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Miyuki Baker | Phoenix Staff

In print | Published October 30, 2008

In a bit of linguistic serendipity, the word “alyeska” exists in both the Aleut language and in modern Albanian. In Aleut, it represents the origin of the state of Alaska’s name, literally translating to “the great land.” In modern Albanian, it means “no further.” In light of his conviction on seven counts of corruption, we find it fitting to note that Senior Senator Ted Stevens of Alyeska’s career appears poised to go alyeska.

But before we dive into the long and often embarrassing career of Senator Stevens, a broader look at the politics of Alaska is in order.

Overwhelmingly Republican (albeit with a strong libertarian streak that can be explained both by the state’s geographic isolation and cultural legacy of individualistic pragmatism), Alaska has declined to put a Democrat in major office since 1974. President Bush was elected by a 31-point margin in 2000 and by a relatively massive 25 percentage points in 2004. Its legislature tends to the extraordinarily conservative, with legalized medical marijuana being the sole beacon of progressive policy passed by a notoriously pro-life, pro-corporate, pro-drilling and anti-federalist (occasionally to the point of secessionism) state government. Despite a scant three electoral votes, it is the bastion of conservatism that the Republican party is trying to cater to in this election.

With the nomination of Sarah Palin, the state’s plucky frontier heroine, Alaska has been forced to jettison its historically low-profile inclinations. For better or worse, the minutiae of its politics has become the subject of public scrutiny in the lower 48. And as media attention has turned to Ms. Palin, her associates and even Congressional antique Ted Stevens, a rather alarming amount of dirty laundry has come to light. For a state filled with well-intentioned salt-of-the-earth types, many of its politicians have surprisingly ignoble legacies of corruption and abuse of power.

Let’s begin with the latest exploits of the 1984 Miss Wasilla. A little over a week ago, the blog-cum-newspaper Politico published allegations that the Republican National Committee had spent over $150,000 on clothing and makeup for the former pageant contestant. For a self-avowed everywoman with an affinity for the age-inappropriate boots proffered by the Naughty Monkey brand, Ms. Palin and the Republican party have still managed to spend nearly $76,000 at Neiman Marcus and just under $50,000 at Saks Fifth Avenue since her nomination. This speaks nothing of her spiraling maintenance costs (her stylists and makeup artists are the best paid McCain campaign staffers).

While most Democrats have chosen not to react to Ms. Palin’s extravagant spending at Barney’s New York, Bloomingdale’s and other top-shelf department stores, choosing instead to let her excess and $2,500 Valentino jackets speak for themselves, the McCain campaign is understandably furious over the story. Tracey Schmitt, a RNC spokeswoman whose job lately has become reconciling Palin’s increasingly rogue behavior with the rest of the McCain campaign, chastised the mainstream media for losing focus on “all the important issues facing the country right now,” instead devoting time to campaign fashion.

But Ms. Schmitt misses the mark on two counts. First, the media and Americans aren’t objecting to Palin’s infamous red pleather jacket or seven-year-old Piper’s Louis Vuitton purse because they don’t find them stylish — instead, Republicans and Democrats alike are questioning what in the world American politics has come to when parties pay stylists more than policy consultants and spend donor contributions on dressing supposedly down-to-earth hockey moms in couture. Second, the amnesiac Republican party is forgetting its own hysteria over former Senator John Edwards’ now infamous $400 haircut. As Sam Stein of The Huffington Post aptly put it, “if Edwards had gotten one of his legendary haircuts every single week, it would still take him 7.2 years to spend what Palin has spent.”

In the larger scheme of the RNC’s current Alaska problems, Ms. Palin’s pricey go-go boots are small potatoes compared to the calamitous Senator Ted Stevens. Let’s begin with a breakdown of the more controversial moments in his 39 year tenure in the Senate.

Capitalizing on being the longest-standing Republican in the Senate (following the death of the adulterous and habitually racist Strom Thurmond of South Carolina), Stevens has maneuvered himself into a position where he is uniquely suited to funnel pork spending to Alaska, to the tune of $379,699,715 in 2008. Mr. Stevens has had the dubious honor of topping both the pork-per-capita and total pork lists published by Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington consultancy, for the last thirteen years.

A perennial skeptic of the scientific reality that human beings are in fact accelerating the process of global warming, Stevens recently offered up the astute analysis: “If we’re close to the end of [a warming period], that means that we’ll starting getting cooler gradually [sic], not very rapidly, but cooler once again.” Scientists are marginally less optimistic.

In 2006, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, the committee responsible for regulating Internet service providers and e-commerce, Senator Stevens offered up a remarkably asinine explanation of how the Internet works. The Internet, said a witless Stevens, is not a dump truck. “It’s a series of tubes.” Indeed.

Throughout his lengthy tenure in the Senate, Stevens has displayed a degree of incompetence that, while disturbing, could be written off as relatively benign. But five years ago, his behavior crossed the fine ethical line separating politics-as-usual from outright corruption. In 2003, the Los Angeles Times uncovered evidence that Senator Stevens used his extensive connections and political power to obtain personal financial benefits.

In exchange for pork or favorable treatment in laws, businesses such as the VECO Corporation showered Stevens with gifts totaling over $250,000. In a scheme that closely resembles insider trading, Stevens funneled federal money to a Utah industry group managed by his close friend Bob Penney and subsequently invested in the region, netting him $135,000.

Mr. Stevens’ indiscretions could not remain under the table forever, and on Monday, he was found guilty by a federal grand jury of seven violations of the Ethics in Government Act. The enormity of this conviction has been recognized everywhere except, it seems, in the mind of Senator Stevens. While John McCain, Sarah Palin, and a number of fellow Senators have called for his resignation, Stevens maintains his innocence, and not only plans on pursuing a formal appeal but will also continue his campaign for reelection this November.

This decision is nothing short of catastrophic. Mr. Stevens has not only soiled his own reputation, but those of the state of Alaska and the United States Congress at large. Even the avowedly Republican blog RedState has endorsed the Democratic candidate for Stevens’ seat in the Senate, calling Stevens a “pox on the Republican house.”

In light of Ms. Palin’s exorbitant spending, Stevens is far from the only thing plaguing the beleaguered Republican party. However, his situation has the potential to be particularly damaging. The Senate consistently has the lowest approval rating of any American political institution. Americans think of it as bloated, ineffectual and removed from the realities of life in this country; Republicans cannot allow them the chance to add “corrupt” to the list, not only for their own sake, but for that of the American political process at large.

This situation is, as Barack Obama noted following the conviction, not just a referendum on Ted Stevens, “but on the broken politics that has infected Washington for decades. It’s time to put an end to the corruption and influence-peddling, restore openness and accountability and finally put government back in the hands of the people it serves.” We couldn’t have said it better.

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