Cleveland Paper Highlights Delegation Partnership

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 08/05/2023

ANCHORAGE - Dan Sullivan’s hometown newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is calling Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski’s bipartisanship “stunning” given the polarized political environment in Washington. Cleveland reporter Stephen Koff was so shocked he even had to call an Alaska political scientist to confirm it.

Koff noted the Begich-Murkowksi pairing in a piece comparing the two senators from Ohio, Rob Portman (R) and Sherrod Brown (D) - who hail from different parties and vote together only 41% of the time.

By contrast, Begich and Murkowski have voted as much as 80% of the time together, a claim called “true” by independent fact check organization PolitiFact. Open Congress lists the two senators as having voted together 65% of the time during the 113th Congress, more than any other split delegation in the Senate.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer writes:

“Ohio’s pair votes together more often than the pairs from nine other states: Iowa (where the senators vote together 32 percent of the time), Arkansas (38 percent), Florida (29 percent), Louisiana (30 percent), Missouri (39 percent), Nevada (38 percent), Pennsylvania (33 percent), South Dakota (36 percent) and Wisconsin (28 percent). Brown and Portman share the same togetherness score as North Carolina’s Richard Burr, a Republican, and Kay Hagan, a Democrat.

“But the Brown-Portman duo is no Begich-Murkowski.

“Alaska Democrat Mark Begich and Republican Lisa Murkowski have voted together 65 percent of the time in the 113th Congress, a number so stunning that The Plain Dealer called a political scientist in Anchorage to see if it could be true.”

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