September 21, 2007
Alaska Back In Play Thanks To Stevens & Young
And the hits just keep on coming for the Republican Party.
The FBI has tapes of telephone conversations between Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and a businessman convicted of bribing lawmakers, AP reports. Bill Allen, a longtime friend and political supporter of Stevens, agreed to record his phone calls to the senator after pleading guilty to bribery and agreeing to cooperate with the feds in this sprawling political corruption scandal.
Allen is the founder of VECO, an Alaskan energy firm. In an ongoing bribery trial of another politician, former Alaska House Speaker Pete Kott, Allen testified that his company paid to renovate Stevens' home and that his employees did the work. Stevens insists that he and his wife paid for the renovation themselves. A former employee also testified that VECO employees were paid by the company to work on Stevens' campaigns -- a possible violation of election law.
Details of the phone conversations haven't been made public, so there's no evidence yet to indicate how snugly Stevens and Allen were in bed together. Even so, the bribery trial and FBI investigation of both Stevens and his son, Ben, are casting a shadow on the GOP, so much so that the state's Republican governor, Sarah Palin, is calling for Ben Stevens to resign from his post as Alaska representative on the Republican National Committee.
According to Allen, VECO paid off the younger Stevens while he was a state senator. The elder Stevens, meanwhile, has a reputation for intimidating Senate colleagues and directing a flood of federal dollars for projects in his sparsely populated state. Stevens is already a favorite target of fiscal conservative critics like John McCain. Looks like he'll soon be a target of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as well.
Alaska, with its famously mostly male population, is reliably Republican, but it, too, caught anti-incumbency fever last fall. Palin became the state's first woman governor largely on the power of her let's-clean-up-the-GOP platform.
National Republicans are chugging the Alka Seltzer as they stare down a highly unfavorable congressional campaign season next fall. Even if Stevens is cleared of Allen's allegations, the taint of GOP corruption will linger. A year ago, the prospect that he would face a serious primary or general challenge seemed unthinkable. That's no longer the case.
Alaska suffers from not being a highly prized state on the electoral map, which could contribute to Stevens' seat tipping over. A Democratic source who has worked in Alaskan politics acknowledges that the parallel presidential election hurts the party. Nevertheless, with so much territory to defend, the National Republican Senatorial Committee may not have the resources to extend a hand to the 49th state.
"If they have to go in to Alaska to save the seat, where do they take the money from? Does that mean that they're just going to write off Virginia or New Hampshire as a loss like they did Pennsylvania last cycle?" said the source, who was not authorized to speak for the party.
The coveted Virginia and New Hampshire seats are both up for grabs next year. Last year, the Senate's No. 3, Rick Santorum, lost his re-election bid to Democrat Bob Casey Jr., in part, it is believed, because the NRSC did not flood the zone there when he started sinking in the polls.
It does not help Stevens that his frequent partner in the appropriations game, GOP Rep. Don Young, has a sticky wicket of his own. Young is accused of anonymously adding a $10 million earmark to a transportation bill that benefited a major donor and real estate developer. The lawmaker is also under investigation by the FBI, though it isn't clear for what -- there are quite a few allegations to choose from. According to the Washington Post, Young has paid lawyers more than $262,000 in fees already, indicating he isn't on the docket for a parking ticket.
State Democrats have already launched a campaign to oust Young. Should he and Stevens be given the boot -- or prisoner stripes -- next year, Alaska will lose two powerful advocates in Congress. With oil drilling such a hot issue there, though, Republicans may think twice before sacrificing either pol.
Posted at 4:20 PM
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