In reference to your April 22 editorial, Sen. Frank Murkowski, R- Alaska, certainly was referring to the sort of Republicans that Maine has sent to the Senate when he said “we need more Republicans in the U.S.Senate.”

Sen. Murkowski needs Republicans who support the right-wing leadership of the Senate on almost every vote, who choose the pharmaceutical industry’s version of prescription-drug bills, who support this president’s monstrous tax-reducing policies that put the country back into deficit, who spring to the aid of such inappropriate Cabinet appointments as that of Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Sen. Murkowski is perfectly satisfied to have Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins as seatmates in hopes of returning a Republican majority to the Senate in 2003, even though Maine’s two fine senators sometimes annoy him by straying off the GOP reservation occasionally and to be against such awful bills as his special interest: the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. Thanks for drawing this to our attention.

Tom Schroth

Sedgwick