In late 2002, incoming Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski appointed his daughter to fill the remainder of his own term in the U.S. Senate. While this raised eyebrows, it’s likely that most Alaskans approved of the appointment. This is best reflected by the fact that Lisa Murkowski won her first election to the U.S. Senate against a formidable candidate — former Gov. Tony Knowles — by about 10,000 votes in 2004.
In retrospect, though I am no scholar of the Frank Murkowski governorship, it’s evident that among his most prudent and certainly time-tested acts was in the first month of that governorship with the appointment of Lisa Murkowski to the U.S. Senate. Naturally, Gov. Murkowski knew his daughter’s intelligence, mettle and character. At any rate, the manner of her arrival to the U.S. Senate is decidedly old news.
At the time of her appointment, there were five Republican members of Congress from New England and 12 from New York state. There are now zero Republican members of Congress from New England and seven from New York. The Republican Party of George W. Bush (and certainly George Herbert Walker Bush) no longer exists. Sen. Murkowski has not changed. Her party has.
If I had time to study Sen. Murkowski’s 23-year voting record, I would find hundreds of votes that I would have cast differently than she. As but one example, I would have joined Sen. Mitt Romney in voting that it was cause for President Trump’s removal from office for his efforts to drum-up an investigation into President Biden’s alleged activities in Ukraine while simultaneously withholding congressionally approved arms to the beleaguered Ukrainian patriots, pending that “fake” investigation. Her more recent vote to confirm Attorney General Bondi is completely dismaying, too.
I had never voted for Sen. Murkowski until I was afforded the option to do so in 2022 through ranked-choice voting. Instead, I voted for Gov. Knowles (2004), Mayor McAdams (2010), Lt. Col. Stock (Independent, 2016), and Pat Chesbro (2022). Even when Sen. Murkowski’s future looked especially bleak in 2016 and many progressives (and conservatives) wrote-in “Murkowski” that year, I did not join in that effort. I didn’t view her political predicament as my particular problem, and I was confident that she would prevail without my help. Fortunately, I was right about that.
I am the son of two New Dealers. My father adored Adlai Stevenson, my party’s nominee for president in 1952 and 1956 and he came to Alaska working for Territorial Delegate Bob Bartlett. My mother worked for Sen. William Proxmire of Wisconsin, a nemesis of our own Ted Stevens, elected after the fall of Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy, and later Sen. Mike Gravel. I will continue to support Democrats in their bids for Alaska’s delegation to Congress. Very recent American history has only reaffirmed my interest in the success of my own party.
My views, however, on Sen. Murkowski have evolved. I always felt generally positively about her. Now, however, I see something more. Imagine entering a room with the U.S. Senate majority conference with 50 members staring down three dissenters on the important Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmation vote, and you’re one of those three? This is not easy. Some will say that there is nothing laudable or noteworthy in doing the right thing, by opposing the nomination of the secretary. Wrong, it’s laudable. Sen. Murkowski has repeatedly shown a willingness to be a free agent, beholden to no one in particular, and to call balls and strikes as she sees them. She, alone among Alaska’s delegation, has been deliberate in demanding this freedom. If she appears too progressive to some, it’s only because — some would argue — her own party has become radicalized.
Sen. Murkowski also responds to the sentiments of her Alaska constituents, as when she refused to jettison the Affordable Care Act when no substitute was seamlessly available to people needing health insurance coverage. I suspect she voted not to confirm Justice Kavanaugh because he failed to demonstrate the decorum required of a nominee even while under fierce attack.
So, what does all this mean? It means that I am an admirer of Sen. Murkowski’s. I commend courage and intelligence. How can I not? More often than not I am proud to call Lisa Murkowski my senior senator. And when, at her recent sermon from the National Cathedral, Bishop Mariann Budde said that Americans are afraid of their federal government, I strongly suspect that Sen. Murkowski would undoubtedly have the empathy to hear and feel that angst.
I will continue to encourage my party to select its very best candidates to send to the U.S. Senate. If that candidate is credible, thoughtful and intelligent — which is likely — I will give them my first vote. But, I will happily and eagerly support Sen. Murkowski in my rankings. And, if the decency of character she affords our country is under threat — and it is — I will be with her. She need only call.
Rep. Andy Josephson was elected to the Alaska State House of Representatives in 2012 and represents residents in South Midtown, Taku-Campbell and East Sand Lake.
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