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At the national meeting for the centrist political group No Labels this month, Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski spoke about being one of the dwindling number of moderate dealmakers in Congress.
“It’s a very lonely place to be, and our architecture, our campaign architecture, is not set up to support that,” she said.
Murkowski is part of a dying breed on Capitol Hill.
At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, she helped form a bipartisan group of 10 senators who helped to pass sweeping legislation addressing COVID-19 relief, infrastructure, gun safety and more.
Next year, only five of the 10 will return.
Two of the departing dealmakers spoke about their bipartisanship in their farewell speeches this month.
“We had each come to Washington to enact law that would help people," said Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, who chose to retire at the end of his term. "And that’s just what we did. We accomplished together what we could have never done alone."
Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester lost a closely watched bid for reelection.
“You wouldn’t have known which one of us was a Democrat and which one of us was a Republican,” he said of the group of 10.
At the No Labels event, Murkowski said their absence will be felt.
“We’re losing some of those individuals, those voices who were good and were strong and were willing to kind of push things a little bit in order to get us to the right place,” she said.
In January, the Senate will have 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats.
Only three states — Maine, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — will be represented by senators who are not from the same party, the lowest number ever. The Pew Research Center says the height was 27 in 1979 and 1980.
“The Republican Party used to have conservatives and Democrats within it. The Democratic Party used to have conservatives and Democrats within it. We don’t live in that world anymore,” said Michael Thorning, who studies Congress for the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.
He said party allegiance has become more important in winning congressional elections, and that, in turn, has made lawmakers more partisan.
“They’re all concerned about whether or not they are going to be punished by voters actually for cutting a deal,” Thorning said.
Overall, he said the tone in the Senate has gotten more charged in recent years. But Thorning said the 100 senators are still motivated to work together because they can’t get much done without some dealmaking.
According to Thorning, members like Murkowski will remain important in getting the ball rolling.
