They are two of only five female Republican senators – but Collins and Murkowski have shown their strength time and again in the healthcare debate

In a historic first, the vice-president, Mike Pence, was called to the Senate floor. His job was to cast a tie-breaker vote, after two Republicans split with their party on an issue of critical importance to Donald Trump personally and to his agenda.

The rogue senators were Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and the issue was the nomination of Betsy DeVos as education secretary. With Pence’s help, DeVos was confirmed. But it would not be long before a revolt by Collins and Murkowski would once again require Pence’s intervention.

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Three times in 24 hours this week, the pair of senators voted no on Republican attempts to make good on their promise to erase Barack Obama’s healthcare law. On the most high-pressure vote of the three, a procedural measure to open debate on the issue, Murkowski and Collins were the only two Republicans to defect.

One additional Republican vote would probably have banished the “repeal Obamacare” effort for good. But there was not one additional vote. Collins and Murkowski alone, among Republican senators, stood in Trump’s path as he strained to deliver on one of the hallmark promises of his candidacy.

The president noticed, and he was not happy, particularly with Murkowski, who unlike Collins had not taken a prominent role before the Senate adjourned for its July recess in opposing the efforts of the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, to erase the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

“Senator @lisamurkowski of the Great State of Alaska really let the Republicans, and our country, down yesterday,” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning. “Too bad!”

Murkowski retorted in an interview on Capitol Hill: “Every day shouldn’t be about campaigning,” adding that she had “no second thoughts at all” about her vote.

As women in the Senate, Collins and Murkowski are part of a select group of 21 in a legislative body of 100 that continues to be extremely lopsidedly male. The pair are part of an even smaller club of only five Republican female senators (out of 52 Republican senators) currently serving.

In multiple votes, Collins and Murkowski have formed an even smaller team of two: the only two to try to block debate on healthcare, the only two to try to block a generational threat to public schools and the only two capable, it has sometimes seemed, of blocking Trump.

Hailing from opposite geographic extremes of the country, however, the sometimes partners are not exactly a pair, with contrasting political roots and goals and ideological daylight between them.

Collins is the more consistently moderate Republican, visibly breaking with her caucus – and the president – on issues such as the travel ban and on environmental issues ranging from the protection of streams to caps on methane emissions. Unlike Murkowski, Collins voted for a 2013 measure to expand background checks for gun show purchases.

Collins was likewise much more assertive than Murkowski on the question of Trump himself, going so far as to say in June 2016 that she might vote for Hillary Clinton. “I do not anticipate voting for her this fall,” she told the New Yorker, but “I’m not going to say never”.

Murkowski, by contrast, did not withdraw her support for Trump until October, after the emergence of an audio recording in which he described what sounded like serial sexual assault. “I cannot and will not support Donald Trump for president,” Murkowski said after the tape was published. “He has forfeited the right to be our party’s nominee.”

Neither senator should be mistaken for a progressive hero. Both voted against Obama’s original healthcare legislation, and both voted in favor of confirming the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, with Collins offering a personal defense of the nominee, who she said “is not motivated by racial animus”.

But the two women have crafted what has emerged as an important partnership, not only on healthcare legislation in general but on important provisions of the broader law such as blocking funding for Planned Parenthood, a dearly held Republican objective that both Collins and Murkowski have consistently opposed.

“I am committed to ensuring that important provisions of the [healthcare law], such as covering those with pre-existing conditions, continued support for Medicaid expansion, coverage for dependents and no lifetime limits, and funding for Planned Parenthood remain intact,” Murkowski wrote in a letter to constituents in June, sounding almost like a Democrat.

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Collins echoed her earlier this month, criticizing a Republican bill which she said “would make sweeping and deep cuts to the Medicaid program, which has been a safety net program on the books for more than 50 years, ensuring that some of our most vulnerable citizens or disabled children or low-income seniors receive the healthcare that they need”.



Murkowski and Collins also share – along with every other woman in the Senate – their exclusion from the working group of 13 men that drafted an early version of the healthcare legislation still under construction.

There is at least one more key vote left this week in the Republican effort to dismantle the ACA. If Collins and Murkowski team up once again to block Trump, millions of citizens could have them to thank for having protected crucial access to healthcare.

Or Pence may once again find himself making a trip to Capitol Hill to break a tie.