Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and a top Republican primary challenger backed by former President Donald Trump will advance to the general election, NBC projects. Murkowski and Kelly Tshibaka, a former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Management, will both advance, along with Democrat Patricia Chesbro, NBC projects. It was too early to call the fourth candidate in this competition. Alaska has a top-four threshold as part of the state’s ranked-choice voting system, which was adopted via ballot in 2020 — just in time for Murkowski, who was not guaranteed to emerge from Tuesday’s primary race as the clear favorite. Both Trump and the Alaska Republican Party have endorsed Tshibaka over incumbent Murkowski for the Senate seat. Trump had been highly critical of Murkowski while president, saying in 2018 that he would “never recover” after he voted against his second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. Trump, the de facto leader of the Republican Party, vowed to campaign against Murkowski after she and six other Republican senators voted to convict Trump of inciting the riot on Capitol Hill on January 6. “I don’t know where other people will be next year, but I know where I will be — in Alaska campaigning against an unfaithful and very bad senator,” Trump said at the time.
