How Republicans got Murkowski to yes on Trump's megabill

More than 19 hours into a grueling all night Senate session, John Thune was still unsure if he could lock down Lisa Murkowski.

The Alaska Republican known for her independent streak remained unhappy with her party's signature legislation. She spent hours in scores of conversations — in public, on the Senate floor and behind closed doors — trying to persuade fellow Republicans to make changes to the massive package. She had warned for weeks that the GOP tax and domestic policy megabillwould cause too much pain for her home state’s most vulnerable citizens, and she wasn’t backing down.

At one point, Thune did the unthinkable: He entertained pursuing Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Ky.) vote, which Republican leaders had written off weeks ago. Asked around 3 a.m. after his meeting with the Kentucky Republican if he thought Murkowski was a no, Thune dodged. “We'll find out,” he said.

Her vote was at risk of being out of reach, especially after the Senate parliamentarian ruled that multiple sweetener provisions to boost Medicaid payments to Alaska and Hawaii violated Senate rules that limit what can pass through the reconciliation process with a simple majority. A subsequent blow to Thune’s efforts came early Tuesday morning when the parliamentarian rejected another attempt to boost Medicaid dollars for Alaska.

But Murkowski — at times wrapped in a blanket or carrying around legislative text and pen to her colleagues — was able to extract key concessions for her state as she huddled on the floor with leadership, staff and fellow Alaska GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan. She won victories on clean energy tax credits, delaying changes to food aid for her state and the promise of massive revenues from oil and gas drilling leases, among other priorities she can take back home.

In the end, she voted for a bill that makes up the core of her party’s domestic agenda.

“I held my head up and made sure that the people of Alaska are not forgotten in this, but I think that there is more that needs to be done, and I'm not done,” Murkowski told reporters immediately after the vote. “I am going to take a nap, though.”

Murkowski is hoping to take another swing: She’s calling for both chambers to go to conference rather than simply accepting the narrowly passed Senate bill. But the House is already taking initial steps to move it toward a floor vote.

Hovering over the late-night, will-she-or-won’t-she deliberations was Murkowski’s famous independent streak, which is core to her political identity. In 2010, she famously won reelection as a write-in candidate, defeating a tea party favorite. More recently, she bucked President Donald Trump by voting to convict him during his second impeachment trial and opposing some of his appointees.

She’s also spoken repeatedly, as part of a recent book tour, about her growing outlier status within a Republican Party increasingly shaped in Trump’s image. Her opposition to the party’s bill would all but guarantee a challenge from the right if she runs again in 2028.

But this was not one of Murkowski’s moments to buck her party: Even as she held out to get extra wins for her home state, she ultimately voted for a bill she just minutes later decried as “rushed” and “imperfect.”

"She has a reputation, almost relishing being rebellious," Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said in an interview before the vote, predicting she would be with them. "She certainly doesn't want to be the reason it didn't happen. ... I just can't imagine she's got John McCain in her,” referring to the late GOP senator’s dramatic thumbs-down vote to save Obamacare.

Murkowski’s indecision was a driving force behind the more than 24-hour vote-a-rama, in which votes dragged out for hours to accommodate lobbying and negotiations for her proposed changes to the bill. Just before 4 a.m., Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) indicated the fate of Trump’s bill fell into Murkowski’s hands, calling her “the key to the whole thing.”

What Murkowski was wrangling for was pretty basic: How to blunt the impact of the bill on her state.

“What I tried to do was to ensure that my colleagues understood what that means when you live in an area where there are no jobs, it is not a cash economy,” she told reporters. “And so I needed help, and I worked to get that every single day.”

Even when the vote-a-rama reached a full day — and after the Senate parliamentarian greenlit several Alaska-specific sweeteners designed specifically to win her vote — Murkowski formally wasn’t on board.

“Every state truly does have a voice and it manifests at different times by different people in different ways. And sure, this one Lisa had an opportunity to be very influential,” said Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) in an interview.

Murkowski met with Thune shortly after 3 a.m. on Tuesday in his office off the floor as her vote remained in doubt. She also subsequently had long conversations with Majority Whip John Barrasso, who escorted her around the Capitol, including to the votes that ultimately led to passage of the bill. At one point, while she was negotiating, Sen. Thom Tillis, who announced he was retiring after coming under fire for his criticism of the bill, was perched by her left shoulder.

Amid the overnight drama — as Trump’s bill appeared to be headed for failure — Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) summed up how many of his colleagues privately viewed leadership’s decision as “coming down between Lisa and Rand,” referring to the Kentucky Republican senator.

Thune acknowledged in a brief interview that he had flirted with pursuing Paul’s vote when it seemed that Murkowski might be slipping away, adding: "We had multiple strategies in place."

Holding out clearly paid some dividends for Murkowski.

In one case, the parliamentarian OK’d a provision that allows for Alaska, Hawaii and several other states to temporarily escape higher costs for SNAP, the food assistance program for the poor, if certain conditions are met.

And as part of Senate Republicans' sweeping final amendment to the bill that was part of the overnight negotiations, they removed a controversial tax on solar and wind energy projects that Murkowski and a handful of other Republicans were agitating to be removed.

Another goodie bordered on the obscure, if not for the senator: Bowhead whaling boat captains recognized by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission will be able to deduct more for whale-hunting-related expenses, up to $50,000 from the current $10,000.

Murkowski “is somebody who studies the issues really, really hard and well,” Thune said. “I'm just grateful that at the end of the day she concluded what the rest of us did ... which is that it was the right direction for the future of our country."

Lisa Kashinsky, Benjamin Guggenheim and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.