Lisa Murkowski

Lisa Ann Murkowski ( ; born May 22, 1957) is an American attorney and politician serving as the senior United States senator for Alaska, having held that seat since 2002. Murkowski is the second-most senior Republican woman in the Senate, after Susan Collins of Maine. She became the dean of Alaska's Congressional delegation upon Representative Don Young's death.

Murkowski is the daughter of former U.S. senator and governor of Alaska Frank Murkowski. Before her appointment to the Senate, she served in the Alaska House of Representatives and was elected majority leader. She was controversially appointed to the Senate by her father, who resigned his seat in December 2002 to become governor of Alaska. Murkowski completed her father's unexpired Senate term, which ended in January 2005, and became the first Alaskan-born member of Congress.

Murkowski ran for and won a full term in 2004. After losing the 2010 Republican primary to Tea Party candidate Joe Miller, Murkowski ran as a write-in candidate and defeated both Miller and Democrat Scott McAdams in the general election. She is the second U.S. senator (after Strom Thurmond in 1954) to be elected by write-in vote. Murkowski was elected to a third term in 2016 and a fourth term in 2022, running as a Republican.

Murkowski was vice chair of the Senate Republican Conference from 2009 to 2010. She served as chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee from 2015 to 2021, and has served as vice chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee since 2021.

Murkowski is often described as one of the most moderate Republicans in the Senate and a crucial swing vote. According to ''CQ Roll Call'', Murkowski voted with President Barack Obama's position 72.3% of the time in 2013, one of only two Republicans voting for his positions over 70% of the time. In recent years, she opposed Brett Kavanaugh and supported Ketanji Brown Jackson in their respective nominations to the Supreme Court. On February 13, 2021, Murkowski was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict Donald Trump of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial. Following this vote, she was censured by the Alaska Republican Party.

Early life, education, and early career

Murkowski was born in Ketchikan in the Territory of Alaska, the daughter of Nancy Rena (née Gore) and Frank Murkowski. Her paternal great-grandfather was of Polish descent, and her mother's ancestry is Irish and French Canadian. As a child, she and her family moved around the state with her father's job as a banker.

She earned a B.A. degree in economics from Georgetown University in 1980, the same year her father was elected to the U.S. Senate. She is a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority and represented Alaska as the 1980 Cherry Blossom Princess. She received her J.D. degree in 1985 from Willamette University College of Law.

Murkowski worked as an attorney in the Anchorage District Court Clerk's office from 1987 to 1989. From 1989 to 1998, she was an attorney in private practice in Anchorage. She served on the Mayor's Task Force for the Homeless from 1990 to 1991.

Alaska House of Representatives

In 1998, Murkowski was elected to the Alaska House of Representatives. Her District 18 included northeast Anchorage, Fort Richardson and Elmendorf Air Force Base (now Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, or JBER), and suburban parts of Eagle River-Chugiak. In 1999, she introduced legislation establishing a Joint Armed Services Committee. She was reelected in 2000 and, after her district boundaries changed, in 2002. That year she had a conservative primary opponent, Nancy Dahlstrom, who challenged her because Murkowski supported abortion rights and rejected conservative economics. Murkowski prevailed by 56 votes.Alaska Governor Girl's Revenge
, ''Huffington Post'', Donald Craig Mitchell, May 25, 2011. Retrieved October 6, 2018. She was named as House Majority Leader for the 2003–04 legislative session. She resigned her House seat before taking office, due to her appointment by her father to the seat he had vacated in the U.S. Senate, upon his stepping down to assume the Alaska governorship. Murkowski sat on the Alaska Commission on Post Secondary Education and chaired both the Labor and Commerce and the Military and Veterans Affairs Committees. After she resigned to join the U.S. Senate, her father appointed Dahlstrom, the District Republican committee's choice, as her replacement.

U.S. Senate

Appointment

In December 2002, Murkowski—while a member of the state House—was appointed by her father, Governor Frank Murkowski, to fill his own U.S. Senate seat made vacant when he resigned from the Senate after being elected governor.

The appointment caused controversy in Alaska. Many voters disapproved of the nepotism. Her appointment eventually resulted in a referendum that stripped the governor of his power to directly appoint replacement Senators. Along with others eligible to be considered, future Alaska governor Sarah Palin interviewed unsuccessfully for the seat.

Elections

Murkowski has won three full terms to the Senate, but has never won a majority of the vote; she won 48.6% of the vote in 2004, 39.5% in 2010, and 44.4% in 2016.

2004

Murkowski ran for a full Senate term against former Governor Tony Knowles in the 2004 election after winning a primary challenge by a large margin. She was considered vulnerable due to the controversy over her appointment, and polling showed the race was very close. The centrist Republican Main Street Partnership, which wanted to run TV ads for Murkowski, was told no airtime was left to buy. Near the end of the campaign, senior U.S. Senator Ted Stevens shot ads for Murkowski and claimed that if a Democrat replaced Murkowski, Alaska would likely receive fewer federal dollars. Murkowski defeated Knowles by a narrow margin.

2010

Murkowski faced the most difficult election of her career in the August 24, 2010, Republican Party primary election against Joe Miller, a former U.S. magistrate judge supported by former Governor Sarah Palin. The initial results showed her trailing Miller, 51–49%, with absentee ballots yet to be tallied. After the first round of absentee ballots were counted on August 31, Murkowski conceded, saying that she did not believe that Miller's lead could be overcome in the next round of absentee vote counting.

After the primary, the Murkowski campaign floated the idea of her running as a Libertarian in the general election. But on August 29, 2010, the state Libertarian Party executive board voted not to consider Murkowski as its Senate nominee.

On September 17, 2010, Murkowski said that she would mount a write-in campaign for the Senate seat. Her campaign was aided in large part by substantial monetary assistance from Native corporations and PACs, as well as state teachers' and firefighters' unions.

On November 17, 2010, the Associated Press reported that Murkowski had become only the second Senate candidate (after Strom Thurmond in 1954) to win a write-in campaign, thereby retaining her seat. She emerged victorious after a two-week count of write-in ballots showed she had overtaken Miller. Miller did not concede. U.S. Federal District Judge Ralph Beistline granted an injunction to stop the certification of the election due to "serious" legal issues and irregularities Miller raised about the hand count of absentee ballots. On December 10, 2010, an Alaskan judge dismissed Miller's case, clearing the way for Murkowski, but on December 13, Miller appealed the Alaska Superior Court decision of the previous week to the Alaska Supreme Court. The state Supreme Court rejected Miller's appeal on December 22. On December 28, U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline dismissed Miller's lawsuit. Governor Sean Parnell

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