Ted Stevens -- and Senate GOP -- In Trouble

Alaska Senator Ted Stevens is in big trouble.

And when Stevens is in trouble, so are Senate Republicans.

In a high-profile raid on the senator's home, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Internal Revenue Service agents raided the home of 83-year-old senatorial schemer Monday, as part of an investigation into his relationship with an oil field services contractor jailed in a public corruption investigation.

Bill Allen, the contractor who is suspected of providing expensive favors such as a massive home renovation to Stevens, has already pleaded guilty to bribing Alaska state legislators.

Allen's VECO Corp., an oil field services and engineering company, has reaped tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts during the years when Stevens chaired the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and a fellow Alaska Republican, Congressman Don Young, chaired the Resources Committee and then the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the House.

Young is reportedly the subject of a federal investigation relating to Allen's campaign fund-raising on behalf of Alaska Republicans.

Young is the third most senior Republican in the House, which Stevens is the senior Republican in the Senate.

Both Young and Stevens face reelection in 2008.

If Young is beat, it will just be another case of a Republican seat falling to the House Democrats, who are unlikely to lose the relatively comfortable majority they secured in 2006.

If Stevens is beat, it is a different story.

Democrats won a narrow majority in the Senate in 2006. With the support of independents Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, and the lamentable-but-still-slightly-in-the-tent-for-caucus-purposes Joe Lieberman, of Connecticut, Majority Leader Harry Reid heads a caucus with 51 members to 49 for the Republicans. The Republicans desperately want to retake the Senate. But the task, which already looked tough, is lookin even tougher with each new revelation regarding Stevens.

The problem for Senate Republicans in 2008 is that, because they won so many seats in the GOP-friendly post 9-11 election of 2002, they now must defend far more vulnerable seats than the Democrats in 2008.

The last thing the Senate GOP leadership needed was trouble in Alaska, a Republican-leaning state that has elected Democrats to statewide office in recent years and that maintains an edgy maverick streak. But with the Stevens investigation expanding, they've got that trouble.

At a time when many of Alaska's prominent Republicans have been linked to scandals, there are a number of "clean" and popular Democrats waiting to move up. Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, the son of popular former Democratic Congressman Nick Begich, heads the list. But it also includes Democratic legislators Eric Croft, an able reformer who garnered a good deal of attention when he sought the governorship a few years back, and Ethan Berkowitz, who was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 2006. State Senators Hollis French and Johnny Ellis are also on the list of Democratic prospects.

And then there is former Governor Tony Knowles, a Democrat who served in Alaska's top job from 1995 to 2003. Knowles narrowly lost bids for the Senate in 2004 and for another term as governor in 2006, but he retains a following statewide and he has great name recognition and an image as something rare in Alaska: an ethical statewide official.

Stevens said before the FBI raids began that he planned to seek an 7th full term. Recent developments may cause a change in plan.

But whether Stevens seeks reelection in 2008, or whether he steps down and creates an open-field race, Knowles would be an extremely viable contender -- with strong statewide name recognition and a solid reputation.

For Senate Republicans, the idea of a battered octogenarian senator who is plagued by scandal struggling to cover up his shame in a race with Knowles or a younger Democrat such as Begich, is a nightmare scenario.

For Senate Democrats, 2008 is suddenly shaping up as what could be one of their best election years in decades.

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John Nichols' new book is THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT: The Founders' Cure for Royalism. Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson hails it as a "nervy, acerbic, passionately argued history-cum-polemic [that] combines a rich examination of the parliamentary roots and past use of the 'heroic medicine' that is impeachment with a call for Democratic leaders to 'reclaim and reuse the most vital tool handed to us by the founders for the defense of our most basic liberties.'"

Comments (23)

1. That Senator "NO!" --i.e. Ted Stevens-- could be knocked out of the upper house on a corruption rap is good news for all of America.

   Let's hope the Dems can remove their heads from a dark anterior tight space and take an inspired leadership role on fighting corruption and returning some dignity to Washington.

   If they were to find this kind of inspiration and follow through with strong measures on public campaign financing, Constitutional restoration, dramatically shrinking --while making their budgets subject to scrutiny-- such bloated bureaucracies as the Defense Dept and others, extracting themselves from AIPAC's morbid, icy, death grip, creating a functioning health care system........

   Just imagine!

   In the meantime, back to grim reality.

   Here's one from the propaganda files:

   (NY Times guest op-ed, Monday 7/30)

   A War We Just Might Win By MICHAEL E. O'HANLON and KENNETH M. POLLACK

   Washington

   VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration's critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

   Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily "victory" but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

   After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated -- many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

   Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference..........

   Yeah, I bet. Show me the data to support that patently absurd claim.

   Anyone who has followed the Iraq debacle with enough curiosity to penetrate the veil of propaganda that shrouds the subject here in America will be strongly skeptical of yet another --among the endless claims-- of "but wait, we're so close to turning the corner."

   Here's the intrepid --and unembedded-- Patrick Cockburn to offer a crisp riposte:

   Counterpunch diary [counterpunch.org]

   Posted by b_kool_66 at 07/31/2007 @ 02:55am

2. Excuse me, I intended, "posterior tight space" above.

   Posted by b_kool_66 at 07/31/2007 @ 02:58am

3. Took 'em long enough to snare this corrupt old grump.

   Posted by Lil at 07/31/2007 @ 07:37am

4. Senator Stevens deserves much opporbrium for his various nefarious efforts on behalf of the most reactionary wing of the Republican party.

   However, the public opinion brush with which he is being tarred not unsurprisingly has missed the truth and instead gone for the salacious. If there is a state that is in need of pork, it is Alaska from the perspective of economic development.

   Even if Alaska would continue to serve as nothing more than the U.S. back yar third world resource depot and game preserve, the development of those resources requires the bootstrapping of infrastructure that the remainder of the U.S. has taken for granted for the last 75 to 100 years.

   Bridge to nowhere is an admittedly great sound bite but inherently untrue. The referenced bridge in Southeast Alaska would have provided a ground transportation link between a community that is attempting to develop its local resources and its airport. An airport that due to the rugged coastal Alaskan terrain could not be built on the island on which the community is situated.

   It is both easy and wrong to attempt to apply the same standards to Alaska that the remainder of the 50 states assert that they have to work under. That too rosy view of the supposedly virtuous 49 states ignored the incredible amounts of resources that the nation has invested in the remaining 49.

   An immediate and short list would begin with all of the New Deal WPA pork projects that brought us such modern necessities as rural electricity, modern water treatment plants, hydroelectric power and water recreation, etc.

   Again, I have no problem with holding Senator Ted to account. Just get it right.

   Posted by canaar at 07/31/2007 @ 07:46am

5. back yard

   Posted by canaar at 07/31/2007 @ 07:47am

6. "We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily "victory" but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with."

   What does "getting somewhere" mean exactly? No one ever asks what exactly our soldiers-or the proxy Iraqi police, do to suppress the insurgents. No one ever asks who the insurgents are. Are the insurgents Iraqis fighting the invading occupiers? If so, are the US troops putting down a struggle for self-determination and liberty--like the British forces during the US revolution? Are US troops using the tactics of terror--invading homes, roughing up, threatening, bullying, destroying property. Is the US attempt- ting to train a force of thugs to insure a police state so the US can exploit the oil and keep Iraqis down and out? Is that the "stability"?

   Posted by Lil at 07/31/2007 @ 07:48am

7. "With the support of independents Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, and Joe Lieberman, of Connecticut, Majority Leader Harry Reid heads a caucus with 51 members to 49 for the Republicans."

   "Joe Lieberman", Mr Nichols?!?!?!?

   Posted by Mask at 07/31/2007 @ 08:09am

8. I would be extremely surprised if Stevens seat went to the Democrats. Anything is possible but I think the only way Stevens will ever be out of the senate is by retiring; he's seems pretty unbeatable to me.

   Posted by hhemwm at 07/31/2007 @ 10:16am

9. Then again, who knows what can happen over the next fifteen months?

   Posted by hhemwm at 07/31/2007 @ 10:18am

10. he's seems pretty unbeatable to me.

    Posted by HHEMWM 07/31/2007 @ 10:16am | ignore this person

    he's toast. once the FBI is carrying out cartons from your house, you in big trouble.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 07/31/2007 @ 10:33am

11. BTW, Mr Nichols, ever the optimist, seems to be out there in the thin air.

    Alaska has elected SOME Democrats, but the Governor is Republican, the AK Senate is 11-9 Republican, 27-13 GOP in the AK House. Hardly a "Purple State", much less Red. If Stevens steps down, or leaves after his term is up, pretty good odds the Alaskans will elect another Repub.

    Posted by Mask at 07/31/2007 @ 10:45am

12. NICHOLS chronicles Sen. Stevens' being in politics too long......and

    CORN `imagines' Sen. Vitter's `possible' encounter with a committee aid.......and

    KATHA opined on HRC's cleavage............

    All very Progressive and earth-shattering!

    Posted by Happy at 07/31/2007 @ 10:49am

13. Posted by MASK 07/31/2007 @ 10:45am

    Knowles is a credible threat as a senate candidate. Repub v. Dem means much less in Alaska than other states. The majority caucus in either house of the legislature is generally a coalition caucus that includes members of both parties. The disparity in the house came as the result of some pretty inventive gerrymandering during the Hickel administration.

    In presidential elections however, Alaska is reliably republican due primarily to the fundamental difference over economic development of its natural resources.

    Posted by canaar at 07/31/2007 @ 11:37am

14. New Hampshire was dependently repub too, but no more.

    it's spelled opprobrium.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 07/31/2007 @ 1:10pm

15. In presidential elections however, Alaska is reliably republican due primarily to the fundamental difference over economic development of its natural resources.

    Posted by CANAAR 07/31/2007 @ 11:37am

    So Knowles is essentially "Republican-lite"?

    Posted by Mask at 07/31/2007 @ 1:16pm

16. Posted by MASK 07/31/2007 @ 1:16pm

    Nope. However, not the best relationship with labor. Not a republican concerning government size, functions of government or social programs tending rather toward liberal/progressive values. Personal taxation not much of an issue in Alaska due to no state sales tax or state income tax. A commitment to intelligent, and sustainable economic development that makes genuine efforts to safeguard the public resources does not make a person Republican lite in my lexicon.

    Thank you for the proofreading service JR. As Mask once picked up on, I have difficulty making my fingers work in the correct order for typing " o r p " combinations. Corpo v. copro was that example which gave such glee.

    Generally speaking typos do not equate with poor spelling skills.

    Posted by canaar at 07/31/2007 @ 2:28pm

17. can, the reason I corrected that spelling is that this is a word most often misspelled. by me.

    there is a difference between a typo and a misspell. a typo is a slip of the finger, misspelling is a slip of the mind.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 07/31/2007 @ 2:46pm

18. Thank you for the excellent link, B_KOOL_66.

    Posted by cka2nd at 07/31/2007 @ 3:23pm

19. Posted by CANAAR 07/31/2007 @ 2:28pm

    I'm not saying it's impossible, CANAAR. After all, look at North Carolina...20 years of Jesse Helms, then an idiot like Faircloth later, and they elect John Edwards. (of course he was going to lose his 2004 re-election bid, so Kerry saved his butt)

    But Alaska has been pretty solid Blue, with Repubs holding both US Senate seats, House seats, the Governor's mansion and the state legislature.

    That's pretty heavy odds for Knowles to go up against.

    Posted by Mask at 07/31/2007 @ 4:32pm

20. Posted by MASK 07/31/2007 @ 4:32pm

    Agreed. A good indicator of the length of those odds is everybody's head scratcher regarding Don Young's having kept his seat for 30+ years. This is the same Don Young that during a photo-op visit to a Fairbanks high school, publicly referred to gay men as practitioners of anal intercourse by using the term that includes the Anglo-Saxon root comprising one of the George Carlin seven forbidden words. This bit of endearing class, in addition to his spotty voting record, persistent rumors of corruption, etc. Somewhat reminiscent of Eddie Edwards: "He may be a crook, but he's our crook" type of mentality. He's certainly got an A+ rating from the NRA and that plays big in the last frontier.

    Begich, Croft and Berkowitz are the real deal with Croft and Berkowitz not yet forty years old. However, the Dems have run several "can't lose" candidates against Rep. Young in the past.

    Nonethless, Knowles is a popular and charismatic Alaskan politician that is thus far un-tainted by allegations of corruption.

    FWIW, Governor Palin could be accurately described as Democrat-Lite.

    Posted by canaar at 07/31/2007 @ 5:14pm

21. I find it interesting the comments about who will run against Stevens. None of these prospective candidates have declared and time is a critical factor in running against Stevens, because of the revenue generating fundraising that has already started. I don't know their reasoning, but I know that time is what matters most and that's why I filed for Ted's seat last December. In general Congress has it's problems whether it be Republican or Democrat and it's time to infuse Congress with new blood and I'm not talking about career politicians, previously mentioned.

    Posted by Rocky Caldero at 07/31/2007 @ 8:14pm

22. I WILL CONFESS THAT I WAS A TRIFLE AMAZED...

    To see the Gonzales' Bureau bust one of their own.... (Is Gonzo trying to show that he has justicial cojones after all?)

    Posted by w_m_bear at 08/02/2007 @ 1:10pm

23. JR:

    I misspell opprobrium, too. On the quadrennial occasion when I use the term.

    I agree that Stevens is toast. I can only hope that 15 months from now, all voting age Alaskans remember the FBI walking out of his house with all of those boxes.

    Posted by Rapaport at 08/02/2007 @ 1:55pm