Alaska News

Entitlement mentality led Sen. Stevens into legal trouble

My father-in-law was in show business, an amateur who learned the rules of performance. One of them is "Leave 'em laughing, leave 'em calling for more -- don't overstay your welcome on stage."

Sen. Ted Stevens has been on the public stage more than 50 years. He never learned this lesson. Now the man who expected to be senator for life might end his life in jail.

In 2000, an Anchorage civic group said Stevens was Alaskan of the Century. Already, some people are saying that was the last century.

Stevens rejects the charges in the 28-page indictment out of hand. That will be harder to do before a judge and jury. The indictment is a carefully crafted, narrow description of various favors and gifts Veco chieftain Bill Allen bestowed on Ted, benefits Ted never reported as required by law.

In the pages of the charging document, Allen comes across as something of a millionaire handyman to a U.S. senator, providing a multitude of home improvements from 2000 on.

Allen was a well-established contractor but not a contractor who did home improvements -- except for Ted. Allen also was Ted's Cal Worthington -- providing him with an inside deal on a $44,000 1999 Land Rover for his daughter.

If Ted Stevens had retired in 2002, when he was 78 years old, it's doubtful he would have come under the scrutiny that produced this federal indictment. If Ted had been a private citizen in 2003, Bill Allen could have turned the Girdwood chalet into a mansion and nobody would have cared.

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But Ted Stevens wasn't about to retire. In an e-mail, he told me that a doctor he knew said there was no reason humans couldn't live and function well to age 120. Apparently that's what he was intended to do.

As a much younger candidate for the Senate, Stevens repeatedly hammered incumbent Ernest Gruening as too old. His attacks in 1968 were blunt, personal and quite jarring -- especially as the "aged" Ernest Gruening was younger then than Stevens is now.

Stevens did not break the law because of his age. Rather, his lengthy service seems to have convinced him that his U.S. Senate seat was private property, his and his alone. He's among some senators of both parties who have the idea they are senator for life.

In fact, the Senate is becoming an old folks home. In 1928, Furnifold Simmons of North Carolina was the oldest senator, age 74. Today, 16 senators are 74 or older -- almost one-sixth of the entire body. If Mark Begich wins this Senate seat, he will, at age 46, become the third-youngest senator.

Ted Stevens, Bill Allen and their friends and allies, Democrats and Republicans, were members of Alaska's privileged elite. Like privileged elites everywhere, they developed a sense of entitlement accompanied by an indifference to appearances.

Allen was quite open about the kind of man he was. You didn't have to smell sulfur to know the devil was in the room. He bought legislators through campaign contributions, gifts and favors. If Alaskans only knew the details of his corrupt activities after his indictment, they had plenty of reason to know he was manipulating the government for his own benefit. For one thing, in the '80s he paid the largest fine ever imposed to that date for violation of the state campaign contribution laws.

Alaskans have good reason to be grateful to Ted Stevens. He has showered the state with federal largesse. He has played a role in shaping every major piece of federal legislation affecting Alaska for 40 years. Our history would be different, perhaps profoundly different, without him.

But even a legend has to say good-bye -- and Ted Stevens clearly did not understand that.

Michael Carey is the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News. He can be reached at mcarey@adn.com.

MICHAEL CAREY

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Michael Carey

Michael Carey is an occasional columnist and the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News.

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