Ivan Moore, a Lisa Murkowski pollster, got political Twitter abuzz yesterday with a suspect poll from July 11-21 by Alaska Survey Research showing his client winning the ranked choice Alaska Senate election, by beating the Trump-endorsed Kelly Tshibaka in Round 3... with some significant help from Democratic voters.
Round 1:
Lisa Murkowski (R) 36
Kelly Tshibaka R) 27
Elvi Gray-Jackson (D) 19
Joe Miller (R) 18
Miller eliminated
Round 2:
Murkowski 39
Tshibaka 40
Gray-Jackson 21
Gray-Jackson eliminated
Round 3:
Murkowski 55
Tshibaka 45
No other polling has shown Murkowski (who has been endorsed by Joe Manchin) beating Tshibaka, who has not only been endorsed by Trump, but also by the Alaska Republican Party, as well as by Trumpists Cory Lewandowski, Bill Stepien and Brad Parscale. An early June poll by Change Research, a Democratic firm, had a very different result:
Tshibaka- 39%
Al Gross (D)- 25%
Murkowski- 19%
John Wayne Howe (I)- 4%
But there's a new wrinkle in the race... maybe. Sarah Palin, a notorious pursuer of attention, who says she's never heard of Tshibaka, told some far right religionist nuts that she's thinking about running against Murkowski. She told New Apostolic Reformation leader Ché Ahn, a psychotic insurrectionist who took part in the Trump coup, that "If God wants me to do it, I will."
Right Wing Watch reported that "Palin appeared with Ahn at a leadership conference cosponsored by Ahn’s Harvest International Ministry and Mario Bramnick’s Latino Coalition for Israel. 'Prophet' Cindy Jacobs prayed over Palin and declared that God is raising up an army of pastors and intercessors that will take her “all the way to the top” when she takes her next 'big step.' Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to the same gathering.
Ahn asked Palin if she would consider running for U.S. Senate from Alaska; she said she would have to pray about it, suggesting that it would be a big sacrifice to leave her home in “God’s country” for the hostile “bubble” of Washington, D.C. “If God wants me to do it, I will,” she said. But, she added, Christians would have to do a better job supporting her than they did during her run for the White House.
Palin praised Ahn, who resisted pandemic-related restrictions on church gatherings and, with the help of religious-right legal group Liberty Counsel, won a victory at the Supreme Court. Sounding an alarm about what she claimed was a threat of “potentially forced immunizations,” Palin urged conference attendees to be actively engaged in politics and to “infiltrate” and “influence” the culture.
“We’ve got to get out there,” she urged. “We have to be the ones shaking it up. And essentially, yeah, taking over. Otherwise, what was given to God will be taken away from God.”
Until recently Alaska has had a relatively mild pandemic. In the past two weeks the case load has risen dramatically (134% statewide with an 80% rise in hospitalizations in the same period). Largely because of people like Palin, Ahn and Tshibaka the vaccination rate is just 45% for adults.