Alaska GOP Pledges To Find Primary Challenger For Murkowski For Convicting Trump In Impeachment Trial

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) walks to the Senate subway after a vote in the Senate on June 18, 2019. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/GettyImages)
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Like other state Republican committees whose senators voted to convict now-ex President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, the Alaska GOP is out to punish Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)-and it’s going even further than the rest.

The Alaska Republican Party (ARP) State Central Committee passed a resolution on Saturday that not only censured Murkowski for her vote and for speaking “critically” of Trump in general; it also swore to bar the senator, who is up for reelection in 2022, from ever holding office again.

“The Party hereby will recruit a Republican primary challenger to oppose and prohibit Senator Murkowski from being a candidate in any Republican primary to the extent legally permissible,” the resolution states.

But it wasn’t just her lack of fealty to Trump that drew the ARP’s wrath, according to the resolution. Several of Murkowski’s other sins included: voting against repealing the Affordable Care Act, opposing limits on abortion, and supporting Rep. Deb Haaland’s (D-NM) nomination as the Biden administration’s interior secretary.

The senator’s office did not immediately respond to request for comment.

As one of the seven GOP senators who broke from the party to convict Trump for inciting the deadly insurrection in January, Murkowski isn’t the first to get slapped with a censure from their state’s Republican committee.

However, the ARP’s resolution goes beyond merely signaling the committee’s devotion to Trump-it throws its support behind the ex-president’s pledge to get Murkowski and other Republicans who impeached him kicked out of office entirely.

“She represents her state badly and her country even worse,” Trump said in a statement earlier this month. “I do not know where other people will be next year, but I know where I will be — in Alaska campaigning against a disloyal and very bad Senator.”

Murkowski is the only senator out of the seven who is up for reelection in the upcoming midterms.

H/t the Anchorage Daily News.

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Notable Replies

  1. Several of Murkowski’s other sins included:

    Have a functioning brain, reasonable conscious, societal awareness, and aversion to misogynistic, racist bullshit.

  2. Murkowski is the only senator out of the seven who is up for reelection in the upcoming midterms.

    I am supporting her in the early rounds, hoping she takes another bite out of the state Republican Party.

    Who’s a good Democratic candidate?

  3. She won an election where she was a write-in candidate, and her name is not necessarily easy to spell. I doubt she’s overly worried.

  4. “Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.”

  5. Alaska (unless the GOP successfully overturns it in court) has a “jungle primary” where everyone runs regardless of party followed by a general election in which ranked choice voting is used. The chance of a far right GOP candidate winning is slim to none.

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