Would Murkowski Ever Switch Parties?

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

Every congressional cycle for the past twenty years has seen moderation go by way of the dodo bird.  It is increasingly unbecoming of members of either party to moderate their views in a world where straight-ticket voting is such a big deal.  This is why when a state realigns (recently this being the case with Ohio & Florida on the right, Arizona & Georgia on the left) it is imperative that you swoop in as quickly as possible and go for as many chips (i.e. seats) as you can, largely as a result of there being so few on the table to begin with.

Particularly for Republicans, moderation of any kind is seen as a sign of weakness, and in the Trump Era, a sign of betrayal by the leader of the party.  You saw this happen this past year, where House incumbents like Jaime Herrera Beutler & Peter Meijer lost primaries that ultimately went to the Democrats in the general, Republicans willing to sacrifice seats solely as an appeasement to the former president.

Which makes what happened this past week in Alaska all the more remarkable.  As was anticipated by polling, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) both won reelection to the next Congress.  But both did so with a shockingly similar coalition despite coming from completely different parties.  This is basically unheard of in modern politics.  While crossover voting happens, surely (compare Nan Whaley's numbers to Tim Ryan's in Ohio this past cycle, or look at how Wisconsin, Kansas, & Nevada all elected different parties for Governor vs. Senator), it's very rare that a candidate like Murkowski exists.  While Peltola is doing what people normally associate with a red-state Democrat (aka hold your entire base, and try to pick off as many independents and moderates as possible from the other party), Murkowski basically did the same thing...with the same voters.  

Murkowski did not hold the Republican base-she lost it to a conservative challenger Kelly Tshibaka.  Murkowski won by holding pretty much all Democrats, either in the first or the second round of voting (but honestly, more so in the first as Democrat Pat Chesbro only got 10.3% of the vote).  Keep in mind that Joe Biden won 42% of the vote in Alaska, Hillary Clinton won 37%, and in 2012 Barack Obama got 41%.  Somewhere around 40% of the state regularly votes for Democrats on a presidential level.  If Chesbro is only getting 10% of the vote, it stands to reason that 75-80% of Democrats voted for Murkowski on the first ballot, and virtually all of them did on the second ballot.  With Republicans on average getting about 50-55% of the vote in presidential elections the past three cycles, Murkowski was just elected with likely 95% of the people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and maybe 20% of the voters who went for Trump.  Put simply-she won because Democrats elected her, not Republicans.

That doesn't happen anywhere else.  The only other person who is in that same league of that is Joe Manchin, and doing some quick math even he got elected more so because of Biden voters than because of Trump voters.  This used to not always be the case-in the 1980's, Reagan voters gave overwhelming majorities to a number of Southern Democrats.  But Murkowski now stands apart as a unicorn in Congress, someone who holds her seat almost exclusively thanks to the other party.

This isn't the first time this has happened, it's worth noting.  Murkowski won in 2016 due to a number of Democratic defections (though you could make a mathematical argument that it was close to 50/50 between Clinton voters & Trump voters, which is still more than a crossover phenomenon like Manchin), while in 2010 she won with roughly half of her voters being probable Obama voters.  This is quick math, it's worth noting (a secret ballot makes it impossible to get this number precisely), but she's the only current member of Congress with this pattern, and it's worth asking two questions about these results: first, what are Democrats getting out of this relationship, and two, would Murkowski ever switch parties?

Murkowski with fellow
moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)

The first question, to be honest, is some but not a lot.  Murkowski has definitely stuck out as a potential aide to Chuck Schumer in the past six years, but rarely when it came to something of major consequence.  She voted against Brett Kavanaugh & for the second Trump impeachment, but voted for Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, & sided with Trump in the first impeachment hearing even when Mitt Romney refused to back the then-president.  She voted against Betsy DeVos, but she did so only when it was clear that DeVos would be confirmed anyway (it should be noted, the same thing happened with Kavanaugh), and she voted for Ketanji Brown Jackson...but at that point she knew she'd get confirmed.  She has not stuck her neck out too far on abortion rights, not only ensuring Barrett & Gorsuch were on the Court, but also not helping to end the filibuster to codify Roe.  She didn't help Schumer to bring Merrick Garland's vote to the floor of the Senate, even though she knew at the time it might make the difference long term for abortion rights & gay marriage, both of which she adamantly supports (she is one of the dozen Republican senators who will make sure that DOMA is repealed hopefully in the next week).  In terms of tangible things that Murkowski has genuinely gone on a limb for the Democrats for, the three biggest ones that come to mind are overriding Trumpcare (when she, Susan Collins, & John McCain sank the bill that would've gutted the Affordable Care Act), and she recently endorsed both Joe Manchin & Mary Peltola (both Democrats) for reelection.  These endorsements were likely not decisive, and one could argue Peltola's ended up helping Murkowski more in the end, but it was a risky move in a (still) red state.  Murkowski, it has to be noted, is getting a lot of Democratic support for very little cost.

The second question, I think, is one that will be intriguing over the next six years.  Alaska Republicans clearly don't like Murkowski-the only reason she has a job is Ranked-Choice Voting, and as the GOP is not moderating, she's going to either have to shift to the right (in a similar fashion to Susan Collins) or she's going to continue to look out-of-step.  Peltola's victory, especially if she can repeat in 2024, is something she can keep an eye on.  Alaska is one of the most independent states in the country (their legislatures are frequently coalition governments in a way pretty much no other state can achieve for longer than a term), and if they are willing to vote entirely for the person rather than the party, there's a lot to be gained from Murkowski moving to the Democrats, particularly if she can work out an arrangement with Chuck Schumer about energy policy, the one issue that she is the most to the right of an average Democrat.  She has six years to think about it, obviously (during which time she'll be able to see how Biden, Peltola, and her fellow senator Dan Sullivan fare in their reelection bids), and at 65-years-old it's hard to tell if she's the sort of candidate that will want to be an octogenarian in the Senate (she may well have just survived her last reelection bid), but this is an avenue I hope that Schumer & Senate Democrats are keeping open.  In a map where just 1-2 seats can make the difference, Democrats being able to grab a seat in state like Alaska would be worth pretty much any price they had to pay.