An Anchorage attorney and MacArthur Foundation “genius” award-winner is challenging Sen. Lisa Murkowski in this fall’s general election.
On Tuesday, Margaret Stock formally announced her independent candidacy for U.S. Senate.
“There’s a lot riding on this election for Alaska’s economy and for Alaska’s future. More of the same party politics won’t fix it, but will only make things worse. We need independent leadership in Washington,” she said in a statement released Wednesday.
Stock, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, works as an immigration attorney in the Anchorage office of Cascadia Cross-Border Law. She taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and holds degrees from the Harvard Law School, the Kennedy School of Government and the U.S. Army War College.
Murkowski has served in the U.S. Senate since 2002, when she was appointed to her seat by her father, Frank Murkowski, who had left his Senate seat to run (and win) the governorship. At the time, Lisa Murkowski was the Republican majority leader in the Alaska House.
Murkowski has won two elections for the Senate, including in 2010, when she was defeated in the Republican primary but became the first write-in candidate to win election to the U.S. Senate since Strom Thurmond did it in 1954 in South Carolina.
Thus far, opposition to Murkowski in the fall election has been limited.
According to the Alaska Division of Elections, Murkowski faces only Republican Thomas Lamb of Anchorage in the state primary. In the general election, Stock joins Libertarian Cean Stevens of Anchorage. No Democratic Party candidate has yet filed to run for U.S. Senate.
