TED STEVENS, MIRED IN CORRUPTION, FACING ELECTORAL DEFEAT BACK HOME, IS TRYING TO DERAIL ETHICS LEGISLATION IN DC

not a happy camper

While Ken was playing hooky from work and leading poor Mike Stark down the garden path to Chez O'Reilly in tony Plandome Heights or Plandome Manor or Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome or whatever part of Manhasset Loofah Boy inhabits, DWT was still getting questions from the readers. (Ken usually answers most questions-- while I try raising more.) But one that kept coming in, was variations of the theme of what exactly Ted Stevens had done wrong to merit half a dozen posts in 2 days-- and that's not even counting the ones from Alaskaphobes that Ken will get to once he recovers from the indignity of being chased down the driveway by Bill O'Reilly in his red panties.

Anyway, this morning's Washington Post actually answers the question-- or at least part of it. They're sticklers for things like proof and details and stuff like that so when they talk about $1.6 earmarks, they mean precisely that. In any case, the Post is reporting that the federal law enforcement agencies that raided his home Monday are "investigating whether Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) used a $1.6 million congressional appropriation to help an Alaska marine center purchase property from a business partner of the senator's son, said sources familiar with the probe."

This scratches the surface of why Stevens needs to change his DC residence for a federal penitentiary-- but it's a start. They point out that the investigation is a part of an ever widening federal probe into Stevens' connections to an Alaska culture of corruption every bit as pervasive, toxic, and venal as the one Tom DeLay and Rick Santorum inflicted on Washington, DC during their short but lethal tenures.

Investigators are particularly interested in how those earmarks may have helped the marine center buy land from Trevor McCabe, a former Stevens aide who also was a business partner with Stevens's son, Ben, according to sources and news reports. Ted Stevens has wielded enormous clout as a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, which he chaired for six years, regularly steering hundreds of millions a year in earmarks to his home state.

The center got a $1.6 million earmark to buy adjacent property owned by McCabe, sources said. The land was eventually sold by McCabe's firm to SeaLife for $550,000, according to sources and news accounts.

Stevens refuses to talk with the media about his criminality but he huddled with Cheney and a gaggle of his Republican senate colleagues, each one as guilty as he, trying to figure out how to make it all just go away. He wasn't amused when someone suggested he and David Diapers Vitter move into an office together-- on the other side of town. And firing U.S. Attorneys, an old Cheney specialty, might get noticed faster this time. Trent Lott, who hasn't been caught doing anything overtly illegal yet, was one of the senators conspiring with Cheney and Stevens. Afterwards, shaking his head, he said "Every week, I think, 'How much worse can things get in the Senate?' We are at the bottom here, and every week it gets worse."

In Stevens' case, it probably will continue in that vein. Barbara Flanders, who serves as a financial clerk for Stevens on the Commerce Committee, testified in the past several weeks and provided documents regarding the senator's bills, according to an attorney in the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because grand jury matters are secret by law. And the Veco executives who bribed him, as well as Alaska Congressman Don Young, are cooperating with the FBI, selling him and his crooked son down the river to save their own asses. And this morning's CQPolitics is reporting that, electorally, both Stevens and Young are in big trouble back home.

With Monday’s FBI raid of Stevens’ Alaska home producing the loudest headlines yet, Republicans are being forced to contemplate whether these “safe” seats might become vulnerable. Meanwhile, Alaska’s usually beleaguered Democratic minority is adjusting to the new realities and sizing up how much an opportunity these ethics flaps may afford them.

It appears increasingly likely that the Democrats will make more serious runs than usual at both Young, who has held Alaska’s only House seat since 1973, and Stevens, who was appointed to the Senate in 1968 and won his seven subsequent elections by overwhelming margins.

...“It’s never been considered a real thing to beat Ted Stevens,” said Alaska Democratic Party Executive Director Mike Coumbe. “Now, it’s a real chance we’ll take both the House and the Senate seat.”

With the August 2008 primary still more than a year away, the Democratic field for the nomination to challenge Young has a more definite shape.

Back for a rematch bid is Diane Benson, a writer and mother of a wounded Iraq war veteran. Benson lost the 2006 House race by 56.6 percent to 40 percent-- a better-than-expected showing, given that Young usually has won by more overwhelming margins and outspent Benson by nearly $2 million to about $200,000.

But also in the running is Jake Metcalfe, who officially entered the House race Monday after resigning as chairman of the Alaska Democratic Party on Saturday.

Metcalfe, an attorney for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said the current controversy surrounding Young was a factor prompting him to enter the race right now. But Metcalfe-- who said his 59-year-old brother is a National Guardsman serving in Kuwait in a support role for the U.S. military engagement in Iraq-- said he also plans to make the public’s distaste for the Iraq war a big part of his campaign.

“It’s going to be an expensive race,” said Metcalfe. “But it wasn’t hard for me to make up my mind.”

By contrast, the only Democrat who has launched a campaign to take on Stevens is Rocky Caldero, a councilman in Unalaska, a town of about 4,300 people in the Aleutian Islands (and, symbolic of Alaska’s vast land area, located about 800 miles from Anchorage).

The best-known potential Democratic contenders, for either the Senate or the House race, remain on the sidelines, though, at least for now. The national Democratic House and Senate campaign committees are actively courting for popular Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich and Ethan Berkowitz, a former state House minority leader who was the lieutenant governor nominee on the Democrats’ unsuccessful 2006 ticket. Neither has committed to run for either office.

Begich said Tuesday he gets calls about the two races every day. Members of Congress have called him personally to gauge his interest. “There’s a lot of people who would like to see a decision either way today,” Begich said. “But these are difficult decisions.”

Begich could benefit from bearing a familiar name in Alaska politics. His father, Nick Begich, won Alaska’s sole House seat in 1970, but was killed along with then-House Majority Leader Hale Boggs of Louisiana in 1972 when the campaign plane in which they were flying disappeared without a trace. Begich, though missing and presumed dead, was re-elected over Young that November, but Young claimed the seat for the Republicans in a special election held the next year.

Meanwhile, to make matters even worse for himself, Stevens is trying to derail the ethics bill passed overwhelmingly (411-8) by the House today. He doesn't want to give up on the private jets corporations routinely use to bribe him with. Half a dozen Republicans are lining up to run for "Uncle Ted's" Senate seat in case he decides to retire or winds up behind bars before the '08 election.