Murkowski Backs Alaska Democrat, Cites Ability To Do The Job

Lisa Murkowski has endorsed a Democrat for governor of Alaska on the apparently provocative theory that the governor should be able to govern Alaska.

NBC News reports that the Republican senator is backing Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins over a field that includes three Republicans, among them Donald Trump’s preferred candidate, Bernadette Wilson. Murkowski told Anchorage station KTUU that the Republican contenders were too partisan and said the state needs a governor who can work with its legislature.

Working with the legislature: the sort of radical demand you might find hidden in a job description.

The endorsement, made Tuesday and reported late that night, concerns the race to succeed term-limited Governor Mike Dunleavy. Kreiss-Tomkins faces Wilson, former Anchorage mayor Dave Bronson and former state attorney general Treg Taylor. Alaska uses ranked-choice voting. An endorsement is not a result, and NBC’s assessment that the race leans Democratic is a forecast, not a prematurely printed inauguration programme.

Murkowski’s stated reasoning is more practical than a grand declaration of political conversion. She said a governor’s relationship with the legislature affects what Alaska’s congressional delegation can accomplish in Washington. State and federal government have to deal with one another, an arrangement that stubbornly continues even after somebody wins an argument on television.

Kreiss-Tomkins said he and Murkowski had spoken during the campaign and that he believed she had become confident in his ticket’s ability to solve problems. He praised her work across the aisle. Neither statement establishes that every proposed policy will work. It explains the coalition they are asking voters to consider.

Wilson’s response addressed the governing question with the calm precision of a car alarm. In a statement to NBC, she accused Murkowski of abandoning Alaska’s values, attacked Kreiss-Tomkins on taxes and portrayed his allegiance as lying with extreme socialists intent on fighting Trump.

There is plenty of room for a substantive tax argument in a governor’s race. But the response also illustrates the choice Murkowski is describing: a discussion about doing business with a legislature becomes an argument about loyalty to the president. Alaska gets an entire state election, and somehow the main character is still a man in Washington.

Murkowski has not stopped supporting Republicans. She has endorsed Senator Dan S. Sullivan for reelection. Her gubernatorial endorsement therefore cannot honestly be compressed into a story about joining the Democratic Party. She is supporting different parties for different offices, which voters are allowed to do even if campaign consultants find it emotionally inconvenient.

Her recent criticism of the Trump administration’s lawsuit over another Alaska candidate with a similar name also supplies relevant context. She argued that state officials had already distinguished the candidates on the ballot. Trump responded by calling her the worst Republican senator. That exchange came before this gubernatorial endorsement; it should not be repackaged as his reaction to Tuesday’s news.

The through-line is the conflict over who gets to decide what Alaska needs. Murkowski is arguing for a coalition that can function within the state. Wilson is offering a sharper partisan test. Voters will choose, and there is no need to pretend the choice is already settled to notice the difference.

One Republican senator has looked at the Republican field and decided that working with other people is worth crossing a party line. The rest of the party might consider why that now looks like an act of rebellion rather than the minimum requirement for public employment.