Anchorage Daily News

Ted Stevens leaves public life as the most powerful figure ever to walk Alaska's political stage. His 50-year career, brought to an end by voters this past week, is tragic in the classic literary sense of the word. The same certitude and sense of righteousness that carried him to greatness also led to his personal and political downfall.

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Sen. Stevens sits at a Washington, D.C., luncheon in November 1970 with Congressman- elect Nick Begich. Thirty-eight years later, Begich's son Mark would defeat Stevens and end his 40--year Senate career.

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No public official in Alaska did more to make the state what it is today than Ted Stevens. During the long span of his career, Stevens was revered for his ability to benefit Alaskans by delivering policies, programs and money from a far-off and too-often indifferent federal government. He was Alaska's generous, pragmatic Uncle Ted.

Yet Uncle Ted was no teddy bear. He could be prickly, even irascible. He lacked the politician's gift for charming strangers. Famous for outbursts against adversaries, he lived by Machievelli's maxim: It is better to be feared than loved.

As U.S. senator, he became the federal viceroy for Alaska -- if it fell in Ted Stevens' sphere of influence, Ted Stevens would tell the federal government what to do.

He pushed the forest service to log more old-growth trees in the Tongass. He told the feds how to set up and run a new Native hospital. He spearheaded land trades that cleared the way for development projects and enriched the state. He told agencies what to build and where. He told them which programs in Alaska would get money and how much.

SECOND-LARGEST INDUSTRY

With his ability to tap the federal treasury, Ted Stevens made himself into Alaska's second largest industry, after oil. He promoted and protected a large, vital military presence in the state. He made sure that federal employees were well-paid, with a generous, tax-free cost-of-living allowance. He supplied contractors with a steady stream of federally-funded projects and Alaska agencies and groups with a steady stream of federal grants.

Ted Stevens was a solid Republican Party man but not a petty partisan. A moderate conservative, he never embraced the party's hard swing to the right. He has been a supporter of the Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling. He was one of the few Republican senators to vote down one of the impeachment counts against President Clinton. He worked with Democrats and saw compromise as a legitimate part of the legislative process.

In 1964, a young Ted Stevens supported moderate Republican Nelson Rockefeller over conservative favorite Barry Goldwater for president. As late as 2006, Sen. Stevens drew kudos from that bastion of East Coast environmentalism, The New York Times, for his work on a national fisheries conservation measure that bears his name.

That pragmatic, Alaska-first record drew an occasional challenge from the right wing of his party, but he easily prevailed.

SAD END

Great as Ted Stevens has been, he is human, and like the rest of us, he has his flaws.

Late in his career, he felt he had insufficient wealth for a man of his power and influence. He entered into unusually profitable business arrangements with local developers who later sought his official help. He palled around with a corrupt lobbyist and accepted a slew of unreported gifts, including extensive home renovations. Now Sen. Stevens leaves office a convicted felon.

It is a sad end to a successful and storied career.

LEGACY EVERYWHERE

At every major turn in modern Alaska history, Ted Stevens was there, shaping the state's future.

Settling Native land claims, authorizing the trans Alaska oil pipeline, expanding Alaska's national parks and wilderness -- Ted Stevens was in the middle of the battle, fighting for his vision of Alaska's future.

No matter where you turn in Alaska, you will see Ted Stevens' legacy. In Anchorage, the airport that bears his name, the city's port, the military bases, the Native hospital, all major roads, the gleaming Native corporation offices -- all are marks of Ted Stevens' funding prowess, senatorial influence and personal vision of a better Alaska.

When the fledgling Native firms struggled to get going after the land claims settlement, Ted Stevens rejuvenated them with hundreds of millions of dollars in federal tax breaks. Later, he got them special bidding preferences on federal contracts, which has brought boom times to some savvy Native firms. Throughout Alaska's small rural communities, you'll find health clinics, clean drinking water projects and sewerage systems that Stevens helped fund.

In 1978, Ted Stevens paid a terrible personal price for his service to the state. Coming home to the Anchorage airport, the small plane carrying him and his wife caught a crosswind upon landing and flipped. His wife Ann died. He carried on and steadily grew more influential in the Senate, and more important to Alaska, for another 30 years.

His electoral defeat and federal convictions tarnish, but do not erase, five decades of service to the state he loves so much.

In his parting remarks to the U.S. Senate on Thursday, Stevens said, "Many people doubted whether Alaska had what it took to be a successful state, and they asked whether Alaska was still Seward's folly."

"We proved those doubters wrong," he said.

And no one was more responsible for doing that than U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.

BOTTOM LINE: Alaskan of the century? Yes.

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