderful patriot Sarah Palin of Alaska just announced that she is running for Congress, and that means there will be a true America First fighter on the ballot to replace the late and legendary Congressman Don Young,” said Trump.
Sarah Palin notably endorsed Trump very early in the 2016 primaries. “We are ready for a change. We are ready and our troops deserve the best, a new Commander-in-Chief whose track record of success has proven he is the master at ‘The Art of the Deal,’” she said.
In his endorsement, Trump recalled how Palin elevated the 2008 McCain campaign as the media and establishment Republicans sabotaged her.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin looks on at Hansen Agriculture Student Learning Center at Iowa State University on January 19, 2016, in Ames, IA. (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)
“Sarah lifted the McCain presidential campaign out of the dumps despite the fact that she had to endure some very evil, stupid, and jealous people within the campaign itself,” he said. “They were out to destroy her, but she didn’t let that happen.”
“Sarah Palin is tough and smart and will never back down, and I am proud to give her my Complete and Total Endorsement and encourage all Republicans to unite behind this wonderful person and her campaign to put America First!” he concluded.
Sarah Palin announced her run for congress this past Friday to fill the seat left vacant by the late Don Young, citing the economic devastations of the Biden era:
America is at a tipping point. As I’ve watched the far left destroy the country, I knew I had to step up and join the fight. The people of the great State of Alaska, like others all over the country, are struggling with out-of-control inflation, empty shelves, and gas prices that are among the highest in the world. We need energy security for this country, and Alaska can help provide that – but only if the federal government gets out of the way and lets the free market do what it does best.
“At this critical time in our nation’s history, we need leaders who will combat the left’s socialist, big-government, America-last agenda,” Palin said.
“This country was built by heroes, and the radical left dishonors their legacies by opening our borders to illegal immigrants, mortgaging our children’s future, and selling out our nation’s interests to the highest bidder,” she added.
After more than a decade away from electoral politics, former GOP Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is going back on the ballot for the at-large House seat left vacant by deceased Rep. Don Young who died last month. It’s past time for the former vice-presidential candidate reclaim her stardom as a serious policymaker after the media nearly killed it in 2008.
Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris is everything the media frantically portrayed Palin was about to be 14 years ago. Ignorant, extreme, unprepared, and merely one 70-year-old’s heartbeat away from the presidency. Except while Arizona Sen. John McCain was 71 in 2008, President Joe Biden governs today at 79.
Harris offered her latest word salad this week in what’s become routine for the vice president dragging the administration down with abysmal favorable ratings. Watch what she had to say at a White House event with the prime minister of Jamaica on Wednesday:
VP HARRIS: “One of the issues that has been presented as an issue that is economic in the way of its impact has been the pandemic… we will assist Jamaica in COVID recovery by assisting in terms of the recovery efforts in Jamaica that have been essential.” pic.twitter.com/fVSr8Km6co
If it were Palin at the podium, Saturday Night Live (SNL) would lead this weekend’s program with Tina Fey returning to reprise her role as the 2008 vice-presidential candidate. In fact, Fey will probably be back on the late-night skits as Palin once again by the end of the year mocking Palin’s run for the House of Representatives as the comedian did when the conservative lightning rod endorsed Trump in 2016.
Wednesday’s nonsense from Harris at the White House was relatively tame compared to the prior 14 months of nonsensical commentary from the nation’s president on stand-by.
Just last month, Harris appeared to confuse Ukraine as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), despite its pending membership of the western security apparatus at the heart of the conflict in eastern Europe.
“I will say what I know we all say and I will say over and over again: the United States stands firmly with the Ukrainian people in defense of the NATO alliance,” Harris said at the annual DNC meeting.
Harris made the same mistake again in a tweet days later.
Palin, in contrast, was depicted as a dunce when she suggested governing the state closest to the Kremlin-controlled landmass along its arctic border enhanced her foreign policy credentials with Russian land visible from Alaskan territory.
“I can see Russia from my house!” Fey mocked the governor on SNL who returned to the weekly comedy program to play the part.
Just 55 miles with islands in between on the Bering Strait however, even Slate conceded that yes, Palin’s was right when she claimed on ABC “you can actually see Russia from land, here in Alaska.”
Palin was asked again later in the campaign by Katie Couric, then at CBS, how governing Alaska equipped her to navigate complex global affairs. Her response wasn’t well-articulated, but it wasn’t outright inaccurate either, certainly not on the scale of misidentifying Ukraine as a NATO state when Russia’s invasion was launched over that very issue.
Palin, the most popular governor in the country wasn’t treated fairly in 2008, whose folksy attitude on the campaign trail was the subject of mockery from reporters who often trapped her in “gotcha questions” in nearly every memorable moment of the election. The same could not be said of Harris, whose unpopularity and extremism failed to propel her own presidential campaign even to the Iowa caucuses. GovTrack rated Harris, not Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, as the most liberal senator in 2019.
Harris’s pattern of quotable moments, on the other hand, has almost always come unprovoked in prepared speeches, or, as shown above, in a written tweet, with few exceptions. One exception stands out below where Harris explains the crisis in Ukraine as if she were a kindergarten teacher to an audience who are not kindergarteners:
Even after the media’s hostile coverage of the former Alaska governor in 2008, Palin’s popularity never dipped below 50 percent among constituents during her time in office despite her national reputation wrecked by the beltway circus. No vice-presidential candidate ever faced the kind of viscous and sustained character assassination as Palin did, by both the media and her own campaign.
While Biden’s team protected Harris on the trail, Palin’s handlers, Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace, were working to undermine the success of their own ticket selling out stories to reporters before the election was over. Wallace didn’t even vote for the campaign that employed the future MSNBC host.
If Palin’s run for Congress pans out, we can expect more of the same.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Unlock commenting by joining the Federalist Community.
Subscribe