(LifeSiteNews) – The Republicans of Alaska’s 9th Congressional District condemned the Republican U.S. Senate leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, for spending on behalf of Alaska’s liberal incumbent Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, instead of supporting her more conservative challenger, Kelly Tshibaka, who has the backing of the Alaska GOP.
Murkowski, a pro-abortion Republican known for siding with Democrats on issues including federal funding for abortion, far-left activist nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court, and pro-LGBT federal spending, faces a three-way challenge in Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system against Tshibaka, a self-described “pro-life, pro 2nd Amendment, and pro America first” conservative endorsed by the Alaska Republican Party and former President Donald Trump, and Democrat Patricia Chesbro.
But despite Murkowski’s repeated opposition to GOP priorities as well as a core moral plank of the official Republican platform, McConnell has long declared himself “proud she’s in the Republican conference.” In the current race, he’s spent several million dollars backing her over Tshibaka via his Senate Leadership Fund PAC.
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The Federalist reports that the Alaskan Republican Party’s District 9 central committee voted last Thursday to “request the Senate Leadership Fund immediately stop the attack ads against Kelly Tshibaka and discontinue all support of Senator Murkowski,” and “request the Republican Party of Kentucky leadership act against Senator Mitch McConnell for his inappropriate behavior against Alaska Republicans and Republican endorsed candidate Kelly Tshibaka.”
The GOP’s District 6 committee previously passed a similar resolution.
“In September, McConnell’s PAC reinjected money into the Alaska Senate contest after initially canceling $1.7 million alongside $8 million stripped from Republican Arizona Senate nominee Blake Masters,” The Federalist’s Tristan Justice writes. “McConnell later pulled another $10 million from the Arizona race, leaving the Republican candidate abandoned by the primary super PAC charged with reclaiming the upper chamber. Both Masters and Tshibaka have pledged not to support McConnell for another term in GOP leadership.”
A longtime fixture of the Republican establishment, McConnell has been credited with helping confirm Trump’s many judicial nominees (who overturned Roe v. Wade but have been mixed on other issues), but has also worked against the concerns of the party’s conservative grassroots on issues including marriage, gun rights, COVID-19, spending, healthcare, and GOP primaries.
“If you want to trash-talk our candidates to help the Democrats, pipe down. That’s not what leaders do,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), said last month in comments widely recognized as directed at McConnell. “And Republicans need to be leaders that build up the team and do everything they can to get the entire team over the finish line.”
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“Ultimately, though, when you complain and lament that we have ‘bad candidates,’ what you are really saying is that you have contempt for the voters who chose them,” Scott continued. “Now we are at the heart of the matter. Much of Washington’s chattering class disrespects and secretly (or not so secretly) loathes Republican voters. These self-appointed ‘smart guys’ in Washington think they (not the voters) should be able to choose our candidates. The D.C. crowd should not choose candidates, and they do not, and they will not.”