Alaska’s Other GOP Senator to Back Murkowski for Reelection

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) listens during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on the federal COVID-19 response on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 18, 2021. Susan Walsh/Pool/Getty Images

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) plans on backing Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in 2022, pitting him against former President Donald Trump.

“Look, we don’t agree on everything, but we make a good team for Alaska,” Sullivan said on Sunday during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”

If she runs again, “I’m going to support her,” he added.

Trump has said he plans on campaigning against Murkowski, one of seven Republicans to vote to convict him during his second impeachment trial.

Murkowski “represents her state badly and her country even worse,” Trump said in a statement earlier this month.

“I do not know where other people will be next year, but I know where I will be — in Alaska campaigning against a disloyal and very bad Senator,” he added.

The Alaska GOP has also said it will support a primary challenge to Murkowski, as it censured her for her impeachment vote.

Sullivan noted that Murkowski helped him win reelection last year.

“When I ran in 2014 and beat a Democrat incumbent and we got the Senate majority back, Senator Murkowski was a strong supporter of mine. And in 2016 I supported her. And just in my reelection in 2020, where, you know, the national Democratic Party came in big in Alaska, massive amount of money, Senator Murkowski was a strong supporter of mine and we won that reelection very strongly,” he said.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) speaks during a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing in Washington on May 7, 2020. Al Drago/Pool/Getty Images

Murkowski first entered the Senate when she was appointed by her father, who resigned in 2002 to become Alaska’s governor. She later launched a write-in bid after losing in the 2010 Republican primary, and won the general election. She is in her third term.

Murkowski is the second-most moderate Republican, according to GovTrack’s ideology score, which is based on members’ sponsorship actions. She regularly sides with Democrats on key issues, such as supporting last week the first openly transgender Senate-confirmed nominee.

Murkowski said she voted to convict Trump because of what she heard during the impeachment trial.

“I have reached the conclusion that President Trump’s actions were an impeachable offense and his course of conduct amounts to incitement of insurrection as set out in the Article of Impeachment,” she said in a statement.

“If months of lies, organizing a rally of supporters in an effort to thwart the work of Congress, encouraging a crowd to march on the Capitol, and then taking no meaningful action to stop the violence once it began is not worthy of impeachment, conviction, and disqualification from holding office in the United States, I cannot imagine what is. By inciting the insurrection and violent events that culminated on January 6, President Trump’s actions and words were not protected free speech. I honor our constitutional rights and consider the freedom of speech as one of the most paramount freedoms, but that right does not extend to the President of the United States inciting violence,” she added.

Trump was acquitted of a charge of incitement of insurrection due to 43 Republicans, including Sullivan, voting against the charge. Supporters argued that on Jan. 6, before the storming of the Capitol, he had urged the crowd to stay peaceful.