Alaska’s senior U.S. senator, the target of an aggressive challenge in her reelection campaign, got a warm reception at the Alaska Federation of Natives annual convention on Friday.
The AFN audience greeted U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski with a standing ovation and multiple bursts of applause.
Murkowski returned the warm greeting to members of Alaska’s largest Native organization.
“I hear you. I listen to you. I feel you. And when I go back to Washington, D.C., I work my heart out for you,” Murkowski told the audience. “It’s an honor to represent you.”
In her speech, the Republican senator described her work on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed last year, that will send billions of dollars to Alaska to address long-standing needs like running water, sanitation treatment and broadband services.
And she discussed her priorities for future action when the new session of Congress convenes.
“Housing is at the top of my list,” she said. Lack of housing is a problem “just about everywhere,” from the urban core of Anchorage to rural areas “where costs are high and overcrowding is all too common.”
Another priority is the expansion of a new program she created to help address contaminated lands. “We cannot allow this to go unattended any further,” she said.
Murkowski said she also plans to “keep up the fight for a life-saving road for the people of King Cove,” she said. That refers to a longstanding but controversial proposal to build a road through part of Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Southwest Alaska to connect the village of King Cove, an Aleut community of about 900 people, to a military-legacy airport in the tinier village of Cold Bay. The issue has been argued in the federal courts, with varying outcomes. Most recently, an appeals court revived the project.
Another continuing priority, Murkowski said, is to address dramatic changes in the rapidly warming Arctic. “We need you all at the table in guiding decisions along the way, focusing on security, on shipping, mapping, ports, research, trade,” she told the audience.
A rare moderate who has diverged from her party, Murkowski is being challenged from the right by Kelly Tshibaka, a former commissioner of the Department of Administration. Murkowski earned the ire of former President Donald Trump by crossing him on various issues and by voting to convict him in his second impeachment trial; Tshibaka is endorsed by Trump.
Earlier in the day, a prominent figure on the other side of the partisan aisle vouched for Murkowski at the AFN convention. Sen. Brian Schatz, the Hawaii Democrat who chairs the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, praised her in his online address.
“Lisa is an essential voice for bipartisanship and an embodiment for how the United States government should work, not just bipartisan but nonpartisan,” Schatz told the convention audience by teleconference. “I think for the sake of Alaska Natives, it is essential that Lisa Murkowski return to the Senate to continue her great work.”
Murkowski, in her speech, also gave some cross-party praise.
“I will tell you I’m so pleased to be able to welcome Mary Peltola as our representative for all Alaska,” the senator said about the state’s new U.S. House member, elected in the August special election to serve out the remainder of the term of the late Rep. Don Young. Peltola, who is Yup’ik, was the keynote speaker the day before, at the start of the three-day convention, and got a rapturous reception that Murkowski said was moving.
“I’ll tell you my heart was filled, as I listened to her strong words, but also the beautiful and the spontaneous and just the prayerful singing that embraced her at the end,” Murkowski said. “Mary has made history and we are all so very proud of her. And I’m going to share with you, it’s about time that we had an Alaska Native woman serving in the United States Congress.”
Both Murkowski and Peltola, who is running for the full two-year House term to start in January, are scheduled to participate in candidate debates on Saturday at the AFN convention. After that, the organization will vote on resolutions that include proposed endorsements of both women in their campaigns.
• Yereth Rosen came to Alaska in 1987 to work for the Anchorage Times. She has been reporting on Alaska news ever since, covering stories ranging from oil spills to sled-dog races. This article originally appeared online at alaskabeacon.com. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.
