Alaska Public Media

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski isn’t ruling out running for governor.

When asked by a reporter Monday afternoon if she had considered adding her name to a long list of Republican candidates for the seat next year, she gave a short reply.

“Sure,” she said. “Lots of Republicans have.”

Associated Press reporter Becky Bohrer later asked Murkowski if she was being sincere.

“Was that a flippant response or a serious response?” Bohrer asked. “Is that something that you’re seriously considering at this time?”

“Well it was a little bit flippant, I have to admit,” Murkowski said laughing, “because everybody asks me about it. So you know when you’re asked, you’re like, ‘I don’t know. I was thinking about it.'”

Murkowski spoke during a wide-ranging, nearly 90-minute sit-down with reporters in her Anchorage office. Other topics included her displeasure with reductions in staffing for the National Weather Service, the delay in getting judicial nominees confirmed for Alaska’s U.S. District Court vacancies and the zeroing out of funding for the Denali Commission. She also defended her vote on President Trump’s reconciliation bill, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill, and the carveouts she secured for rural health care.

“I did everything within my power as one lawmaker from Alaska to try to make sure that the most vulnerable in our state would not be negatively impacted,” Murkowski said. “And I had a hard choice to make, and I think I made the right choice for Alaskans.”

Alaska Survey Research released a poll Monday that showed Murkowski’s favorability with progressives and moderates had plummeted after she voted for the president’s bill. Both of those blocs of voters helped her get re-elected in 2022. Murkowski said the bill would have passed without her support.

“What I’m trying to do is not win elections,” Murkowski said. “I am just trying to do the best that I can for Alaskans.”

Murkowski has served as one of Alaska’s two U.S. senators since 2002, when her father Frank Murkowski appointed her to his seat following his successful bid for governor. She did not commit to a re-election bid for her Senate seat either on Monday, saying the election is years away. She’s not up for re-election until 2028.

Alaska lawmakers on Saturday refused to accept an executive order from Gov. Mike Dunleavy seeking to create a state agriculture department, setting up a legal fight between the legislative and executive branches.

Dunleavy introduced an executive order that would split the existing Division of Agriculture within the Department of Natural Resources to a new cabinet-level department as lawmakers began a special session on Saturday. It was one of two items he placed on the agenda for the special session.

But lawmakers rejected the order. Senate President Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican, and House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham independent, said in a letter to the governor that state law and the Constitution did not allow the governor to introduce an executive order during a special session.

In part, the pair wrote, that’s because lawmakers narrowly voted down a very similar order earlier this year.

“We’re encouraging the governor to introduce it again in January and deal with it properly,” Stevens said.

Lawmakers are also considering bills that would create an agriculture department.

Dunleavy, in a letter to legislative leaders, challenged the Legislature’s refusal to consider the order. He said the Constitution and state law did not limit executive orders to regular sessions and said he planned to create the department unless lawmakers voted the order down.

“Unless the Legislature convenes in joint session to disapprove the Executive Order as required by Section 23 (of the Alaska Constitution), I will consider it to have become law at the close of the special session and proceed accordingly,” he wrote.

Alaska lawmakers on Saturday overrode Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of some $51 million in state funding for public schools. The 45-14 vote means lawmakers successfully reversed Dunleavy’s decision to cut $200 of the per-student funding increase approved by lawmakers during the last legislative session.

The vote was the second successful veto override after lawmakers convened Saturday for a special session called by Dunleavy.

Members of the Democrat-heavy bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate, who are typically at odds with the Republican governor, said they saw the special session as an effort to ensure the governor’s vetoes were not overridden. Dunleavy initially asked Republican lawmakers to avoid the Capitol to ensure his vetoes stood, his spokesperson said. But lawmakers overrode him nonetheless.

In May, 46 legislators voted to override Dunleavy’s veto of a bill boosting the so-called base student allocation, the per-student figure in the state’s education funding formula, by $700. The vote came after years of advocacy from teachers, students, administrators and community leaders who said the state’s education system was in crisis after nearly a decade of essentially flat long-term funding.

But after the Legislature adjourned for the year, Dunleavy trimmed the per-student increase from $700 to $500 for the upcoming school year in the state’s budget using his line-item veto power. That amounted to a year-over-year cut for schools, which last year received the equivalent of a $680-per-student boost in one-time funding. Educators and students on Friday gathered on the Capitol steps to call on lawmakers to reverse the veto.

“The state of Alaska is falling short of its constitutional responsibility to adequately fund public education,” Fairbanks Superintendent Luke Meinert said. “Instead, more and more of that burden is being shifted on the local taxpayers, stretching communities like Fairbanks beyond their limits, and the consequences are real.”

When he issued the call in early July, Dunleavy said he wanted lawmakers to consider education reforms to boost the state’s bottom-of-the-nation test scores and take up legislation that would create a state agriculture department.

In an emailed statement, Dunleavy on Friday again urged lawmakers to consider his proposals.

He introduced three bills for the special session on Saturday. One would expand tax credits for businesses that donate money or equipment to schools. Another would advance a pilot program in which the state would work with tribes to create so-called state-tribal compact schools. A third would create new retention bonuses for teachers, allow the state education department to bypass local school boards and directly create new charter schools, allow students to enroll in schools outside their district and create a new reading-focused after-school program.

Many of the proposals are ideas majority lawmakers have said they need more time to consider or have rejected in the prior two sessions, and legislative leaders said they did not plan to vote on the bills during the special session.

“No hearings on bills to improve Alaska’s dismal student test scores, no effort to lift the public school system from 51st in the nation, no tribal compacting to improve educational opportunities for our rural and Native students, and no apparent desire to prevent high school seniors from being unprepared because they don’t have the skills needed to compete for good jobs in the increasingly competitive 21st century economy,” Dunleavy said. “That is a shame.”

Lawmakers plan to evaluate some elements of what Dunleavy proposed, including a system that would allow students to enroll in out-of-district schools, with a task force that will begin meeting later this month.

The governor’s bill expanding tribal compact schools remains pending. Dunleavy introduced a new version for the special session on Saturday. A day earlier, representatives from five tribes that the bill would allow to create compact schools called on lawmakers to act on the proposal during the special session.

“This is really a pilot project,” said Knik Tribe Education Director Carl Chamblee. “This is something where we’re ready to move forward. It shouldn’t take that much time for a pilot project to be reviewed, discussed and voted on by a body of legislators.”

But Senate President Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican, said he had concerns about the bill. The bill would have the state work directly with tribes to create new schools, rather than placing them within existing school districts.

“It’s a very important issue, but we want to make sure that if we do tribal schools, they’re done properly, and they’re done right, and they’re done through the local school districts, not through the Department of Education,” he said.

The head of the Coalition for Education Equity, Caroline Storm, said Friday her advocacy group was readying a lawsuit that would seek to force the state to adequately fund schools.

The Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, a business group, sent a letter to lawmakers urging them to override Dunleavy’s veto.

“Continued constraints on the Anchorage School District will degrade the long-term economic health of Anchorage. As the largest community and economic hub of Alaska, these impacts have detrimental ripple effects statewide,” said the group’s president and CEO, Kathleen McArdle. “We already see the impacts in continued outmigration, and Alaska won’t get the chance to foster transformative solutions without the trust of families.”

Correction: A previous version of the story misstated the vote total. It was 45-14, with one lawmaker absent.

Alaska lawmakers overrode Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a bill intended to bolster the authority of the legislative auditor on Saturday, handing the governor a defeat with the first vote of a special session.

Along with an attempt to override Dunleavy’s veto of more than $50 million in public school funding, House and Senate leaders said the vote on Senate Bill 183 was a top priority for the special session. The state Constitution requires lawmakers to hold override votes within five days of reconvening.

The bill passed the Senate unanimously and by a 30-10 vote in the House. Lawmakers said it was necessary to address what the heads of the state House and Senate described as a “persistent pattern of obstruction within the senior ranks of Alaska’s Department of Revenue.” It came after a precipitous dropoff in revenue from so-called oil tax and royalty settlements, which the state negotiates with oil companies. In 2020, those provided $281 million for the state’s main savings account; in 2024, that number dropped to $3.1 million.

Legislative leaders said Dunleavy’s administration had not fully cooperated with an audit that seeks to examine the state’s collection of oil taxes by failing to produce a summary table outlining settlements that the governor’s administration provided as recently as 2019. Instead, in recent years, the administration has offered raw data that the legislative auditor said was unusable. The bill would have required the administration to turn over information to the auditor “in the form or format requested.”

Dunleavy vetoed the bill, saying it raised constitutional issues. He said any allegations that the administration had acted unethically or illegally were “baseless.”

The Legislative Budget and Audit Committee earlier this summer authorized a rare use of its subpoena power to compel the administration to turn over the data lawmakers are looking for.

Legislators are planning to arrive soon in Juneau for the special session scheduled to kick off Saturday morning. Legislative leaders say they expect the session to move quickly, and likely not last more than a day.

Most lawmakers are now planning to show up Saturday, including some Republicans who initially said they’d skip the beginning, but they’re divided on whether it’ll be worth the money it costs to bring them to Juneau.

Precisely what this special session will cost is up in the air. A portion of the cost depends on how long legislators stick around before they adjourn.

Fifty-seven of the 60 legislators — that is, everyone who doesn’t live in Juneau — can collect per diem payments of around $300 per day to cover their daily expenses, like food and lodging. And then there’s the airfare: flying legislators from Anchorage or other communities to Juneau isn’t cheap.

Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, an independent, will be flying in from his home in Dillingham, and he said he expects the total cost of the session to run into the six figures.

“Accounting for the entire legislature, all the support staff, the gathering of, you know, all the pieces it takes to hold a session, it can be north of $100,000 a day,” Edgmon said.

The head of the nonpartisan Legislative Affairs Agency, Jessica Geary, said by email that her office won’t know the exact cost until lawmakers turn in their expenses for reimbursement. They have two months to do so.

But the agency has some data from the past. One six-day session in 2021 cost nearly $175,000, or around $30,000 a day.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy called this year’s special session and put education reform and the creation of a state agriculture department on his agenda. But Edgmon, an independent, said he’s expecting Dunleavy’s vetoes to be the overriding priority. Though the governor sets the legislative agenda for sessions he calls, he does not have the power to force lawmakers to consider legislation, and legislators are able to determine on their own when to adjourn.

The governor offered some new details on his agenda for the session on Monday. Many of his proposals are ideas that lawmakers have, over the past two years, rejected or have said need a closer look. They’re planning to convene an education task force to talk over ideas like inter-district open enrollment in late August.

Edgmon said he hoped legislators could muster the 45 votes needed to overcome Dunleavy’s veto of more than $50 million in education funding. If they do, he argues the cost of the session would be money well spent.

However, “for the other measures that the governor is contemplating, I don’t see any pathways towards immediate success,” Edgmon said. “Quite frankly, the money would have been better spent doing our normal course of business and regular session.”

Lawmakers also plan to attempt to override Dunleavy’s veto of an oil tax transparency bill that passed by a wide margin. That bill would face a lower 40-vote override threshold.

Edgmon and the Senate president, Kodiak Republican Sen. Gary Stevens, said Monday they planned to adjourn immediately after the override votes. Edgmon said he has a hotel booked for “a couple of nights.” He’s bringing his chief of staff to Juneau, but nobody else, he said.

Rep. Zack Fields, an Anchorage Democrat, said he’s not planning to bring any staff to Juneau. He said he isn’t even booking a hotel room. He said the peak of summer tourism in Juneau makes it hard to find rooms that don’t cost an arm and a leg.

So, he’s planning to arrive Friday night, sleep in his office, and leave after the votes on Saturday.

“No one sees this as a kind of real month-long special session,” Fields said.

Like other members of the Democrat-heavy bipartisan majorities in the state House and Senate, Fields sees the session as an effort by Dunleavy to ensure his vetoes aren’t overridden. He said he can’t square that with the fact that Dunleavy cited the state’s low-oil-price-induced fiscal constraints when he vetoed the $50 million in education funding.

“It’s hypocritical to say the state is short of money and then call a special session that is sort of farcical in nature,” he said.

Dunleavy’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Kevin McCabe, a Big Lake Republican and an ally of the governor, said he thinks the special session would be money well spent — but only if legislative leaders take some time to actually consider Dunleavy’s proposals.

“I think this would be a good use of the state’s money if we manage to fix the educational issues that are happening in the state of Alaska, the student outcomes,” McCabe said. “Nobody cares. Nobody seems to care about the students.”

But if lawmakers stick to their stated plan and solely focus on override votes, McCabe said, “it’s a waste of my time. It’s a waste of your time. It’s a waste of everybody’s time. And our kids, as usual, suffer the consequences.”

But McCabe said he will be there when lawmakers gavel in Saturday. That’s a change from a couple of weeks ago — he had planned to be in Idaho for a pro-life conference. McCabe got a call Thursday from a van driver wondering why he wasn’t at the airport in Coeur d’Alene, he said.

Dunleavy initially asked Republicans to skip the first five days of the session because, according to his spokesperson, he didn’t want legislators to override his vetoes. The Democrat-heavy majorities need minority Republicans’ help to do so.

But more recently, McCabe said Dunleavy’s office has told Republicans it would be a good idea to show up in Juneau. McCabe is hoping to stay in the Legislature’s Assembly building, which has apartments for lawmakers and staff. If there’s no room, McCabe said he’ll sleep in his office.

A handful of other conservative House members, including some like McCabe who initially said they were not planning to attend, say they’ll be there, too.

“Clearly, my constituents, they want me to be there to work,” McCabe said.

That’s in line with a poll released Thursday by the left-leaning group Data for Progress, which indicates that nearly three quarters of respondents told the group they didn’t want legislators to skip the session.

Some 59% of the more than 600 respondents said they wanted lawmakers to override the governor’s veto of education funding, according to the poll. An even larger majority, 72%, said they wanted legislators to override Dunleavy’s veto of bills boosting oil tax transparency and capping interest rates on payday loans.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski was one of only two Republicans to vote against confirming senior Justice Department attorney Emil Bove to be an appellate judge on the East Coast.

Still, Republicans confirmed him Tuesday night, by a vote of 50 to 49.

Murkowski cited the accounts of whistleblowers to explain why she was unwilling to confirm Bove to a lifetime appointment on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

“When somebody who is going to be placed on on the bench as at the Circuit Court level, basically tells other attorneys that you should disregard the law —That, to me, is disqualifying,” Murkowski said in an interview Tuesday afternoon. “Just plain and simple, disqualifying.”

She and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine joined all Democrats in voting against Bove.

Murkowski’s vote shows that she’s still sometimes willing to disappoint Trump and fellow Republicans, even as progressives remain mad at her for helping Republicans pass Trump’s big tax and policy bill a month ago.

Sen. Dan Sullivan was one of the 50 yes votes.

Six retired Alaska state judges penned an op-ed last week, urging Sullivan to reject Bove’s nomination.

“In recent times, highly regarded and long-experienced attorneys at the DOJ have resigned, publicly stating that Bove demanded that they act unethically in their handling of high-profile cases,” the retired judges wrote.

Sullivan did not respond to an interview request Tuesday.

Other Republican senators emerged from their weekly policy lunch saying they’re committed to doing what it takes to get around Democratic objections and more swiftly confirm Trump’s nominees. Some said they had coalesced around a plan to let Trump bypass the Senate and install nominees while senators are on their August recess.

Murkowski said she’s not on board with any plan that evades the Senate’s authority to confirm nominees.

“It is our responsibility. It is part of our constitutional assignment, on this whole role of advise and consent,” she said.

The White House is pushing the Senate to approve Trump’s nominations faster, but Murkowski said the number of confirmations is on par with the past two presidencies at this stage.