On the Hegseth confirmation, and especially Murkowski
As noted in this post, Pete Hegseth was confirmed by the Senate in a vote of 51/50 with Vice President Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. The GOP Senate members who voted “Nay” were Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitch McConnell the former Majority Leader.
Murkowski is the quintessential RINO and yet she’s from a red state, Alaska. You may wonder why she’s still Alaska’s senator. She was first elected in 2002 and has held the seat since then, having won her most recent election in 2022. That means she is up for re-election in 2028, if she decides to run. She’ll be 71 years old then, not especially geriatric by current standards in politics.
But if you look at Murkowski’s election history it’s a bit easier to understand, although strange. She’s the daughter of a well-known and once-popular Alaskan governor who had also been a senator. Her father appointed her to the Senate when he resigned his own seat to become governor in 2002. She was already in politics, however, as a member of Alaska’s House of Representatives starting in 1999. When I say that her father was a “once-popular” governor, I’m referring to the fact that he won the governorship by a wide margin, but by the time he tried to run for a second term he was primaried out and left with the dismal approval rating of 19%.
Lisa Murkowski has held on more or less by the skin of her teeth. (By the way, I don’t usually put anyone down for having failed the bar exam because I’m well aware of how difficult it is, but Murkowski has the distinction of having failed four times and passed only on the fifth try.) For example, when she ran for re-election to the Alaska House in 2000, she won by 56 votes.
When her father appointed her to the US Senate in 2002, many Alaskans were unhappy:
The appointment caused controversy in Alaska. Many voters disapproved of the nepotism. Her appointment eventually resulted in a referendum that stripped the governor of the power to directly appoint replacement senators.
As far as her elections to the Senate go:
Murkowski has had several close challenges but has never lost a general election. She has won four full terms to the Senate; she won 48.6% of the vote in 2004, 39.5% in 2010, 44.4% in 2016 and 53.7% in 2022.
That 2010 race was a three-candidate event in which she was successfully primaried and was not the GOP nominee, but decided to run anyway in a write-in campaign and beat the official Republican nominee, a Tea Party candidate, by a narrow margin. My guess is that the reason for her victory included crossover Democrat votes, people who realized one of the Republicans would win and wanted it to be the RINO. In 2016 it was a four-way race:
[In 2016] Murkowski was re-elected with 44.4% of the vote, becoming the first person in history to win three elections to the U.S. Senate with pluralities but not majorities, having taken 48.6% in 2004 and 39.5% in 2010.[4] Miller’s 29.2% finish was then the best ever for a Libertarian candidate in a U.S. Senate election in terms of vote percentage.
Her 2022 victory was extremely strange as well [emphasis mine]:
This was the first U.S. Senate election in Alaska to be held under a new election process provided for in Ballot Measure 2. All candidates ran in a nonpartisan blanket top-four primary on August 16, 2022, and the top four candidates advanced to the general election, where voters utilized ranked-choice voting.
Murkowski had been a vocal critic of Donald Trump during his presidency and opposed several of his initiatives. Murkowski was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial in 2021, and was the only one up for re-election in 2022. On March 16, 2021, the Alaska Republican Party voted to censure Murkowski and announced that it would recruit a Republican challenger in the 2022 election cycle. Kelly Tshibaka, a former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration, was endorsed by Trump and the Alaska Republican Party. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell and the National Republican Senatorial Committee supported Murkowski.
In addition to Murkowski and Tshibaka, Democrat Pat Chesbro and Republican Buzz Kelley also advanced to the general election. On September 13, Kelley suspended his campaign and endorsed Tshibaka but remained on the ballot. Murkowski received a plurality of first-place votes; however, because no candidate received a majority of the votes in the first round, an instant runoff was triggered. Murkowski won reelection in the third and final round, winning most of the second-choice votes from Chesbro’s voters.
So she won because of Democrat votes, this time without a doubt. She also had the support in that election of none other than Mitch McConnell.
I think that history explains, at least in part, how it is that Alaska came to have Lisa Murkowski as its long-time senator.
For McConnell, I don’t think his vote is any mystery: he hates Trump, and perhaps it has something to do with his financial interests as well.
Susan Collins is much easier to explain. I wrote:
I don’t fault Collins. She’s from Maine. She helps even if she sometimes votes with Democrats, because when she retires she’ll be replaced by a real Democrat.
She has to choose the times she will vote more conservatively, and when it doesn’t matter as much is free to vote with Democrats. She almost certainly was aware of the breakdown of votes, and knew that Vance was available to break the tie.
Commenter “Old Flyer” wrote:
I am not so charitable toward Collins. There are ample opportunities to assuage the Left leaning voters in her relatively tiny constituency; but Hegseth’s confirmation was hanging in the balance. I believe that she is a committed anti-Trumper and will oppose him as long as she feeds at the Senate trough–regardless of the stakes.
I think the answer is as I said above: that she knew it actually didn’t hang in the balance. It’s possible to forget that votes are often known in advance and that members of Congress sometimes vote to make a point when they know it doesn’t matter in the end.
My problem with ranked choice is that ultimately you’re voting for a person, not a series of policies. You can’t really quantify a person like you can a series of political policies.
My problem with ranked choice is that ultimately you’re voting for a person, not a series of policies. You can’t really quantify a person like you can a series of political policies.
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What you’re doing with ranked-choice is giving a set of instructions as to how your ballot is to be cast in a particular set of circumstances. In each contingent circumstance, you’re voting for a person.
McConnell’s intervention in Alaska politics is properly condemned.
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NB, evidently our floor leaders double as fundraisers and control the chamber by spreading cash around. This is another scandal.
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The American Conservative Union’s index puts Collins’ voting record to the left of Sleaza’s. OTOH, Collins voted for Brett Kavanaugh and Sleaza did not.
The 2010 campaign was nearly as dodgy miller as the tea party won the nomination murkowskis ran as an independent on a dodgy write in campaign where any scribble was deemed a legitimate signature of course there were other scams countered against miller by the mcclatchy press
There was emnity between the tea party and the establishment in alaska that went on for some years of course murkowski would go on to not only vote against trumps nominees but the worst of bidens austin mayorkas and garland along with their contentious deputies
In retrospect there was some lawfare carried against stevens and several state reps using dubious witnesses that were challenged on appeal but those races were never reinstated
Art Deco (3:21 pm), who is “Sleaza”? (Please pardon my ignorance/ naivete.)
Sleaza: A play on the name Lisa. As in Murkowski.
Ranked choice voting. They tried to bring that to Idaho last time around, and it was defeated 70/30 thankfully. Even without it we have our share of Republican squishes, especially when it comes to immigration. Agribusiness carries a lot of weight here, and they throw it around.
Plenty of Begiches of both parties in Alaska politics, too. It’s like the extended Udall family, which by some accounts not only includes Democrats in Arizona, New Mexico, and Arizona, but also Republican Smith and Lee cousins in Oregon and Utah. About the family founder:
David married a second wife, Ida Hunt, in 1882. She was a granddaughter of Jefferson Hunt. David was prosecuted for, but not convicted of, bigamy in 1884. In 1885, he was indicted for perjury stemming from a sworn statement he made backing a land claim for Miles Romney (the grandfather of George W. Romney). His bail was posted by Baron Goldwater, the father of Barry Goldwater.
Any speculation on why Tom Tillis was doing the Hamlet act on PH before he voted to confirm? Collins and the Alaska Snowblower at least didn’t dither on the vote like either Mitch or Tillis. I read speculation that if Tillis voted No then McConnel would have been a Yes to make it a tie, however.
Even without it we have our share of Republican squishes, especially when it comes to immigration. Agribusiness carries a lot of weight here, and they throw it around.
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Ranked-choice voting is a set of tabulation conventions. It does not have any partisan biases.
”Ranked-choice voting is a set of tabulation conventions. It does not have any partisan biases.”
Yes it does, and that’s why the Democrats are pushing for it. It is designed to bring the followers of fringe candidates to the polls and transfer their votes to the Democrat.
Yes it does, and that’s why the Democrats are pushing for it. It is designed to bring the followers of fringe candidates to the polls and transfer their votes to the Democrat.
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No, it is not designed to do that. People who fancy 3d parties can be of any stripe and the most durable fringe organization is the Libertarian Party. Your hypothesis only works if there’s a submerged red-haze vote which is larger than some alternative strand (with both being unmeasured).
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Please note, that controversial ranked-choice contests and runoff contests have occurred in circumstances where there were multiple Republicans running in jungle primaries.
Neo, you may think that Hegseth’s margin was known; but I read that one GOP Senator (too lazy to go back and identify) only changed his mind/vote once the voting was underway.
Maybe Collins divined that he would do so.
My sentiment is that if you run as a Republican it is not particularly honest to jump back and forth at your convenience. We don’t see that among Democrats–except when Manchin did it, of course; and he seemed to do it on principle–or gave that impression.
If her situation as a Republican is so precarious, why doesn’t she honestly run as the Democrat that she often resembles? Maybe some Maniacs are voting for strictly on personality, but maybe some are voting along party lines. She presumably benefits from GOP affiliation.
I will grant that Collins, although too often aligned, is a different creature from Murkowski.
”No, it is not designed to do that.”
Of course it is. Why do you think it’s so popular among left-wing Democrats like AOC? Like motor-voter registration and the abolition of voter ID, it helps Democrats. In this case, it helps by bringing out fringe voters who wouldn’t show up otherwise and transferring those votes to the Democrats.
”If her situation as a Republican is so precarious, why doesn’t she honestly run as the Democrat that she often resembles?”
Why on Earth would you want her to do that? You’d turn a 60% Republican vote into a 5% Republican vote and in some situations throw control of the Senate to the Democrats.
Joe Miller was a person who you wouldn’t want as dogcatcher. He had a member of the liberal press (such as it is) detained at a speech of his. Ranked choice voting was pushed by Murkowski and her people, with outside money. There is a real possibility that two candidates from the same party could face off.
What is interesting is that none of these calculations have to do with the nominee’s qualifications.
It’s all political. So that means, after some filtering down, that it’s about what the voters think about….what?
Could there possibly be any voter interest in the issues moving the politicians in this and similar matters?
Alaska is a red state, yes, but it had a Democrat in the other Senate seat as recently as 2015 and elected a Democrat to its at-large US House seat in 2022. There were odd circumstances in both elections, but it is not by any means unthinkable for a Democrat to win statewide in Alaska.
If you think of a political party as an organization whose highest goal is to win elections and take power, Murkowski is probably the lowest risk candidate for Alaska, especially when you consider that the friction of pushing her aside before she’s ready to go could very easily elect a Democrat to the seat. I strongly suspect that is where McConnell is/was.
On the other hand, if you think of a political party as a vehicle for implementing a conservative agenda, then Murkowsi is an inefficiency because, all things being equal, the GOP could probably win that seat with a more conservative candidate.
I don’t think it’s necessary to accuse McConnell of Trump hatred or some sort of nefarious monetary interest. McConnell is a Senate and a party institutionalist (i.e., he sees the purpose of the party as winning elections and taking power). That is a sufficient explanation for his actions. (Remember that his refusal to consider Garland’s nomination was almost certainly a necessary condition for Trump’s victory in 2016.)
I think the difference here is philosophical. A party whose highest goal is to implement a particular agenda is going to lose more elections than a party whose highest goal is to win and take power. How much risk are you willing to take for the sake of an agenda? I think the worst you can accuse McConnell of is not recognizing the importance of the agenda and the risk of NOT implementing it.
Aside – I agree with neo on Collins. She’s basically the opposite of Murkowski. Murkowski is an inefficiency for conservatives because a more conservative candidate could probably win the seat. Collins is an arbitrage for conservatives because that seat should probably be held by someone much less conservative than her. Her votes for a conservative agenda, like her deciding vote on Kavanaugh, are gravy for the right. My guess is that Democrats view Collins’ seat pretty much the same way that Republicans looked at Manchin’s seat which, for all the grief he caused Democrats, was also an arbitrage in Democrats’ favor.