I Wonder who Made Sure Murkowski Wouldn't Have a Democratic Opponent This Cycle

Tshibaka Seems Like A Pretty Awful Candidate, Even For Trump

Dermot Cole's Reporting From Alaska blog is a good way to keep up with the political goings on in the country's biggest state. Ever since crackpot Trumpist Kelly Tshibaka decided to run for the Senate against Republican Lisa Murkowski, Cole has been reporting on her regularly. She officially filed to run on Monday. The jungle primary/ranked choice general election system Alaska has adopted is likely to keep Tshibaka out of the Senate. The most recent public polling (although of very dubious credibility) shows Murkowski beating her handily in both rounds and in a head to head final match-up 60-40.

Last November Cole wrote that though Tshibaka-- who speaks tongues-- makes a big deal about being a native Alaskan, she spent her whole adult life in DC, "except for the two years she and her husband worked in the Dunleavy administration, establishing residency in Alaska for her Senate run... This 'we' business about taking back 'our' Senate seat from 'Washington, D.C. insider' Murkowski is a complete fraud," he wrote. "Candidate Tshibaka likes to stress two things about her life story. First, she claims her parents were homeless in 1975 in Alaska. Second, she claims that Murkowski is not a real Alaskan, but a D.C. insider, while Kelly is a real Alaskan and not a D.C. insider." But the nonsense about her parents being homeless is a bold-faced lie.

She’s never had a chance to vote for or against Sen. Lisa Murkowski because Kelly hadn’t lived in Alaska as an adult until 2019.

She grew up in Alaska, winning a Miss Alaska Preteen contest at age 11 in 1991, and graduating from Steller Secondary School at 15. She earned a degree in political science in 1999 from Texas A&M and then went onto Harvard Law School, where she met her future husband, Prince Jean Christian Kanyiki (Niki) Wa Tshibaka.

Alaska was never much in the picture after that. It was all Washington, D.C.

...Kelly and Niki are card-carrying Washington, D.C. insiders who have had a variety of government jobs and other experiences in and around the nation’s capital.

They married in Massachusetts on Jan. 28, 2001, both second-year law students at the time. They were admitted to the Maryland bar on Dec. 19, 2002. He is now listed as “inactive/retired,” while she is listed as an “active’ Maryland lawyer.

Kelly stayed at various jobs in D.C. until Dunleavy named her administration commissioner and created a new state job for her husband.

“God keeps wanting me to serve in government,” a 2015 church profile of Kelly quoted her as saying. “He keeps giving me crazy opportunities in my career. He has told me, ‘I’ve made you a Deborah. I’ve made you a mother to a nation.’ It surprises me that, in His plan, I’m more valuable to His work here than at church. People tell me things they can’t tell their pastor about.”

“Despite her impressive job titles the past 13 years, the one she cherishes is co-pastor of Mount Vernon Foursquare Fellowship,” the church profile said.

Last month, Cole was ready to elaborate on the Tshibaka-- big liar narrative, although he refers to it as embellishment. "The humble origin brag is a mainstay of her campaign. 'We are literally a family that went from homeless to Harvard,' Tshibaka said a year ago in an interview with right-wing politician Jim Minnery, a slogan she also tried out with other right-wing groups. She says she was the first one in her family to go to college. She isn’t. Her grandfather on her mother’s side, Edward Allsup, earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in music education from the University of Kansas. Her grandfather earned a doctorate in education from the University of Southern California... Tsibaka’s grandmother on her mother’s side, Jean Allsup, earned a bachelor’s degree in business from Oregon State University. She also earned a teaching degree from California State University-Northridge." But the lies hardly stopped with her manufactured origin story.

In an interview on a right-wing site this week, John Solomon introduced Tshibaka by saying: “You have an amazing story. Your parents were born in Russia. You emigrated here. You’ve become a leader in Alaska.”

Tshibaka did not correct him.

Tshibaka repeated her false claim that Deb Haaland is Interior Secretary only because of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, saying that a committee vote made all the difference. Under the Senate rules, Haaland would have been confirmed with or without Murkowski’s tie-breaking vote in committee.

Tshibaka said Biden and Haaland and Murkowski are to blame for the Ukraine invasion and claimed Biden “shut down all energy production here in Alaska,” which is not true.

She said that Murkowski is “not allowed to run as a Republican in this election,” which is not true.

Ms Compulsive Liar was telling the truth-- at least about how she feels-- this week when she told an audience that she would try to make it a crime to send "morning after" pills through the mail.

I know from my time working at postal service that we can actually stop sending those pills through the mail. We can actually block them in the mail. If we were to pass that kind of act, the postal service can block them using data, because I was on the team that developed those models.”

“So a criminal act of a recipient, the drug maker, the sender, there’s a whole chain there, right, that we would have to prosecute. It’s an interesting question that I need to think through.”

Tshibaka also equated the birth control pill with abortion and called for a similar ban. She said, “That is the third step in the birth control process.”

It has become a popular right-wing claim that birth control pills and IUDs, for example, cause abortions.

“A key factor in the politicization of contraceptives and efforts to limit access is inaccurate portrayals of contraceptive methods as abortifacients versus preventors of pregnancy,” University of Wisconsin Professor or Obstetrics and Gynecology Jenny Higgins and three co-authors said in this 2021 review of the matter.

As proposed abortion bans move ahead in some states, the arguments about what constitutes an abortion have intensified, Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News wrote March 22. She said some abortion opponents want to “bar many forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization, and give embryos property rights, among other things.”

“Other abortion opponents suggest banning forms of birth control they consider ‘abortifacients’ (methods they say cause abortions, such as most intrauterine devices and the “morning-after” pill), while not banning in vitro fertilization. Still others would continue to support most forms of birth control but not the abortion pill mifepristone, which, unlike the morning-after pill, works after a fetus has begun to develop in the womb.”

There are several other candidates running in the August 16 primary, but none who are plausible contenders. Democratic state Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson was unable to raise any money and withdrew, leaving the Democrats without a contender, a perfect set-up for Murkowski. There are 10 minor and vanity candidates also running. As of Dec. 31, Murkowski had $4,263,435 in her campaign account and Tshibaka had $633,843 in hers (having already spent $1,193,109 trying to introduce herself to Alaska voters).

I'm hearing from other campaigns which have polled the state's registered voters that Murkowski's favorability among Republicans is in single digits! She is widely seen there as Biden's candidate and his favorability-- among the whole electorate-- is under 30%! This is going to be a tough one for her to pull off.