Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) told podcaster Galen Druke that she might be open to leaving the Republican Party, and even caucusing with Democrats as an independent, as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) or Angus King (I-ME) do.
But a lot would have to happen to get her to that point.
Druke posed the scenario to her in which Democrats pick up three seats in the Senate in 2026 — a difficult but not impossible feat for them, if the political environment continues to get worse for President Donald Trump — and Democrats proceeded to let her "pass bills that would benefit Alaska" as an enticement to defect, which would just barely give Democrats a Senate majority.
Murkowski didn't completely shut the door on this idea.
"There may be that possibility," she said. "There is some openness to exploring something different than the status quo."
While Murkowski votes with the Republican Party on the vast majority of issues, and in particular is very conservative on energy and resource policies that her heavily rural state's extraction-based economy relies on, she is widely regarded as one of the most moderate Republicans in the Senate and has been harshly critical of Trump on a number of issues.
This is not the first time Murkowski has suggested she isn't entirely comfortable with her role in the current Republican Party. At the end of last year, during a conference with the bipartisan group No Labels, she said that she would be "more comfortable" without a partisan label than with "an identity as a Republican" — although she quickly clarified she is "still a Republican."
