Targeted by Trump, Alaska's Murkowski announces 2022 Senate reelection campaign

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Longtime Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who’s high atop former President Donald Trump's GOP hit list, on Friday announced that she’s running for reelection in 2022.

"My heart is, and always has been, in Alaska, and that’s why I am proud to announce my campaign for reelection to the US Senate in 2022," the senator said in a campaign video announcing her candidacy.

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 "Since my first election, I committed to work tirelessly on your behalf to expand opportunities for our people, support Alaska's job-creating industries and help give voice to hardworking families and business owners," Murkowski emphasized. "I pledged to be Alaska, always. I'm still committed to those values and meeting the challenges Alaskans face today by building on my record of working together to secure historic victories that lift Alaskan communities."

Murkowski, a moderate Republican with a history of working across the aisle to achieve bipartisan agreements, was one of seven Senate Republicans to vote to convict the former president in his February impeachment trial. And she’s the only one of those seven running for reelection in next year’s midterms. 

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Trump’s vowed to come to Alaska to campaign against the senator. And earlier this year he endorsed Murkowski’s GOP primary challenger, former Alaska commissioner of administration Kelly Tshibaka. Several leading members of Trump’s 2020 presidential reelection campaign are working as senior advisers on Tshibaka’s campaign, and Trump’s scheduled to hold a fundraiser for her in February at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

But Murkowski has the support of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the reelection arm of the Senate GOP, which has long backed Republican incumbents running for reelection. And longtime Senate GOP leader Sen. Mitch McConnell and his political team have pledged to support Murkowski as she runs for reelection. The McConnell aligned Senate Leadership Fund, the top outsider super PAC backing Senate Republicans, endorsed Murkowski earlier this year.

Murkowski’s call for Trump to resign following the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and her vote to convict Trump on charges he incited the attack weren’t the first times she’s raised his ire. The senator voted against a Republican backed plan in 2017 to repeal the national health care law known as Obamacare, and a year later she opposed confirmation of now-Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was nominated by Trump.

While Murkowski didn’t directly mention Trump in her video, she did warn that her reelection bid will see plenty of meddling from national partisans.

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"In this election, lower 48 outsiders are going to try to grab Alaska’s Senate seat for their partisan agendas. They don’t understand our state and frankly, they couldn’t care less about your future," the senator charged. 

"I will work with anyone from either party to advance Alaska’s priorities and I will always stand up to any politician or special interest that threatens our way of life," she vowed.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) asks questions during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 30, 2021. (Greg Nash/Pool via REUTERS)

This isn’t the first time Murkowski’s faced a challenging reelection.

Murkowski, the Alaska House of Representatives majority leader, was controversially appointed to the U.S. Senate in late 2002 by her father, who had just resigned from his Senate seat after being elected governor. 

The younger Murkowski completed her father’s unexpired term and easily won the Senate GOP primary in 2004 on her route to winning a full six-year term. But six years later, she lost the GOP primary in 2010 to Tea Party supported challenger Joe Miller. Murkowski then launched a write-in campaign and successfully won the general election.

Alaskans, in a ballot measure last year, changed how they run their elections. The scrapped party primaries, and going forward the top four voter getters in a non-partisan primary will advance to the general election, where ranked choice voting will be used to determine the winner.

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Murkowski’s been fundraising this year, ahead of Friday’s announcement. She hauled in nearly $1.1 million during the July-September third quarter of fundraising, with roughly $3.2 million cash on hand. Tshibaka brought in $465,000 during the third quarter, with nearly $300,000 in her campaign coffers.

Earlier this week a new pro-Murkowski super PAC named "Alaskans for Lisa" was formed.