“Alaskans are not paying much attention to the House impeachment drama,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said to The Hill, a news website.

If this is an accurate account of her views, I’m not sure she is right, based on the imprecise tool she is using to measure the level of interest in the televised hearings.

“They’re seeing the headlines in their paper and know that it’s underway but I’ve been checking in with my staff that are working the phone lines, not just here in D.C. but around the state. I check the mail traffic coming in and it is not something that is occupying the waking hours of Alaskans right now,” Murkowski told the publication.

Using the number of phone calls or emails to her office as a measuring stick could provide a strong indication of interest in an issue that specifically impacts Alaska, and there are many of those. But it is hardly a great tool to use when the topic is impeachment of the president.

Lots of Alaskans who are following the impeachment hearings will never contact Murkowski’s office. And the Senate so far has no part in the process, but it will.

Murkowski is the subject of a lot of speculation in the national media about how she is going to handle the issue and she will be under a lot of pressure.

Newsweek reported Friday that President Trump and Senate leader Mitch McConnell are particularly worried about what Murkowski and Sen. Susan Collins will do.

“McConnell is worried their votes are not safe. In fact, in his role as Trump's sherpa—the calm hand who knows better than anyone how to count his caucus' votes—McConnell counseled the president to call Murkowski and pledge to work with her on an ambitious energy bill that the Alaska senator has been pushing for three years,” Newsweek said.

The New York Times referred to her as a “borderline skeptic” on impeachment.

Vox reported that Murkowski, Collins and Sen. Mitt Romney are the only three Republicans " who aren’t wholeheartedly defending President Trump on impeachment” at this moment.

The Washington Post said Republican Senate leaders are debating among themselves the prospects of holding “a lengthy impeachment trial beginning in January to scramble the Democratic presidential race — potentially keeping a half-dozen candidates in Washington until the eve of the Iowa caucuses or longer.”

The Post said that Romney and “more independent-minded senators, such as Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, could side with Democrats to force a process that Democrats accept as fair, according to a person familiar with Republican discussions.”

Bloomberg quoted Murkowski as saying she is not ready to discuss impeachment. “No, I’m not going to talk about it,” she said.

Last week Politico reported that it would not surprise Republicans if Murkowski stood up to Trump.

“The Alaska senator has been a chronic problem for the White House. Whether it was her vote against the GOP’s Obamacare repeal proposal, or her persistent abuse of the administration for its handling of a 35-day government shutdown, or her go-it-alone refusal to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Murkowski has shown a unique capacity for afflicting the president,” Politico said.

Trump mentioned Murkowski, and not in a positive way, during a fundraiser at the Trump Hotel in Washington earlier this month. Trump asked if Murkowski was present, but she was not.

“She hates me. I kind of like her but she really doesn’t like me. We do so much for Alaska you’d think we’d get her vote for something one of these days,” Trump said, according to the Washington Post.

The votes of a small number of GOP senators will be important, even if there will never be 20 GOP senators to convict Trump. If a majority of the Senate supports Trump’s conviction, short of the two-thirds majority to remove him, that would still be a devastating blow.

As New York Times columnist Bret Stephens said, “Trump knows that the number needed to spell his moral defeat on impeachment is four. If Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and one other Republican join the Democrats to convict, the political humiliation will be thunderous. And, as my colleague David Leonhardt has convinced me, it could devastate his re-election chances. If the administration thinks impeachment is such a political winner, they wouldn't be fighting it this hard.”