Lisa Murkowski
(born 1957)
“I’m working for my state first.”
Years in political office: 1999–present
Position: US senator from Alaska, 2002–present; Alaska House of Representatives member, 1999–2002
Party affiliation: Republican
Hometown: Ketchikan, Alaska
Top causes: climate change, health care, and natural gas projects
Life Story
Senator Lisa Murkowski says she gets her iron backbone from the expansive northern territory she represents. “I come from a pretty independent state,” she once told an interviewer. “Alaskans are pretty opinionated, and we’re not afraid to share our opinions.” Murkowski is a second-generation Alaska resident and has roots in the fishery town of Ketchikan, where her dad, former Alaskan governor Frank Murkowski, grew up.
Interested in politics from a young age, she went to Georgetown University in Washington, DC, to get her bachelor’s degree in economics. She then attended law school; moved to Anchorage, Alaska; and became a lawyer. She married small-business owner Verne Martell, who promised to take care of the kids while she kicked off her political career in 1998.
That year Murkowski was elected to Alaska’s House of Representatives, and was reelected twice before her life took an unexpected turn. Her dad became governor of Alaska in 2002. He hadn’t finished his term as senator, and as governor, he could appoint his own replacement. He talked publicly about the possibility of choosing a novice Republican politician named Sarah Palin (page 148), but in the end, he opted for his own daughter. Palin nursed a grudge over this blatant nepotism and wound up taking his job in the next round of elections for governor, cementing a political rivalry between the families. Still, Murkowski proved to be a good fit for the position, and she has been reelected for fifteen years and counting.
The long-lasting senator has built a strong reputation for self-reliance. Though Murkowski identifies as a staunch conservative, she’s never been afraid to buck the party line. She was one of only three Republicans to vote for the DREAM Act. In 2010 she, along with seven other Republicans, voted to repeal the 1994 Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that forced LGBTQ military members into the closet.
More recently, she’s spoken out against Republican president Trump. During the presidential election, she withdrew her support when videos emerged that showed him using misogynistic language. Once he was in office, she voted against the government shutdown Trump proposed in an attempt to get more money to spend on a US-Mexico border wall.
What’s on Her Agenda
Murkowski stood out as independent during the Senate vote to confirm Trump’s candidate for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh. Murkowski, because of her bipartisan voting record, was seen as one of the deciding votes in the matter. After telling a reporter of her own “#MeToo moment,” referring to the movement that encouraged people across the country to speak out against sexual harassment, Murkowski voted against Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Murkowski’s rebellion earned her harsh words from Trump, who said her no vote would cost her Senate reelection in 2022.
The senator is a firm believer in the need to take action against climate change and has witnessed the effects of it up close. Her home state of Alaska is an enormous piece of land dominated by Arctic tundra. The state is on the front line of climate change, experiencing sea ice erosion and shifting migratory paths of caribou and other animals that some Alaskans depend on for food. Murkowski has advocated for her voters’ concerns about the changing landscape of their state. For instance, she urged Trump not to pull out of the Paris Agreement and acts as the chair of the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
She is also an advocate for Alaska’s oil industry, which, since 1977 when the trans-Alaska oil pipeline started pumping, provides a whopping average of over 80 percent of the state’s budget. To maintain, or even boost, this income for her state, Murkowski wants to begin oil mining in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a 19-million-acre (76,890 sq. km) park that has been federally protected since 1960. Murkowski has used her position in the Senate to make that drilling happen.
Some find these two stances contradictory, while others consider her pragmatic for considering both environmental and economic concerns. Murkowski remains adamant that diesel is an important source of heat and energy for many isolated Alaskan homes and that the project will create much-needed jobs, boosting the quality of life and livelihoods of her constituency. To her critics, she says that it’s impossible to understand the needs of her state from afar. “In Alaska it’s beyond rural, it’s frontier,” she says. “It’s beyond what most people can relate to . . . you have to experience it.”
Awesome Achievements
- She is the first person born in Alaska to be elected to the US Senate.
- In 2010 she lost the Republican primary for her reelection to Senate, but she headed to the general election as an independent candidate and won. It was the first time a Senate candidate had been elected by a write-in vote since 1954.
- She once caught a 63-pound (29 kg) king salmon (which is Alaska’s state fish).
Quotables
“I believe that our climate is changing and we’re seeing the impacts.”
“I shouldn’t view whether what is right and what is wrong based on the political affiliation of the individual that we are considering.”
“There is a balance that goes on in Alaska that I’m proud to talk about, because we’ve made sure that the balance is there for the people first who live there, who need not only the jobs and resources, but the economy that comes with it.”