Sen. Lisa Murkowski reflects on ‘blue wave’ in 2026 election

Ben Townsend
KNOM News Director Ben Townsend here, and we've got Senator Lisa Murkowski in the studio. Lisa, thanks for being here.

Lisa Murkowski
It is so great to be back in Nome. It is a stunningly beautiful fall November day. I picked it. I guess you've had some really kind of icky weather and some bad storms recently, so I am super glad to be here on a blue bird Day.

Ben Townsend
Also joining is KNOM reporter Augusta McDonnell. We have just 15 minutes with you, so we're going to hold you to it. We're going to get a lot of stuff in here, we’ve got a lot of questions. We want to keep them moving.

Lisa Murkowski
All right.

Ben Townsend
First, I wanted to ask what brought you to Nome today?

Lisa Murkowski
So you may or may not be aware, we just had an election yesterday, and with all the chaos and the swirl that goes on with politics, I have to tell you, I just want to be working again. And so, as I was looking at my schedule, I had a day Wednesday that was pretty clear, and I thought I haven't been up to Nome all year. I'm going to go up. I'm going to just let the chaos and the swirl of the elections be behind me and focus on work. So today it was all about the high prices of fuel and energy, housing issues, the economic challenges that come with opportunity. So it has been a full day of Nome immersion again, and it's felt pretty good.

Ben Townsend
I want to talk about the port a little bit. In 2025, Congress appropriated nearly 25 billion – with a B – to the U.S. Coast Guard, in part to build out its icebreaker and cutter fleet, air assets, infrastructure, among other things. Of course, Nome is undergoing a massive port expansion. I hope you got a chance to see it today.

Lisa Murkowski
We did.

Ben Townsend
That would allow ships like icebreakers to dock here. So, with these two things in mind, the Coast Guard investment and the port project here, what do you think the future of the Coast Guard and the military looks like in Nome?

Lisa Murkowski
I want to encourage, and I am actively encouraging the Coast Guard to have more of a presence here. When you think that your closest Coast Guard station is down in Kodiak, and how many maritime miles that is from where we are here in the Bering Straits, there is a lot of water in between. And it's not only water that has fisheries that are active. You've got a level of shipping that is just almost explosive in terms of what we have seen coming through the Bering Straits in recent years, and we just don't have the Coast Guard presence that I believe we need to have.

But if you're going to have a Coast Guard presence, you also need to have a place where you can put your ships. And so whether it's Arctic security cutters or other vessels that can be there to serve this region, I want to see our military. I want to see our Coast Guard be more actively engaged with the community here in looking at the future.

But there have been some who say, "Well, I don't really want to have increased traffic in the Bering Strait.” Whether we like it or not, it is out there. It is happening. And so, how we can have a presence that provides for security, surety, environmental protections. These are the things that not only the people of Nome, but the people throughout the region and really up and down the entire coast need to be part of.

Augusta McDonnell
Given the increase in interest in beefing up infrastructure and security on and in Alaska and on our Arctic coast, what's the likelihood that Nome will be home to a new military base in the next five years?

Lisa Murkowski
A military base is a pretty substantial undertaking, and so I would not be suggesting that we would see a military base in Nome in the next five years. What I think you will see is more expanded presence, and what that may specifically look like, I think remains to be seen.

We have some older military installations that have kind of seen better days that the military is looking to kind of dust off. I think you're seeing the Air Force that is looking at some of the old forward operating bases and seeing what needs to be done to rehab them. The Navy is looking more critically and investing money in Adak, and again, I think the oast Guard clearly has interests up here in addition to the military.

Augusta McDonnell
Earlier today, we actually toured the Port of Nome as well, looked at some of the expansion, looked at the plans, and also talked with local port leadership, who discussed that there is a rub when building out expanded infrastructure, big federal dollars, big contractors in town with the local community. So, as you're looking at the various interests that are exploring developing Nome for defense interests, what does that mean for the people of this community?

Lisa Murkowski
The term that's being used is “dual use infrastructure.” In other words, the Port of Nome, an expanded Port of Nome, can can serve military purposes in so far as if there were naval ships that come up, whether it is the potential for Arctic security cutters, but you also want it to serve the community, and so making sure that you still have full use of of subsistence harbor, so the local people are not are not pushed out of this this this facility and this opportunity, so when you're talking about dual use, though, you want to make sure that that the burden is shared.

It’s expensive to build out a port. I mean, if you were there moving that rock, doing the work that is underway, is not cheap. This is a very expensive project, and so what what we're trying to underscore with Washington D.C. and the Pentagon is that when we're talking about the Port of Nome, what we're really talking about is a national security asset because right now we do not have the coverage in the Arctic that we need as an Arctic nation.

The United States of America does not have a deep water Arctic port. It's as plain and simple as that. Nome will be that port, and it will be important for the people of Nome, but it will also be important for the security of the country as we watch and as we see, again increased levels of activity in the Arctic and going through the Bering Straits.

Augusta McDonnell
Okay, let's transition a little bit into the topic of the week, of course, the midterm elections. I'm sure if you were here in Nome and you've been talking to folks, you know that rural costs are very high. Voters at exit polls last night in Nome talked about those costs: heating fuel for their homes, the price of groceries, everything that has to be flown or barged in, affected by the costs of transportation. But nationally, Democrats did flip at least seven Senate seats, won the House. The Vice President himself blamed the war in Iran for a lot of the unhappiness with cost and the way that fuel has affected those costs in the United States.

Now you're going to be working with a Democratic majority. So what specifically are you going to push for in Congress to bring down fuel and freight costs for off-road Alaska?

Lisa Murkowski
Well, whether it's a Democrat-led majority or a Republican, I would continue to push the efforts that I have been engaged in to say the war in Iran that we have seen cause the price of fuel and goods, most notably in a place like Alaska, to escalate, we need to figure out how we responsibly bring that war to a conclusion. We need to ensure that the role of Congress is respected. I don't believe that it has been in terms of transparency, full disclosure, not only to the Congress but to the American people. And so I think that is something that will be truly on the plate when we return, whether it's in these next few weeks in this lame duck going forward, but then further.

You know, the fact of the matter is, is prices were expensive here in rural Alaska before the outbreak of the war in Iran, before the Straits of Hormuz were closed off, and so we have got to be looking as a state as to what we can do to help reduce our our costs. It makes no sense to import diesel into communities if that's your power source. What is the resource that is around us that we can tap into that can help power our communities?

You've got the potential. We have wind here in Nome. What more can we be doing with battery storage? You know, we've talked about small modular nuclear. If that is a better alternative, we look to the potential that we have with other renewable sources that are more close to where we are. There are solutions that we can turn to that are closer to home than importing diesel to power our old generators to keep the lights on in our communities, and so those are more long term.

But I think we need to be thinking about that as a state. We don't want to be stuck in a situation ever again when we say because a strait 1000s of miles away has been shut down. We are now literally held hostage. We can't fly out of our communities because it's $1,000 round trip to get from Wales to Nome. I think that was the price. I mean, this is cost prohibitive, and so how do we look more to our own local solutions.

I am one who says that we need to be producing more in Alaska, but I also recognize that when we produce more oil up on the North Slope, that doesn't necessarily get to the folks here in Nome. We put that in a pipe, we send that down to the lower 48. It's refined down there, and then we have to ask for it to come back. And by the time it gets up here to Nome, you know you look at the price that you're paying at the pump, there's $7.39 or 29 cents. So we've got to look to how we can be doing more on our own to address our own energy solutions.

Ben Townsend
Can I jump in with a follow-up regarding the election? As Augusta said, Vice President Vance mentioned the war with Iran was really unpopular. Did you see the events that transpired last night coming?

Lisa Murkowski
No, I knew that we were going to, we were probably going to lose a couple seats. I felt like we were probably, the Republicans were going to lose the House. I did not expect that we would lose the majority in the Senate, and I certainly didn't expect the, the, the trying to – I've written down so many different words to describe. They call it a…

Augusta McDonnell
Blue wave.

Lisa Murkowski
Blue wave.

Ben Townsend
Blue tsunami.

Lisa Murkowski
It really did catch me by surprise. I could feel, I could feel here in Alaska, the real pushback that was coming because of higher prices and people feeling like like Congress had not been responsive to them with that, but I didn't have a sense as to what the rest of the country was feeling, and now I see we were not alone in this.

Augusta McDonnell
Is that do you think a mandate from voters to Congress, this really seismic shift in power has gone to the Democrats? What do you think the message is for Democrats being given this mantle of power? And also what does that mean for your priorities now that Republicans are serving in the minority mantle of power, and also what does that mean for your priorities now that Republicans are serving in the minority?

Lisa Murkowski
My priorities don't change. My priorities are still, I'm anchored here in Alaska to try to figure out how I can make this place that we call home that much better, so that our kids want to stay here, so that we end this outmigration, so we have healthier economies, so we can afford to to live and raise our families where we want to. That doesn't change, and so priorities don't change.

I do hope that the Democrats don't view this as a mandate to retaliate. I don't think my outtake after less than 24 hours is people are fed up of the partisan warfare. What they want is help me with my problems, help me afford my energy bills. Don't tell me that I'm going to have to go into the grocery store and and and. Figure out which is the cheapest box of macaroni and cheese because that's the only thing I'm going to be able to feed my kids tonight. Help me out with my problems, and all you guys in Congress do is just fight and bicker, and you don't do anything to solve problems.

And so I hope that the Democrats look at this and say, "This is our opportunity to lead, to find solutions, and if we're going to find solutions, they have to be for the country.” They can't just be for our party. We have got to get back to governing in the middle, and you all know this is where I feel pretty comfortable, and I've seen it remarked in a couple different articles this morning that maybe what we saw yesterday was the revenge of the middle, the return of more moderated politics.

I hope so, because what I seek as I am looking at this next Congress. I want to try to be a problem solver. I want to try to help people. I don't want to throw political rhetorical bombs at one another and get nothing done. So I hope that the Democrats don't mess this up. I hope that they don't look at this and say the next two years we're just gonna we're just gonna we're just gonna it's gonna be daily retribution directed at Donald Trump. You do that, and we're gonna be looking at you know maybe a red tsunami, and in 2028, I don't think America wants to put up with more of these crazy, wild swings back and forth. Can we just try to settle back into a more calibrated place?

Augusta McDonnell
Among your colleagues in the Senate, are you getting the sense that there is an appetite for a shift in how Congress relates to one another?

Lisa Murkowski
I don't know. I think yesterday was a shockwave for the Republicans, and I'm willing to bet that most of my friends on the other side of the aisle are kind of like, "Oh my gosh, we're the dog that caught the car. What do we do now?” So everyone is trying to figure out, “Okay, what do we do?”

So, it’s a little premature for me to judge as to how this is all going to settle out and the direction that's going to be taken. My goal is to be an individual who is involved in making things happen for the good of the whole, to get the Senate functioning again. I'm going to have an opportunity, not one that I was looking forward to, I have huge respect for my friend Susan Collins, who I think has really tried extraordinarily hard to get the appropriations process on a better path, and she saw defeat in her election last night, regrettably. But that is going to be putting me in a position of higher leadership on the Appropriations Committee. And and what I really want to try to help advance is a way that we can address what has become more of a broken process in the Congress and how we can how we can actually do the job that people have sent us there to do.

Augusta McDonnell
That was my last question, was if you're in line to be the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, and your goal being to repair what you're calling broken in the process, describe how that changes the responsiveness that voters might feel to their representatives. What part of this kind of logjammed process does that play a role in, in terms of voters feeling that they aren't heard?

Lisa Murkowski
Let's just use the example of Nome, the people of Nome feel that their their members of Congress have heard them on their priorities, and they feel that we're actually working with them to try to advance them, and we have helped to advance either through legislation or opportunity to be heard, or are leading on different initiatives. They look at that and say, "Okay, I think we're making some headway."

If what they see is their member of Congress who's doing nothing more than going on, you know whatever Sunday morning talk show to beat up the other side and blame things instead of trying to be responsive to the issues on the ground, I don't think that we are serving them well, and so how can we be responsive to the concerns?

People are pretty animated, and rightly so, about what they're seeing with high costs. What are we doing to address that? And let's show them what we're doing to address that, rather than engaging in partisan warfare right out of the bat and saying you don't really mean it, you know your idea isn't going to go anywhere, and mine’s the only one that works. And if I can't have my way, we're not going to have anything at all. People are sick and tired of the back and forth, and not feeling like it has made their lives any better.

Ben Townsend
I'd like to jump in here because I know we got to get you on the plane tonight. You were just at AFN. You've been to many of those before. We've talked about high costs of living, high fuel prices, everything that goes along with that. What were some other things that you heard from people, especially Alaska Native people, coming out of AFN this year that you're going to be taking back to DC with you?

Lisa Murkowski
It was absolutely first and foremost, it was high prices of everything, but what I also heard was just a growing fear about what what we're seeing with the impacts of of climate in various communities, and we certainly see that here along the coast, the coastal storms, the fact that you've had like three back to backs here in in Nome. I mean, yes, you get fall storms, but what people are seeing and coming to fear, coming to fear the fall, and what it may bring.

And it's not just here. We're seeing weather events in other parts of the state where people are feeling not only a vulnerability but an insecurity in being in their own homes. And what are we doing about it? What are we doing about the erosion? I was in the airport, I was talking to some folks from Galena, and you're thinking Galena is way in the interior, but they're seeing river erosion that is just eating away at that front part of the street there, and so they're showing me video and showing me pictures right there. We are seeing the impacts of weather events and many of them just more extreme, where there is a desire to know what is it that the government can do to help us feel more secure. If we're going to have to relocate, what does that look like? A lot of really deep concerns about things like that, which are pretty heavy.

Some of the other things that I heard that were actually pretty heartlifting, we've been working on the recommendations from the Native Children's Commission. This was a multi-year effort to really understand what more we can do for the greater well-being of Native children, not just Alaska Natives, but Native kids everywhere across the country. And so we have our Native Children Commission Implementation Act, and it's focused on everything from education to social justice to housing to environment to food security, and we've put out positive, I think constructive ideas, and some of them are pilot projects. We might make a few people a little nervous because it's like this is untested, but it's in response to real challenges and it's substantive, and it's all directed again towards the health and well-being of of children, and we had some really good conversations while I was at AFN about the prospects and what we can do to advance things like that that are going to make a difference for our kids.

Ben Townsend
You were really generous with your time, so thank you, Senator Lisa Murkowski, for joining us.

Lisa Murkowski
Great to see you Ben, Augusta. Good to be in Nome.

Ben Townsend
Yes, thanks for coming back. We'll see you next time.