{"id":8274,"date":"2016-08-09T21:39:06","date_gmt":"2016-08-10T04:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/murkowski-undecided-on-voting-for-trump\/"},"modified":"2016-08-09T21:39:06","modified_gmt":"2016-08-10T04:39:06","slug":"murkowski-undecided-on-voting-for-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/murkowski-undecided-on-voting-for-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Murkowski undecided on voting for Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

JUNEAU<\/strong> \u2014 U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she does not know if she will vote for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump this fall.<\/p>\n

But the moderate Alaska Republican told The Associated Press she knows who she won\u2019t vote for, and that\u2019s Democrat Hillary Clinton. Murkowski is concerned that Clinton\u2019s policy positions would be harmful to a resource-producing state like Alaska.<\/p>\n

Murkowski said she has not endorsed Trump and will continue to speak out on issues where they disagree. She said that she has time to decide how she will vote in the November election.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got a few months to listen, as other Americans are, to what is laid down in terms of policy, and we\u2019ll figure it out,\u201d she said Monday.<\/p>\n

Another GOP moderate, Maine U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, on Monday became the latest Republican to announce she would not vote for Trump. Unlike Collins, however, Murkowski is up for re-election this year.<\/p>\n

Murkowski faces no major opposition in next week\u2019s GOP primary. But at least two of her rivals, independent Margaret Stock and Democrat Edgar Blatchford, have called on Murkowski to take a stand against Trump.<\/p>\n

Blatchford, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Murkowski in November, said it\u2019s scary to think of Trump, \u201ca guy who has a temper-tantrum problem,\u201d in the White House.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just cannot vote in this election based on party discipline,\u201d Blatchford said. \u201cI think what you have to do is, you have to stand up and say, \u2018This is the right thing for the country.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Jim Lottsfeldt, a political strategist, said one of the criticisms Murkowski often gets is that she can be \u201ca little too safe\u201d in her approach. He thinks Murkowski will win re-election regardless of her stance on Trump. But he would like for her to be more open about her thoughts on Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe can speak her mind without paying a price for speaking her mind, and I think she should,\u201d Lottsfeldt said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Murkowski was upset in her primary bid in 2010 by tea party favorite Joe Miller, but she came back to retain her seat with a successful general election write-in campaign.<\/p>\n

Alaska\u2019s junior U.S. senator, Dan Sullivan, was the only member of the state\u2019s Republican congressional delegation to attend last month\u2019s GOP national convention, in which Trump accepted the party\u2019s presidential nomination.<\/p>\n

Sullivan has said he intends to support Trump, but he has spoken out when he disagrees with Trump, most recently on Trump\u2019s feud with a couple whose son, a U.S. Army officer, was killed in Iraq. In that case, Murkowski said military families who lose loved ones in war deserve \u201cunconditional love and support,\u201d and Trump must honor and respect that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JUNEAU \u2014 U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she does not know if she will vote for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump this fall. But the moderate Alaska Republican told The Associated Press she knows who she won\u2019t vote for, and that\u2019s Democrat Hillary Clinton. Murkowski is concerned that Clinton\u2019s policy positions would be harmful to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":8275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8274"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}