Sen. Patty Murray’s two decades in office have been marked by her knack for turning her vanilla-ness into an asset to pass big bills and accrue power. Lawmakers in both parties say she has a high trustworthiness quotient. She used it to pull off the budget agreement with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) a few years ago and has been back at it this month, clinching an education deal with GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander and helping to get the Senate out of its self-created jam on a sex trafficking bill.

Now, in a measure of Murray’s prominence and influence, she’s managed to roil the Senate Democratic Caucus just by remaining silent about her ambitions.

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Murray, in a POLITICO interview, refused to rule out the possibility of running against Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, currently No. 2 in her party’s Senate leadership, who’s been busy lining up support to keep his job.

“I think I feel the same way that all the members of my caucus feel: We have a lot of work to do right now,” Murray said in her Senate office last week when asked whether she would rule out a run for whip. “What’s going to happen a year-and-a-half from now is of interest for a lot of people in a lot of ways, but I want to get things done that we need to get done right now and focus on that when the time’s right.”

The uncertainty over whether the former preschool teacher will make a play to be the No. 2 to leader-in-waiting Chuck Schumer of New York has stoked uncertainty among Democratic senators thinking about life in a post-Harry Reid Senate. Schumer, who may well be the deciding factor in how it’s resolved, isn’t making moves on leadership positions other than his own.

Still, some Democratic senators with whom Murray has spoken since Reid announced his decision last month to retire as minority leader came away thinking she might be angling for a bigger role in leadership and could take on Durbin. They say she seems to be waiting for the right moment to decide whether to tap into her reservoir of support in the caucus.

Durbin isn’t about to step aside, though: He has privately told other Democratic senators that he’s locked down more than enough support to keep his job come 2017.

“Senator Durbin has been talking to his colleagues and feels good about the strong support he has in the caucus,” said his spokesman, Ben Marter. “He’s counted votes in the caucus for a decade, so he knows what he is doing.”

If she got the job, Murray would be the Senate’s first female whip. But she’s already the Senate’s most powerful woman, building her status among senators partly by taking on tasks no one else wanted to do.

“Patty Murray is a great example to elected officials on how hard work trumps an incredible drive toward the cameras and photo ops and attention,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). “You know, many people around here are attention-seeking missiles that careen around this complex, constantly looking for the flavor of the day that’s going to get them a headline or get them a story. Patty Murray is the opposite.”

The “mom in tennis shoes” tag is lore by now: A put-down directed at Murray by a state legislator when she drove to the Capitol in Olympia, children in tow, to protest budget cuts to preschool programs more than three decades ago. Murray used the moniker to launch her political career and still displays a pair of tennis shoes in her office.

“People come to Congress with different goals and motives, and some people came here to yell, and that’s fine,” Murray said. “I really came here to solve problems, and I really came here because I want my country to work.”

She’s become one of Reid’s most trusted confidantes, in part for her willingness to take on tasks few, if anyone, wanted to do: chairing the doomed “supercommittee” in 2011 that deadlocked while trying to strike a deficit-reduction deal and leading the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee during the 2012 election cycle, when Democrats faced a tough map and risked losing their Senate majority.

The latter role was particularly thankless. The DSCC chairmanship is typically a steppingstone for members with less seniority, and at the time Murray was already an established senator with a key role in Democratic leadership. But others — including future DSCC Chairman Michael Bennet of Colorado — declined Reid’s offer, and the Nevada Democrat turned to Murray for the job.

Despite worries they would lose seats and perhaps the majority, Senate Democrats instead padded their numbers that year after Murray and the DSCC capitalized on GOP Senate candidates’ comments about rape and abortion. Democrats picked up the Senate seat in Indiana and hung on to Missouri, North Dakota and Montana — all Republican-favored states in a presidential year.

Asked about her penchant for taking on thankless tasks, Murray quipped: “Doesn’t every mom?”

“She never lies to you. She would give you a straight-up answer,” added Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who says she considers Murray a mentor. “She will tell you exactly how she’s thinking, what she’s thinking, how she feels.”

Reid tapped her again this week to lead negotiations with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) on ending the sex trafficking bill dispute. With that fight resolved, Murray is turning her attention to her next task: helping the Senate pass a sweeping education overhaul bill.

Adding another bipartisan deal under her belt, Murray recently reached an agreement with Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who is chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, on a rewrite of No Child Left Behind — the long-expired education law whose reauthorization had stymied the past three Congresses.

Alexander, a deal-maker in his own right, had initially wanted to write a GOP-led draft and then court moderate Democrats to reach 60 votes in the process. Instead, Murray reached out to Alexander, telling him that the two new HELP leaders should try to strike an education deal on their own. They succeeded, writing legislation that unanimously cleared the committee with backing from the likes of Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

“She suggested we try to break the stalemate on No Child Left Behind by the two of us working together to produce a bipartisan bill, so I accepted her advice, we did that and it’s gone very well,” Alexander said. “She is direct, cares about education and is easy for me to work with. So I like working with her.”

This was after Murray reached a budget deal in December 2013 with Ryan, the 2012 GOP vice presidential candidate known for his stances on fiscal austerity and limited government — a view shunned by Murray, whose family when she was growing up had been helped by government aid like veterans’ health care, food stamps and education grants. Their friendship continues to this day, with Murray and Ryan texting each other on election night (she congratulated him and the GOP on winning), engaging in football trash talk (her Seahawks vs. his Packers) and working on their latest legislative effort: how to use data to best evaluate federal programs and tax expenditures.

But Murray is also a legislator who, colleagues say, knows when to negotiate with Republicans and when to be partisan. She is stubbornly on-message, a frustration for reporters but useful for the party when it comes to pushing its position on issues like equal pay and women’s health care.

Still, unlike many of her colleagues, Murray shuns the Sunday show circuit and usually flies home to Washington state most weekends. The last time she appeared on a Sunday show was in December 2013 to promote the Murray-Ryan deal.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) called Murray’s approach to legislating very “Kennedy-esque,” referring to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.).

“During his time period here, Sen. Kennedy got some deals that people would’ve been like, ‘Why are you doing that?’” Cantwell said. “But people trusted that he had crafted the best deal possible and that’s what Patty does. People know that Patty has cut the best deal we could possibly cut.”

Manu Raju contributed to this report.