Ted Stevens:FORMER US senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who funnelled billions of dollars to his home state over six terms in office and became one of the most powerful and combative congressmen of his generation, died from injuries sustained in an aircraft crash last Monday in southwest Alaska. He was 86.
Stevens served 40 years in the US Senate, longer than any other Republican in history. Starting out as a little-known envoy from a remote state, he used a combination of blunt aggression and deft political manoeuvring to become an influential power broker who guaranteed a steady stream of federal dollars to Alaska.
He narrowly lost a bid for re-election in 2008, days after he was convicted of seven felonies for failing to disclose campaign gifts. The conviction was thrown out months after the trial because of allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
As chairman of the powerful appropriations committee, Stevens ensured that Alaska got the billions of dollars it needed to build modern transportation, education and sanitation systems, despite the state’s vast and remote terrain.
“Stevens money,” as federal dollars came to be known in Alaska, transformed the state from its largest cities to its furthest-flung hamlets and made its residents among America’s biggest per-capita beneficiaries of federal largesse.
He was a favourite target of government-spending watchdog groups, and the notorious “bridges to nowhere” he championed in 2005 became a national symbol of out-of-control pork politics.
Stevens, a self-described “mean, miserable SOB”, was unapologetic about defending the interests of the nation’s northern frontier. For difficult fights on the Senate floor, he famously wore a scowl and a necktie featuring the legendary, raging Incredible Hulk.
Theodore Fulton Stevens was born on November 18th, 1923, in Indianapolis. After his parents divorced, he lived with various relatives and eventually grew up in California with an aunt.
He picked up a fondness for surfing and for years kept in his Senate office a polished wooden surfboard that he had bought in the 1940s.
At 19, he entered the army air forces and became a pilot, flying transports over the Himalayas to supply Chinese nationals fighting Japanese troops. His military decorations included two awards of the Distinguished Flying Cross and two awards of the Air Medal.
After the war, Stevens put himself through college with the GI Bill and odd jobs. He graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1947 and three years later received a law degree from Harvard University. He was the first in his family to attend college.
In 1952, he married Ann Mary Cherrington and they moved to Alaska, where Stevens became a federal prosecutor in what was then still a federal territory. A few years later, as a top interior department lawyer in Washington, he used his position to lobby for Alaska’s statehood.
It joined the union in 1959 as the 49th state. He returned north in the 1960s and opened a private practice in Anchorage, winning a seat in the state legislature and losing two races for the US Senate.
In 1968, the local senator, Bob Bartlett, died suddenly, and governor Walter Hickel appointed Stevens to replace him. Four years later, Stevens was named to the appropriations committee and began a long tradition of helping other senators secure home-state projects in return for their votes on Alaska-related issues.
In Alaska, Stevens’s largesse was so interwoven with the lives of his constituents that they called him “Uncle Ted.”
Alaskan journalist Michael Carey wrote that Stevens’s “ability to deliver – and his invulnerability to electoral challenge because he could deliver – transformed him from an elected official into something of a frontier fertility god – worshipped, propitiated, feared.”
He was never known as a great orator or as a national spokesman for his party, but many of his colleagues respected him for his ability to craft bipartisan Bills and for his fierce nature.
“He actually cultivated his reputation for a temper because it made people less willing to challenge him. It worked,” said Svend Brandt-Erichsen, a legislative assistant for Stevens in the 1980s.
Stevens made headlines for his forceful histrionics in 2005 when Senator Tom Coburn, a long-time critic of wasteful government, proposed diverting $452 million for Alaskan bridge projects to rebuilding Louisiana infrastructure destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
“I come to warn the Senate,” Stevens thundered during floor debate. “If you want a wounded bull on the floor of the Senate, pass this amendment.”
After that display of wrath, Coburn’s proposal was roundly defeated.
In December 1978, an aircraft carrying Stevens home from the Alaskan capital Juneau, where he had witnessed governor Jay Hammond’s swearing-in, crashed on the runway in Anchorage. Stevens was seriously injured; his wife and four others were killed.
Two years later, he married Catherine Chandler.
On April 12th, 2007, Stevens reached 13,990 days of Senate service, making him the longest-serving Republican in that body (Strom Thurmond served longer but had been an early Democrat).
His colleagues stopped work and gave him a standing ovation.
Theodore Fulton Stevens, born November 18th, 1923; died August 9th, 2010.