Sen. Lisa Murkowski weighed the choices in the upcoming presidential election during an Anchorage news conference last week.
“I don’t know. Maybe I don’t vote for either one,” Murkowski told Alaska reporters Thursday. “I haven’t decided that. I don’t like the policies of one and I don’t like the character of the other.”
Murkowski, a Republican, also described a climate of partisanship in Washington that she says limits conversations and the exchange of ideas.
“We’ve lost sight of the best part of who we are,” she said.
Murkowski is one of a handful of elected Republicans who have openly opposed former President Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president in the 2024 election. She didn’t support him in 2016 or 2020, either. She was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump of inciting an insurrection following the January 2021 Capitol riot.
Murkowski recently received national attention for raising concerns about the current state of the GOP. She reiterated in the interview that she had no imminent intention to leave the party of which she has been a member for decades. However, she said she would not attend this month’s convention of the Alaska Republican Party, which censured her for her outspoken opposition to Trump.
Murkowski also said she did not support President Joe Biden’s reelection bid. She has been broadly critical of his resource development policies, including the administration’s decision to cancel oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and a proposed rule limiting oil extraction in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
But Murkowski said she continues to be open to working across the aisle.
“As Republicans, we’re told: Don’t go sponsor a bill with a Democrat who’s in a contested race because it might give them an edge,” Murkowski said. “What happens if that Democrat has a darn good idea? And it’s not only going to help them in their state, it’s going to help us in my state? Why wouldn’t I want to do that? But we’re so focused on winning, winning, winning for the team.”
In the video above, watch more from a candid conversation recorded in Murkowski’s downtown Anchorage office on April 4.