Murkowski best choice to represent Alaska in Senate

Lisa Murkowski has represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate since December 2002. She has done it well and deserves another term.

The fact that Murkowski, a lifelong Republican, has disagreed with her party at times, been at odds with former President Donald Trump, or sometimes worked and voted with Democrats does not diminish her abilities, her knowledge of the issues and her hard work in the Senate. Those qualities are positives, not negatives, though her angry detractors portray those same qualities as disloyal to the party. Rather, they show the senator’s loyalty to the country and the constitution.

In her committee work and public comments, Murkowski has shown that she studies the issues, reads the background papers, talks with her colleagues and people on both sides of the debate before deciding how to vote. She learns before she talks, an increasing rarity in U.S. politics these days.

She agonizes over the close calls and cares about the right answer, not the social media posting.

She believes in principles, fairness and the facts.

Murkowski is the Arctic polar opposite of her leading challenger, Republican Kelly Tshibaka, who treats facts as flexible tubing to beat on the senator, stretching the truth much like kids who tell their parents they didn’t eat the last cookie out of the jar.

Tshibaka is among Murkowski’s loudest critics, blasting her for not supporting Trump and not adhering to an all-the-time conservative Republican script. But that ignores an important point: Alaska needs a good senator, not a political party publicist.

Granted, there still are some Alaskans who are cranky that Lisa Murkowski’s father, then-Gov. Frank Murkowski, appointed her to the post in 2002, but that has nothing to do with how she has represented the state and served the nation well in the past 20 years.

The Nov. 8 election is not about name calling or party loyalty, or Trump’s lack of honesty or his policies, or Frank Murkowski’s political skills of a generation ago. It’s about what’s best for almost three-quarters of a million Alaskans. And that is a senator who works for a living with the other 99 members of the chamber.

Sen. Murkowski should stay on the job and deserves your vote.

— Wrangell Sentinel

 

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