Some big and unexpected news burst out of Alaska right at the candidate filing deadline late on Wednesday night, and it's going to sound awfully familiar: GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski has earned herself a primary challenger—again. But there are plenty of differences between this year and 2010. For starters, the guy running against Murkowski this time is a well-known, established politician, former Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan. That name's going to sound all too familiar, too, but this Dan Sullivan is not to be confused with the state's junior senator, also named Dan Sullivan, who had previously served as the director of the state's Department of Natural Resources before narrowly defeating Democratic Sen. Mark Begich two years ago.
The former Mayor Sullivan had also been talked up for that very same Senate race, but instead, he ran for lieutenant governor and wound up losing 48-46 on a ticket with incumbent Republican Gov. Sean Parnell. Despite the loss, the fact that Sullivan served over 40 percent of the state's population for six years gives him a very different pedigree from Murkowski's previous primary opponent, Joe Miller. Miller was an obscure tea partying attorney who had raised little money but wound up stunning the political world when he knocked off Murkowski 51-49, riding little more than an endorsement from Sarah Palin and a bit of outside spending from the grifters at the Tea Party Express.
His race against the incumbent, though, was framed in strict ideological terms, with Murkowski's relatively moderate voting record and her insufficient hatred of Democrats forming the crux of Miller's attack. Sullivan, by contrast, hasn't really explained why he's running (nor did he even give a hint that he would run—until he showed up to file paperwork at the state's elections office minutes before the deadline). In fact, Sullivan's rationale for challenging Murkowski is downright bizarre:
Q: Why are you jumping into the race?
A: I think competition is a good thing overall for any candidate, whether for an incumbent or a first timer. Baptism through fire helps make the candidate stronger. Having contact from people around the state for the past several months, from people who essentially wanted to see a choice in the Republican primary, that's why I'm doing this. The Murkowski family and my family are longtime friends. This is not based on anything other than wanting to make sure that conservative voters have a choice.
Q: So what's the choice? How are you different from Senator Murkowski?
A: That'll come out during the campaign. I'm not going to get into this too much into her record. I'm going to just put out what I believe. ... I won't be directly criticizing Senator Murkwoski. That won't be part of the campaign.
For an ostensibly serious candidate, that's just … weird. The only area Sullivan identified as a possible divide between him and Murkowski was abortion, where Murkowski's sometimes split from her party. But Alaska's a fairly libertarian state (Begich even ran ads touting his support for reproductive rights last cycle), and it's also facing a massive fiscal crisis due to falling energy prices and the depletion of its oil fields, so it's unlikely abortion would take center stage in a race like this. However, in a possible sign of where his philosophical preferences lie, Sullivan did endorse Miller in 2010, albeit in the general election, when Murkowski decided to wage an ultimately successful write-in campaign to keep her seat after losing her bid for renomination.
And this time, Murkowski won't be caught unawares. Remarkably, in 2010, she still had $1.9 million left in her campaign account ahead of the primary; had she spent just a bit more, the outcome could have been very different. Sullivan, meanwhile, says he has no outside organizations helping him, has "raised no money," and says he will not run "a big money campaign." That, actually, does resemble Miller's lackluster fundraising effort, but at least he had the support of the con artists at TPX!
So oddly, despite Sullivan's much higher profile, it may well be that Murkowski will have less to fear from him come the Aug. 16 primary. However, we haven't seen any polling yet, and the last relevant survey—from PPP, back in late 2014—pegged Murkowski's approval rating with members of her own party at just a 44-41 spread. In fact, her numbers were better with Democrats and independents, so it's conceivable that if she does decide that Sullivan's a real threat, she could drop out of the Republican contest and straight-up run as an independent. (Our reading of Alaska law suggests that Murkowski could indeed take this route.)
Democrats, unfortunately, are not well-positioned to take advantage of any chaos that might ensue. Three candidates filed: Ray Metcalfe, who served in the state house over 30 years as a Republican; University of Alaska professor Edgar Blatchford, who once worked in the administration of former GOP Gov. Frank Murkowski (Lisa's father), and Some Dude Dick Grayson, who, uh, lives in Brooklyn. It's conceivable that Democrats could try to swap in a stronger alternative—in a dream scenario, that would be Begich—but right now, that doesn't seem likely. (There was such talk in 2010, too, though the original candidate, Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams, stayed in the race and turned out to be the best option.)
Whatever winds up happening, you do still have to wonder whether Lisa Murkowski is up for another round of intra-party punishment, or if she'll just decide to quit the GOP once and for all. Either path carries risks. The only question now is which one is riskier.
