Ted Stevens Loses Senate Re-Election Bid

JakartaDean writes "Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, famed Internet regulator, has lost his Senate seat. The AP is reporting that 'Stevens was declared the loser in Alaska on Tuesday night after a two-week-long process of counting nearly 90,000 absentee and early votes from across Alaska. With this victory, Democrat Mark Begich (the mayor of Anchorage) has defeated one of the giants in the US Senate by a 3,724-vote margin, a stunning end to a 40-year Senate career marred by Stevens' conviction on corruption charges a week before the election.' It's probably too early to tell what this means for Internet regulation, but at least there's a > 0 chance that the next committee chair will understand something about the Net."

Too Bad

Senator Stevens re-election bid is down the tubes [slashdot.org].

Re:Too Bad

Senator Stevens re-election bid is down the tubes [slashdot.org].

Hey Slashdot ain't a big truck. You can't just dump anything on it, more it's like a series of tubes. And all your damn YouTubes, why I had my staff send me an Internet the other day, took 2 weeks to get here!

I'm amazed

that it got this close. I figured this would be an absolute stomping after Senator Tubes became a convicted felon.

Re:I'm amazed

Yeah -- essentially what this result means is that those Alaskans who cast their vote for Stevens would rather vote for a shamelessly corrupt convicted felon than for a Democrat.

Most of the time, I'm with 'em. ;)

(though, to be fair, he would have probably resigned and been replaced with a better candidate by appointment or special election, had he won.)

Re:I'm amazed

Yeah, it occurred to me that's probably why he was still voted for. If he was forced out of office in disgrace he would be replaced by another less obviously disgraceful Republican. At least I hope that's what happened, although after seeing who they elected Governor I could be giving Alaskan's too much credit.

Re:I'm amazed

If he was forced out of office in disgrace he would be replaced by another less obviously disgraceful Republican. At least I hope that's what happened, although after seeing who they elected Governor I could be giving Alaskan's too much credit.

Funny you should mention that. Even though his replacement would be chosen by special election and appointed, the consensus in the punditocracy was that Palin would run for the seat and probably win.

Re:I'm amazed

They're at least somewhat orthogonal I thought? I'm not American so sometimes I can have really skewed views of how things work down there, but I don't see either as junior to the other. They have a very different set of responsibilities and privileges.

Regarding why she'd want to run... from up here I'd heard some rumblings about how Palin might have some executive experience, but a stunning lack of information about the rest of the country. Said persons then went on to suggest that some senate experience would be good for her if she wants to be involved in the 2012 race, get her some additional exposure out-of-state and some experience in Washington(being a maverick outsider renegade is all well and good, but some knowledge of how things work in Washington isn't entirely bad).

I'm not sure how many millions of Americans this would carry weight with, but these two seemed to think it'd be a splendid idea.

Re:I'm amazed

It's job creation for comedians. Obama's election is making their jobs harder. Palin on a national stage would bring back the good times.

Re:I'm amazed

Well, the local vote doesn't rest so much on the personal qualities of a candidate so much on his ability to bring pork to his district. Having been convicted on things like having a piece of furniture in his home won't impress votes who depend on the pork for their jobs that much. And from what little I drained from the tubes on the topic, Mr. Stevens was an expert at getting quality output from them pork tubes.

Besides, he doesn't stand alone, and it dozen't only happen in the US. In Japan a few years back an MP got convicted, did jail time, got out and got promptly re-elected, despite the national media turning him into a sort of laughingstock. Similarities: he was from the northern, relatively unpopulated and cold part of Japan, and he was a "pork expert".

So, it is either the pork, or the ice. You decide.

Re:I'm amazed

what would have been "stunning" would have been if Stevens survived.

Well, I don't know about "stunning"... Is there anything left that our elected leaders can do that would really "stun" the American public?

Re:I'm amazed

Is there anything left that our elected leaders can do that would really "stun" the American public?

If one of them were to turn out to be decent and upstanding, that would utterly shock us.

Re:I'm amazed

Obama made me realise quite how jaded I've become towards politics. He keeps doing and saying things I approve of, and I keep wondering what his ulterior motive is. The idea that he really believes what he's saying never occurred to me.

Re:I'm amazed

Gerrymandering is impossible in Senate elections as long as state borders remain fixed.

An Alaskan's perspective

This is just really sad. Ted Stevens played a greater role in the development of Alaska as a state than any other person. Most people outside Alaska are unaware that he was literally named Alaskan of the Century. Think about that for a moment.

This is not to defend him. I disagreed with a lot of what he did. (Well, to be more accurate, I disagree with him and all the Robert Byrds, etc who stuffed their states full of pork at the expense of the nation. But at least Stevens had the excuse that Alaska really got a hugely raw deal in its statehood compact, and the lack of fulfillment thereof by the federal government.)

Stevens eventually became exhibit A in the argument for term limits. Well OK, Exhibit C after Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd.) When you are in office that long, you just naturally begin to believe that that office is YOURS, it belongs to YOU. And it's not fair that after your decades of able public service, your buddies on K Street are all filthy rich while you make a tenth of what they do. After all the billions you've brought to your state, who could possibly begrudge you $10,000 here or there? Heck, you DESERVE it!

I just want to point out that at one time, there was more to Stevens' career than this, including distinguished service in the Army Air Corps in WWII.

    - Alaska Jack

Re:An Alaskan's perspective

""After all the billions you've brought to your state, who could possibly begrudge you $10,000 here or there? Heck, you DESERVE it!""

Corruption is like pregnancy ... nobody is just a little pregnant. Whats his name Duke Cunningham (who used to be a Top Gun pilot) also found guilty corruption etc.

A lot of "good" can be washed (down the tubes) by a little bad.

he did it on my dime

Alaskans get $1.85 back for every $1.00 they pay to the Federal Gov't.

So Ted Stevens played a huge role in developing Alaska on my dime. I don't need to laud him for that.

What was wrong with the Alaskan statehood compact? From what I can tell, the Federal government purchased Alaska from Russian. Then turns some of the land over to the state of Alaska? And Alaska gets to charge severance tax on oil taken up there?

Doesn't sound like a bad deal to me.

Re:he did it on my dime

Kwitcherbitchin.

Nevada's got you beat six ways till Sunday. Utah and Oregon are not too far behind, and Idaho and Arizona are roughly 50 percent federally controlled on the basis of land area: Map plus top/bottom ten lists [wordpress.com].

What's more to the point is the fact the federal ownership does not necessarily exclude economic exploitation. A significant portion of federal lands in AK are wide open to oil and gas production, coal and hardrock mining (the latter in the form of legalized looting thanks the the 1872 Mining Act), timber (hello Tongass NF) and dozens of other industries.

You've got a plethora of natural resources and lots of grubby opportunists who'd love an anarchic free-for-all to get while the gettin's good and say the fuck with the long-term consequences. Not too different from the placer miners in 1850s California, the sodbusters in the 1880s/1920s Great Plains, the real estate scammers and S&L kingpins of the 1980s, and myriad other shining examples of unfettered American enterprise. Thanks, but I'd rather see a steady hand on the controls even if some of y'all think it's a dead one.

Re:An Alaskan's perspective

It's rare to have such nuanced views on Slashdot. As much as I wanted Stevens out of the Senate, your perspective on him is quite believable. The world isn't black and white or good vs. evil. People are often shades in between. It doesn't help our understanding of the world to type cast someone or see only one perspective/side of a person, a nation, or an issue.

It is indeed sad to see someone with such a long service to fall to such lows.

Re:Who's The Fool

And now we will be paying him to sit around and do nothing for the rest of his life.

Thanks to his convictions, he will not have a pension, and may spend time in prison.

Re:Who's The Fool

Thanks to his convictions," he will not have a pension," Actually according to the cnn he will. He was grandfathered in. As in recently they made a new law that any new senators who are convicted of felony But since Stevens has been around since before that law. He still gets your money.

Re:Who's The Fool

Thanks to his convictions, he will not have a pension, and may spend time in prison.

Unless still-president Bush pardons him.

Re:If Stevens had won

They would have had a special election.

Am I the only one who read the "special" in "special election" with the same connotation as "special olympics"? :)

Re:To Be, or not To Be...

You mean it's actually possible to be more of a socialist for Alaska than Ted Stevens?!

You do know that to be an actual socialist (as opposed to a cable-news caricature of one), you have to do more than just spend bucketloads of money on any random thing, right?

Re:Are you sure about that?

Oh christ not this shit again.

Who signed the CRA into law? A Democrat.

Where did most of the Democrats go in 1964 AFTER the vote on the CRA? The Republican side.

What wing of what party ended segregation as per Newt Gingrich? Liberal Democrats.

Re:Funny how recounts work

This is neither surprising nor unusual.

For a number of reasons provisional and absentee ballots have historically tended to favor democrats. These include the tendency for the poor & the elderly to vote democratic, as well as democratic voter outreach programs that focus on absentee ballots to lock in the vote early.