Lisa Murkowski says she’d back Manchin over Biden and Trump in 2024
Emily Jacobs
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Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) says she would cross party lines to vote for Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) in the 2024 presidential election if the race is between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Murkowski made the comments in an interview with PBS’s Firing Line with Margaret Hoover, set to air Friday evening, after being asked about her West Virginia colleague’s potential presidential bid on the No Labels ticket. Washington has waited with bated breath for Manchin, who faces a tough reelection fight next year as a Democrat in a ruby red state, to announce his 2024 plans. The senator has said he will make a decision at the end of the year.
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He has also fiercely defended plans from the centrist group No Labels to create a third-party presidential ticket amid speculation that he could be the party’s nominee.
“If it’s a matchup between Biden and Trump, I know exactly where I’d go. I would go with Joe Manchin,” Murkowski said when asked if she’d support the West Virginia senator’s 2024 bid. “I am one who doesn’t like to use my vote for the lesser of two evils. I want to be proactive in who I think could do the job. I think Manchin could do the job. But will our system allow for that? That I don’t know.”
Pressed on if Manchin’s candidacy could tip the scales in Trump’s favor, Murkowski replied: “Think about it, if we go into a 2024 scenario where it’s basically a redo of 2020 between Trump and Biden, what does that say? That we have nobody better than these two? And so an independent or somebody who is offering something in the middle, people are hungry for that.”
“Alaskans are saying, can you talk Joe [Manchin] into running? That’s not for me to do,” she continued. “I do think about what a third party will bring to the equation. We’ve seen it before on multiple occasions, very wealthy people who had an opportunity to fund their race who weren’t able to cut through. You know, maybe it was just not the right time. Maybe now would be a more opportune time.”
The Alaska senator added that she “would really have to do some serious evaluation” to determine if a Manchin third-party ticket could send Trump back to the White House.
Murkowski, a lifelong Republican, never had a particularly strong relationship with Trump to begin with. While she voted to acquit him during his first impeachment trial, she was vocal throughout Trump’s presidency when she took issue with his behavior.
She broke more formally with Trump after he refused to concede his 2020 election loss, eventually voting to convict him at his second Senate impeachment trial after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. She also admitted shortly after he left office that she didn’t vote for the former president’s 2020 reelection bid.
“I will tell you, if the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me,” she told the Anchorage Daily News in the days after the attempted insurrection.
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Her criticism drew Trump’s ire, leading him to back a primary challenger in her most recent Senate race last year. Murkowski, a political force in Alaska, won that race by over 7 points.
The Alaska senator was first elected in 2002, but she made history when she was reelected in 2010 through a write-in campaign. She was the first senator in over 50 years to win her race in such a way.