Kelly Tshibaka, the GOP Senate candidate challenging Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) in next year’s senate race in Alaska, has launched a new television advertisement on Tuesday to hype former President Donald Trump’s endorsement of her campaign.
Tshibaka, the former commissioner of Alaska’a Department of Administration in Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration, just became one of the highest profile candidates in America this week with Trump’s endorsement. This new ad, hitting airwaves in Alaska Tuesday on television, was provided exclusively to Breitbart News by her campaign ahead of its public release. It comes with a website hyping the ad and endorsement as well, made through the GOP’s WinRed platform.
“President Trump fought for Alaska,” a narrator says in the ad. “But Lisa Murkowski, someone who’s supposed to fight for Alaska, stopped fighting for us years ago. That’s why President Trump has endorsed Kelly Tshibaka for United States Senate. She’s conservative, pro-Second Amendment, pro-Alaskan energy, America First. Kelly Tshibaka will fight for us.”
WATCH: KELLY
The ad switches back and forth between photos of Trump and Tshibaka fighting for Alaskans to images of Murkowski yukking it up with Democrat President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State John Kerry—who’s now Biden’s climate envoy and a radical when it comes to leftist energy initiatives like the just-rejoined Paris Climate Accords.
Murkowski, who barely survived a primary in 2010 by running a write-in campaign, has been a U.S. senator since 2002. She first assumed the position of senator when her father, former U.S. senator and governor of Alaska Frank Murkowski, appointed her to his seat when he left the Senate after winning the governor’s mansion in the the 2002 election. She is the only Republican senator up for re-election next year who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial—held in the Senate after he left office.
Tshibaka’s campaign, in a press release rolling out the new ad also provided to Breitbart News exclusively ahead of its public release, explained that Murkowski has been censured by the Republican Party in Alaska and told to no longer identify herself as a Republican.
“Murkowski refused to support President Trump in 2016 and 2020 and enabled Joe Biden’s radical agenda to end drilling and kill Alaska jobs,” Tshibaka’s press release states. “She voted to allow illegal immigrants to remain in the country, voted against commonsense federal judges, voted to keep Obamacare, and voted to remove President Trump from office even though his term had already expired. Because of her record, Murkowski has been censured by the Republican Party of Alaska and instructed not to refer to herself as a Republican in the state any longer.”
Trump’s endorsement of Tshibaka is the highest-profile anywhere in the country, and the only one he has made against an incumbent GOP senator. The high-stakes battle in the Last Frontier, sure to be one of the most expensive in the country, is also going to be one of the longest drawn-out races. A jungle primary next summer will square all candidates of every party and independents off against each other, and the top four vote-getters will advance to the general election in November 2022—where a ranked-choice voting system will determine whether Murkowski survives again or, if not, who replaces her.
This latest television ad is the second such broadcast advertisement from Tshibaka’s campaign. The first ad highlights her backstory and why she’s running for Senate:
That she’s on television this early and often is a sign of her strength as a candidate as it’s still a year away from the jungle primary and more than 17 months to election day in November 2022.
Sources familiar with the matter told Breitbart News that Trump’s endorsement caught Murkowski by surprise. Trump had long been expected to endorse Tshibaka, but GOP observers thought the endorsement might not come until much later in the race. The move by Trump, sources in both political parties in Washington say, sent Murkowski scrambling, seeking help wherever she could find it. “She’s in real trouble,” one source close to Murkowski told Breitbart News.
Trump’s ringing endorsement of Tshibaka was also a brutal beatdown of Murkowski.
“Lisa Murkowski is bad for Alaska,” Trump said in the statement. “Her vote to confirm Biden’s Interior Secretary was a vote to kill long sought for, and approved, ANWR, and Alaska jobs. Murkowski has got to go! Kelly Tshibaka is the candidate who can beat Murkowski—and she will. Kelly is a fighter who stands for Alaska values and America First. She is MAGA all the way, pro-energy, strong on the Border, tough on Crime and totally supports our Military and our great Vets. Kelly is a powerful supporter of the Second Amendment and JOBS! I look forward to campaigning in Alaska for Kelly Tshibaka. She has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”
In response to Trump’s endorsement, Tshibaka said she is “honored, excited, and grateful to have the support of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.”
“To have his strong endorsement is great news for our campaign and even better news for the people of Alaska, because it means we will be getting our Senate seat back from Lisa Murkowski,” Tshibaka said. “President Trump won Alaska by double digits twice because his leadership and policies made him the best president our state has ever known. He knows our Alaska values, knows that we must be free to tap into our vast natural resources, and knows that we ought to be able to chart our own course without constant, authoritarian interference from Washington, D.C. Lisa Murkowski’s career is in its twilight now, and it’s because of her own record. She inherited her position from her father and since has become a senator for the D.C. insiders, rather than the people she’s supposed to represent. She opposed President Trump in both 2016 and 2020, proving definitively that she has no idea what Alaskans need or want. President Trump recognizes this, and an overwhelming majority of Alaskans do as well. I thank President Trump for his confidence in our campaign and look forward to victory next November with him on our team.”
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