Follow the Money: Who Does Lisa Murkowski Represent?
In recent years, political science researchers like Barber (2016) and Kujala (2020) have established that senators and representatives in Congress generally represent their campaign donors rather than their voters. Many Americans probably instinctively sensed this to be the case, and if you’re among them you may be asking what took political scientists so long to figure this out.
That’s a story for another day, but the short version of that story is that the entire discipline was held back by a combination of (1) the inertia of inherited “knowledge” and (2) the lack available data to statistically test hypotheses about influence in American politics. Thankfully, advances in data collection methods, statistical modeling, and especially computational power have gradually improved our ability to question conventional wisdom and come closer to understanding who has real influence in American politics. The story for today concerns what this new understanding of representation tells us about Lisa Murkowski and who she represents.
Who is Lisa Murkowski?
To put it bluntly, Lisa Murkowski is a political nepobaby in its purest form: she first reached the US Senate not through an election but through an appointment by her father, Alaskan governor Frank Murkowski, less than three weeks after Murkowski had left that Senate seat to be sworn in as governor of Alaska. That’s right: Governor Frank Murkowski handed his daughter his seat in the US Senate after holding it for 22 years. She’s now held that seat for another 22 years. What a racket.
While the Murkowskis weren’t among Alaska’s elites when Lisa was born in 1957, by the time she was a young adult her father had managed to ingratiate himself to (and had even become part of) Alaska’s economic and political elite:
In the year Lisa turned 14, her father became president of the National Bank of the North.
Six years later, he headed the Alaska Chamber of Commerce–meaning, of course, that elites in Alaska saw him as a strong advocate for their interests.
Less than a year after Lisa Murkowski finished her undergraduate degree at Georgetown University, Frank joined the US Senate after riding Reagan’s coattails in the 1980 election.
After attending law school at the Willamette University College of Law and completing her JD in 1985, Lisa Murkowski’s career as an attorney got off to a slow start, as she failed on her first attempt at passing the bar exam. Undaunted, she took the bar exam and this time–well, she failed the second time, too. They say the third time's the charm, but it wasn’t for her. Or the fourth, for that matter. But she finally did pass the bar exam on her fifth attempt.
Lisa Murkowski worked as an attorney from 1987 to 1998, when she launched her first campaign for a seat in the Alaska House of Representatives. By the time of Murkowski’s election to the Alaska state legislature her father had been in the US Senate for 18 years, having won re-election in 1986 and 1992 and embarked on his third re-election campaign. Thus, as Lisa Murkowski was running for office in Alaska, she benefited from having one of most recognizable last names in Alaskan politics at the time.
Murkowski won re-elections to the Alaska House of Representatives in 2000 and 2002. Despite having only four years of experience as a legislator, she was named the House Majority Leader for the 2003-2004. However, she never took that position because she received a better offer: her father’s seat in the US Senate.
In 2002, Frank Murkowski ran for Governor of Alaska while he was still in the US Senate. He won that election with 56% of the vote, and resigned from his position in the Senate on December 2, 2002 before being sworn in as Governor on December 4. Now, it would be his job to pick his successor in the US Senate. This person would serve the remainder of his term and then be up for re-election in 2004.
Do you see where this is going?
Mr. Murkowski’s Daughter Goes to Washington
On December 20, 2002, Governor Frank Murkowski selected his daughter Lisa Murkowski to fill the Senate seat he’d left less than three weeks earlier, completing her meteoric and nepotistic rise to power as an advocate for elites interests. Without having to win her Senate seat through an actual election, she entered the 2004 Senate campaign as the incumbent (Thanks, Dad!).
Although the family name had been beneficial to her career through 2002, the nakedly corrupt and nepotistic behavior Frank showed by appointing his own daughter as his replacement in the Senate was not appreciated by some voters heading into the 2004 election. Luckily for the Murkowskis, the non-Murkowski senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens, was also a Republican who was willing to put his support behind Lisa Murkowski. With the aid of Stevens, Murkowski defeated her Democratic challenger Tony Knowles by a vote of 48.58%-45.55%, a difference of just 9,349 votes.
Before discussing Murkowski’s campaign finance history and explaining what that tells us about who she represents, I should make a quick note concerning her campaign finance data for the 2004 election. As of this writing, her data for small individual contributions and large individual contributions are listed incorrectly on Open Secrets. I noticed the mistake and reached out to Open Secrets, which confirmed that the data for 2004 was inaccurate due to how contributions were listed with the FEC at that time. Thankfully, I was given the correct numbers, and I’m hopeful that Open Secrets will update the website to reflect the true data for 2004.
In her first actual Senate election–her re-election of 2004–Murkowski’s campaign funding clearly reflects that of a candidate who is aligned with elite interests. In that election cycle, only 12.43% of her campaign funding came in the form of small individual donations under $200. 47.01% of her funding came from large individual contributions and another 34.93% came from PACs. This means that, overall, more than 80% of her campaign funding came from the rich.
Although her campaign funding skewed heavily towards elites in 2004, it was even worse in each of her three subsequent re-elections. While her 2004 campaign raised about $709K in small individual contributions (out of the $5.70 million it raised overall), she has never raised more than $500K in small individual contributions again.
The table below summarizes the sources of her campaign contributions over the course of her career (I looked through over 2,000 Getty Images of Murkowski to find this gem. You’re welcome.):
After receiving 12.43% of her funding through small donations in 2004, that number never surpassed 4.5% again and fell as low as 1.63% (2016). While almost 82% of her funding came from large individual contributions or PACs in 2004, that number was at least 86% in each of her next three elections in 2010, 2016, and 2022, reaching a high point of just under 95% in 2016. In summary, what the data says is that in her career, a total of about $1.4 million has come in the form of small individual contributions, while about $26.2 million has come from elites. Moreover, the percentage of her funding coming from in-state donations has declined in each subsequent election, declining from about 54.6% in 2004 to about 15.9% in 2022. What this means is that while she represented a combination of Alaskan elites and national elites in 2004, she now primarily represents national elites.
Who are the national elites that Murkowski represents?
In Murkowski’s career, individuals and PACs associated with the oil and gas industry have given more to her campaigns than have individuals and PACs associated with any other industry. In her most recent election cycle, 2017-2022, the biggest offender from the oil and gas industry was ConocoPhillips, which gave Murkowski’s campaign $10K through PAC contributions and just over $50K in individual contributions from “employees”--and I use the word “employees” advisedly because these individuals are almost exclusively executives, lobbyists, and attorneys. So, to the extent that she represents the oil and gas industry, it’s the owners and executives within that industry who supported her and not average Americans.
While the industry that has given her the most support in her career is the oil and gas industry, she has also received substantial support from elites within the securities and investments and electronics and utilities industries. Interestingly, the fourth largest “industry” supporting her political campaigns throughout her career are leadership PACs. This is reflected in her most recent re-election campaign (2017-2022), where the National Republican Senatorial Committee gave her campaign $52K, making it the fourth-largest source of her contributions. In addition to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and elites from PhillipsConoco, other sources of funding among Murkowski’s top 5 contributors include:
#2: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which advocates for policies favorable to the country of Israel
#3: Trident Seafoods, which is the largest seafood company in the United States
#5: KKR & Co, which is a global private-equity and investment company worth over $700 billion (as of 2024) and headquartered in New York City.
All told, Murkowski’s personal background, political history, and campaign finance history tell a clear story:
Murkowski is arguably the greatest beneficiary of nepotism in the US Senate, first relying on her father’s fame in Alaska to win a seat in the Alaska legislature and later being literally appointed by her father as his successor in the US Senate once he became governor. From the beginning of her Senate career, she relied heavily on funding from elites, who surely suspected she’d be a good representative of their interests–just like her father.
If there are any Alaskans out there reading this who voted for Murkowski in the past but may be beginning to doubt whether Murkowski represents them, know this: she doesn’t represent you. She represents her donors, and her donors are rich.
That’s why she voted for Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” knowing that it would kick millions of people off of Medicaid and increase the national debt. She’s willing to harm some of the most vulnerable people in Alaska if it allows her to deliver tax cuts to her rich donors. Remember, she finally caved in and voted for the “Big, Beautiful Bill” despite acknowledging that the bill would harm many Americans. Want to know who it doesn’t harm? The oil and gas industry won’t be harmed by the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” In fact, the bill calls for leasing 18.86 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. I guess those $50K in donations coming from ConocoPhillips executives, lobbyists, and attorneys may turn out to be a good investment after all.
Over the next few years, as you learn about family members, friends, and acquaintances losing Medicaid as a consequence of the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” remember: people like Murkowski decided to hurt poor people to give rich people handouts.
Unfortunately, Murkowski has at least three more years left in the Senate. But it is my hope that by 2028, when Murkowski is once again up for re-election, Alaskans remember who she represents and vote accordingly. No candidate should be seriously considered by the public unless that candidate (1) is primarily funded by small individual contributions and (2) makes campaign finance reform the linchpin of an economic populist campaign. Any candidate who does not meet those basic requirements will represent the interests of elites, not average Americans.