Murkowski’s Trump conviction vote still defines her, but not in a good way

Feb. 13, 2026 – Five years ago today, Sen. Lisa Murkowski cast a vote that still defines her place in the modern Republican Party. And frankly, her place in Alaska politics.

On Feb. 13, 2021, Murkowski voted to convict Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, accusing him of “incitement of insurrection” after the events of Jan. 6 of that year. It was the kind of vote that earned glowing headlines in the national press and applause from Democrats.

But in Alaska, it landed very differently.

Murkowski was one of only seven Republicans to vote guilty. The Senate fell just short of the two-thirds threshold required to convict, and Trump was acquitted. But Murkowski made her point,

Murkowski was once again separating herself from the voters who elected Trump, over half of the state, and positioning herself as the Republican who can always be counted on to oppose the most dominant figure in her party.

Donald Trump did not invent that habit in her. But he certainly exposed it.

For years, Murkowski has cultivated a political identity built less on representing Alaska and more on resisting the direction of her own party when it becomes inconvenient or annoying to her. That’s why she backed the creation of the Ranked Choice Voting monstrosity that has afflicted the state; it was so she would not have to face Republican primary voters, who would have voted her out of office. If we’re honest, we must admit that she engineered it through her surrogates.

She is, in many ways, the senator of the chameleon class,  a Republican when it is safe, an independent when it is useful, and a contrarian when it brings national validation.

Her defenders call it “courage.”

But courage is too generous a description.

Murkowski’s Trump conviction vote was explained by her as a matter of constitutional duty, yet it also fit neatly into a long-running pattern: Murkowski standing apart, signaling to the rest of the country that she is not like those other Republicans, especially not like the ones from flyover states, and certainly not like the ones from Alaska.

This is the same senator who has repeatedly criticized Trump-era politics while benefiting from the Republican infrastructure that helped build Alaska’s delegation into one of the most powerful per capita in the nation.

And it is the same senator who continues to frustrate Alaskans by choosing the Washington consensus over the Alaska consensus.

Her impeachment vote did not remove Trump from office. It did not unify the country. It did not change the outcome.

What it did accomplish was making Lisa Murkowski a media-approved exception. She’s the Republican the left can embrace.

Five years later, Trump remains the defining force in American politics, and Murkowski remains what she has often been: a senator out of step with her base, out of sync with her state, and seemingly more interested in opposing Trump than in understanding why millions of Americans, including many Alaskans, supported him in the first place.

At some point, Alaska voters are left with an obvious question: Who does Lisa represent?

Suzanne Downing is founder and editor of The Alaska Story and is a longtime Alaskan.