A sitting Republican senator just endorsed a Democrat for governor of a state Donald Trump has won three times, one week before Election Day. Lisa Murkowski picked Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins over Trump's chosen candidate, Bernadette Wilson, and she did it on local television like a woman with nothing left to be polite about.
The Endorsement Nobody in the White House Wanted
Murkowski announced Tuesday that she is backing Kreiss-Tomkins, a former state lawmaker, in the race to replace term-limited GOP Gov. Mike Dunleavy. She told NBC affiliate KTUU in Anchorage that he brings "a freshness of energy, a commonsense guy who has a known ability to be working together."
That is a polite way of describing the competition. Her actual objection is that the three Republicans on the ballot are too partisan. Wilson, the one with Trump's blessing, is the one she singled out as unwilling to work with Democrats at any point.
So the argument from a Republican senator is that the Republican field is too much of a Republican field. In 2026, that counts as a stinging critique and also a pretty accurate one.
Wilson Responds With a Nickname and a Meltdown
Wilson did not take it gracefully. Her statement said Murkowski "abandoned Alaska values a long time ago" and called her opponent "Just Keep Taxing" JKT. She then accused Kreiss-Tomkins of allegiance to "extreme socialists hellbent on fighting President Trump to the detriment of everyday Alaskans."
Socialists. In Alaska. A state that sends every resident an annual check out of an oil fund, which is about as socialist as it gets without a flag and a parade. Nobody in the Wilson campaign seems to have noticed.
It also tells you what the Trump-endorsed playbook looks like in practice. A senator who has served Alaska since 2002 gets told she abandoned the state's values because she endorsed someone who wants to cooperate with the Legislature. Cooperating with the legislature is, last I checked, the job.
A Race That Leans Blue in a Trump State
The NBC News Decision Desk rates the Alaska governor's race as leaning Democratic. Trump carried the state in 2016, 2020 and 2024. Hold that thought for a second, because it is the whole story.
Kreiss-Tomkins is running against former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, former state Attorney General Treg Taylor and Wilson, whom Trump endorsed this month. Alaska uses ranked choice voting, which means a split Republican field and a fed-up senator can do real damage. Three Republicans fighting over the same lane while one Democrat builds a coalition is not a recipe the GOP enjoys.
Kreiss-Tomkins said he and Murkowski had "a few conversations" as the campaign moved along and that she got to a point where she was "confident in our ticket." He called her a person of integrity who has worked across the aisle. That is exactly the sentence a Democrat should say in Alaska.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department Is Fighting a Ballot Name
Here is where the story gets properly ridiculous. Last week, the Trump administration sued Alaska election officials over the Senate ballot. The complaint: a candidate named Dan J. Sullivan Jr. appears on the ballot, and the administration argues this could confuse voters who meant to support incumbent GOP Sen. Dan S. Sullivan.
Read that again. The federal government sued a state because two men have similar names. Sullivan is in a competitive race against Democrat Mary Peltola, and apparently the plan to protect him includes litigation over whether Alaskans can read.
Murkowski called it out on X, writing, "Alaskans don't need any help voting for their preferred candidates, and the State of Alaska has already handled this by clearly distinguishing the candidates on this year's ballot." She is right. The state already did the thing the lawsuit claims it failed to do. Trump's reply the next day was to call her the "Republicans' Worst Senator, by far."
The Quiet Detail About Sullivan
One more piece of context makes this less of a simple Murkowski-versus-Trump story. She endorsed Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, for re-election this year. She is not torching her party. She is picking and choosing, and she is doing it in a state where picking and choosing is allowed.
That is the part Trump's team cannot handle. Murkowski is not on the ballot until 2028. She does not need anyone's permission. She backs a Republican for the Senate and a Democrat for governor, and she explains herself on the local news in plain English.
A week out, with the midterms on the way, it is a lot easier to attack a senator on social media than to explain why your gubernatorial pick is trailing in a state your guy keeps winning.
The Dingo Take
Alaskans are about to vote in a race where a federal lawsuit is trying to protect them from a ballot that says two different names. Think about what that assumes about the people holding the pencil. They are being told the government has to step in because they cannot tell Dan S. from Dan J. Jr. Meanwhile their actual problem is a Republican field that the state's own senior senator says is too partisan to govern.
The Trump response to a senator pointing out that governors need to work with legislatures is to call her the worst one in the building. Sure. A governor who refuses to work with the Legislature in a state that depends on federal dollars and a functioning delegation is a real problem, and Murkowski knows it, because she has spent decades living with the consequences. Wilson's answer was a nickname and a socialism accusation. That is not a governing philosophy. That is a bumper sticker with a campaign account.
The lesson is not complicated. When your pitch to voters is loyalty to one man, you lose the people who actually have to live in the state. Alaska might hand the governor's office to a Democrat this November, and a Trump endorsement helped make it possible. Some of us are laughing. Some of us are checking the weather in Anchorage.
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