Donald Trump is a petty and vindictive man. That’s been established for a long time. But one state may be about to find that out literally. Nope, not sapphire-blue California or purplish Nevada–but crimson-red Alaska. After one of its senators voted against Trumpcare, the White House threatened to yank critical jobs and infrastructure from the Last Frontier.
On Tuesday, the Senate’s first attempt to repeal Obamacare failed, 57-43–with nine Republicans joining all of the Democrats in bringing it down. One of the Republicans to break ranks was Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski. Earlier, Murkowski had been one of two Republicans to break ranks and oppose starting debate on repealing Obamacare, forcing Vice President Mike Pence to break a 50-50 tie. Murkowski said that she didn’t believe either proposal had been fleshed out enough in committee to have a credible debate.
Trump’s public reaction was predictable.
Senator @lisamurkowski of the Great State of Alaska really let the Republicans, and our country, down yesterday. Too bad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
But the White House’s private reaction may have been even more chilling. Alaska’s junior Senator, Dan Sullivan, told the (Anchorage) Alaska Dispatch News that on Wednesday afternoon, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called him with a warning–the people of Alaska were going to pay dearly for Murkowski’s refusal to support Trumpcare.
Sullivan didn’t go into specifics. However, he said that Zinke implied “the strong economic growth, pro-energy, pro-mining, pro-jobs and personnel from Alaska who are part of those policies” were potentially on the chopping block. This could be a significant hit to Alaska, 61 percent of whose land is controlled by the federal government.
According to the Dispatch News, Sullivan was likely referring to expanded drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and National Petroleum Reserve, as well as a road from the remote town of King Cove through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Reportedly, plans to appoint Alaskans to posts in the Interior Department are now in jeopardy as well. Sullivan says that Murkowski got a similar call.
This exchange sounds like something you’d expect from a crime family–which is fitting, since Trump’s approach to governing is akin to that of a mob boss. What Zinke effectively did is tell Murkowski and Sullivan that unless Murkowski toed the line and voted for Trumpcare, Alaska was likely to get the equivalent of a horse’s head in its bed.
Democrats on Capitol Hill are up in arms. Congressman Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, accused Zinke of forgetting that he was supposed to “serve the American people as a protector of their rights and freedoms,” not serve as a consigliere for Trump. He mused that this sort of “political blackmail” sounds a lot like “something we’d see from the Kremlin,” and demanded a formal investigation.
Also on Thursday, the Western Values Project filed a Freedom of Information Act request for any contact Zinke made with Senators Dean Heller, Mike Lee, John McCain, and Susan Collins, as well as Murkowski and Sullivan. All except Sullivan and McCain voted against the first repeal attempt.
While a lot of things we’ve seen from Trump sound like something we’d expect from the Third World, this kind of bullying against a deep-red state is a new departure for him. Alaska has only gone Democratic in a presidential election once since joining the Union in 1959–during Lyndon Johnson’s 44-state landslide in 1964. At every election since then, it has been an automatic three-vote deposit in the GOP’s account.
And this is how Trump wants to reward their loyalty–by shaking down an entire state because one of its senators broke ranks and thought that maybe, just maybe, we needed a real debate on health care. This is one offer that should be refused.
(featured image courtesy UAF School of Management, available under Creative Commons BY-NC license)
