Could Lisa Murkowski be the queen of America in 2025?
Photo: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
There are a lot of possible power configurations in Washington that could emerge from the noise and drama of this very close general election. At the moment, the presidential contest is as close to an absolute dead heat as you can imagine, and there are legitimate fears it will go into overtime just like the 2020 race. Control of the House is also teetering on a knife’s edge; the best bet (historically) is that whichever party wins the presidential election will also win a majority in the House, but it really could go either way based mostly on a handful of districts in noncompetitive presidential states like California and New York.
The closest thing we have to a solid betting proposition is that Republicans will likely flip the Senate. They need to gain just two net seats to put that chamber out of reach of the Democrats, even if a newly elected Vice-President Tim Walz is the tie-breaking vote. With Joe Manchin’s retirement, Republicans are sure to pick up one seat. And the landscape is such that Democrats are playing defense nearly everywhere else in potentially losable races in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and, most of all, deep-red Montana (yes, Democrats are praying for upsets in Florida and Texas, but there may not be enough money on the planet to beat Ted Cruz or Rick Scott in a presidential year). So the GOP could flip the Senate if Democrats fall just one Senate race short of an unlikely sweep of competitive contests, no matter what happens to the House and the White House (though a Trump victory would, of course, make GOP control of the Senate even more likely by giving Republicans the vice-presidential tie-breaking vote).
What, then, will a Republican Senate mean for the country? For one thing, we do not know who will be running the chamber: Longtime Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is stepping down at the end of this Congress, and his conference will choose a successor after Election Day. At present, three senators, all much closer to the MAGA wing of the party than McConnell, are in the running: front-runner John Thune, close competitor John Cornyn, and Trumpy insurgent Rick Scott. It’s possible another contender (e.g., Steve Daines) will emerge, but one of “the two Johns” is most likely, which would mean a cooperative help-mate for a Trump administration or an obstructionist if not actively revolutionary opposition to a Kamala Harris administration.
A Republican Senate as part of a Republican trifecta controlling both executive and legislative branches would play an important and perhaps central role in shaping the much-dreaded Trump 2.0 legislative agenda. As many of Trump’s likely congressional initiatives (particularly the assault on non-defense programs eagerly contemplated in Project 2025) as possible would be packaged into a budget reconciliation bill that skirts any potential Senate filibuster by Democrats and makes potentially massive changes in tax and spending policies via simple up-or-down partisan votes. It’s what former House Speaker Paul Ryan called “a bazooka in my pocket,” a way to impose one-party rule on Washington with breathtaking speed so long as party discipline holds.
But that’s why the margin of Republican control may truly matter: Just as maverick Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema wielded outsize power in a 50-50 Senate in the first two years of the Biden administration, someone like Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski could very definitely hold the keys to the kingdom in a 50-50 Senate controlled by her party. She is, indeed, the only senator who could theoretically switch caucuses in the foreseeable future. She doesn’t face voters again until 2028, and her voting base back home (and the ranked-choice voting system Alaska now uses) is organized around independents and Native Alaskans who don’t really want their senator (who has routinely defied Donald Trump) to be a loyal Republican.
Should Republicans control the Senate as a Harris administration takes office, the chamber could potentially be a graveyard not only for legislative initiatives but for judicial- and executive-branch nominations and (if any are in the offing) treaties. Whoever is in charge of the Senate Republican conference will have powerful leverage over the White House, and notably progressive nominations may simply not be made to keep the confirmation machinery moving. If Democrats control the House as well, a Republican Senate would be the main locus of opposition to the new administration, with party rank and file (particularly if Donald Trump is still stirring the pot with MAGA activists) demanding total obstruction of Harris’s agenda. Republican Senators will also have an eye on a relatively favorable 2026 landscape, aware that the non–White House party typically makes gains in midterm elections.
All in all, it’s likely a Republican Senate could be a moderating influence on a rampant Trump administration and a serious problem for an ambitious Harris administration. In either event, Democrats should strongly consider forging some new bonds with Murkowski and boning up on Alaska’s priorities.
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