Former President Donald Trump promised on Saturday to campaign against Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski in 2022 after she voted for a conviction during this year’s impeachment process.
In a note to the Politician, Trump said: “I will not, under any circumstances, endorse the failed candidate from the great Alaskan state, Lisa Murkowski. It misrepresents your state and your country even worse. I don’t know where else people will be in the next year, but I know where I will be – in Alaska campaigning against an unfair and very bad senator. “
Murkowski, a moderate who has held his seat since 2002, has been one of the former president’s harshest criticisms in the party and was among seven Senate Republicans who voted for his conviction in February.
Although Senators Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania also voted against the former president, Murkowski is the only candidate for re-election in the next year .
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On Saturday, the Trump team released a recent survey that commissioned Murkowski to support his efforts to bring it down. Conducted between January 30 and February 1, the McLaughlin and Associates poll found the former president’s favorability rate in Alaska at 52 percent – nine points above Murkowski’s 43 percent.
Murkowski is the 86th most popular Republican in Congress, with 13% sharing a positive opinion, 23% sharing a negative opinion and 19% sharing a neutral opinion of the senator, according to a December 2020 YouGov poll. millennials and Generation X, and is more popular with men than women.
A publicly funded poll of 1,081 Alaskan voters, conducted by Public Policy Polling in June, showed Murkowski with an approval rating of just 29% and a disapproval rate of 55%. Meanwhile, Trump’s approval rating in the state stood at 46 percent and the disapproval rate at 49 percent.
In April 2019, a Morning Consult poll showed that it was still popular with Alaskan voters, despite standing up regularly against Trump’s agenda. In the survey, 43 percent of Alaskans had a positive view of it, compared with 36 percent who had a negative view.
However, in late 2019, Murkowski was elected one of the five least popular senators, along with Collins from Maine, who also supported Trump’s sentencing and is considered one of his opponents in the party, according to Morning Consult.
Trump beat Alaska by 10 points last year, but Murkowski’s political power proved to be strong. After the ex-president’s acquittal in his second impeachment trial, Murkowski told Politico that he was “certain that there are many Alaskans who are very dissatisfied with my vote, and I am sure that many Alaskans are proud of my vote.”
Newsweek contacted Murkowski’s office for comment.