Lisa Murkowski's Conundrum

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

Few politicians have had the career that Lisa Murkowski has had.  Murkowski's entry into politics was, to put it mildly, considered controversial at its start.  In 2002, her father Frank, then Alaska's junior senator, was elected governor.  Murkowski was put in the rare position of choosing his own successor, and while he interviewed a number of candidates, he chose a state legislator who had just been elected four years earlier to the State House, a relatively inexperienced politician who happened to be his daughter Lisa.

The fallout from this was not what one would've expected.  Sen. Lisa Murkowski & her father Frank were berated with charges of nepotism, including by then Mayor of Wasilla Sarah Palin, who had been one of the finalists for the position.  Murkowski quickly got a challenge in her election to the seat from former Gov. Tony Knowles (D), who was favored to win the seat for most of the run due to the way that Murkowksi had gotten into office.  Murkowski, though was able to pull off an upset riding George W. Bush's coattails, and beat Knowles.  Instead, it was her father who paid the price, when Palin, potentially in-part seeking revenge, challenged Gov. Murkowski in the primary and won (eventually setting up her ill-fated time as the Republican nominee for Vice President).  Sen. Murkowski was more moderate than her father, and gained a challenge from the right in 2010, which she lost...but then she managed to pull through by running a write-in campaign, gaining support from Democrats & moderate Republicans against Tea Party challenger Joe Miller, and becoming only the second candidate in American history to win a Senate seat as a write-in challenger.  In 2016, the roles were reversed, with Murkowski running as a Republican against Miller (who was seeking the seat as a Libertarian), and while Murkowski won, she did so without a majority, as Miller made Murkowski's non-endorsement of Donald Trump a major issue in the campaign.

This leads us to 2022, where Murkowski seems inclined to run for another term in the Senate.  She is, after all, one of the Senate's chief power brokers, more willing than any other Republicans (give or take Susan Collins) to buck her party.  She voted against Brett Kavanaugh (or kind of did...the Senate is weird), and voted for the impeachment of Donald Trump (at least the second time).  This has left her in Trump's vengeful purview, as the former president has repeatedly made beating Murkowski a priority.

Murkowski, as I've illustrated above, is a survivor.  She won two elections common wisdom dictated she had no business winning, and was able to defy Donald Trump in 2016 in a way few Republicans have gotten away with.  The 2022 question, though, is what is her best tactic to win reelection.  This is particularly interesting because Murkowski is running in a state with a very specific type of Ranked-Choice Voting, which will mean that the top four challengers from the primary, regardless of party, will advance, and then those four will compete, with whomever gets the majority after lower-performing candidates are eliminated, becoming the state's next senator.

Kelly Tshibaka (R-AK)

This is interesting because Donald Trump has already endorsed Kelly Tshibaka, a former state commissioner, against Murkowski (who, it's worth noting, has not technically announced she'll run though she's widely expected to).  While Miller and Palin are both considering runs, and the latter's celebrity would obviously put her in a unique position against Murkowski, Tshibaka's quick endorsement from Trump would mean he'd be able to command a significant advantage for her, potentially sewing up much of the MAGA wing of the Alaska Republicans, a not-small percentage given how well Joe Miller did in 2016 (27% of the vote is not small, and might make her a nominal frontrunner in 2022 for the initial general election night voting).  Polling shows that Murkowski would beat Tshibaka in a head-to-head, but the race is still being formed, and there's another risk for Murkowski here-what happens if she doesn't make it to the Top 2 to take on Tshibaka?

After all, the Democrats will likely have a candidate.  Murkowski is moderate, but there's not a lot of reason for the Alaska Democrats to sit out this race if they have a decent candidate.  After all, chaos occasionally invites possibility, and the Democrats might be able to get Al Gross, who was an excellent fundraiser in 2020 (even if he didn't produce the results they were looking for), to run another independent race for the Senate.  If Democrats feel that they have a shot at the race (which they knew by Election Day in 2010 simply was not going to be the case based on polling), they'd have little incentive to vote for Murkowski on the first ballot.  After all, if it's Gross vs. Tshibaka in the final rounds, which of the two challengers is more likely to have been second place on Murkowski's supporters' ballots?

Getting third place, is, after all, how her father Frank went out (Palin won the primary, but pilot John Binkley got second place).  Murkowski could assume Gross will implode like the Democrats did in 2010, or that her coalition that year will materialize like that year, but if Chuck Schumer is smart (and he is), there's reason to believe that he might try to negotiate something out of Murkowski.  Schumer would happily kill any Democrats' chance in 2022 if Murkowski would caucus with the Democrats, even as an independent, but that seems impossible as Murkowski has denied she'd ever switch parties.  However, Schumer could still make a point of deterring support for Gross or another Democrat, enough so that Murkowski would be guaranteed the Top 2 (and in the process, get all of a nonentity Democrat's second place ballots to ensure another term) if Murkowski were to support at least some of the Democrats' agenda.  If I were Schumer, I'd be finding a palatable way to get Murkowski onboard with some of the election reforms that are so popular with his base, or at least to back some of the key economic priorities from Biden (likely with a good deal of pork for Alaska, but that's how DC works).  Murkowski, as a sitting senator who is known for being a good dealmaker, could definitely help use the system to her advantage in 2022, but the question remains if she will-RCV in her state means that in order to win, she's going to need both moderate Republicans and willing Democrats to beat Tshibaka-how will she tackle the tricky political terrain of gaining progressive support without alienating too much of the base in a state Donald Trump did, it's worth remembering, win.