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Ted Stevens is the self-styled Incredible Hulk of the U.S. Senate.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Ted Stevens is the self-styled Incredible Hulk of the U.S. Senate.
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Maria Cantwell anxiously massaged her fingers, reddened from the icy gusts off Elliott Bay—a vengeful chill sweeping down from Alaska, no doubt. "I'll take questions now," said the Democrat, Washington's junior U.S. senator. She was bundled up at a recent Sunday afternoon photo op on the Port of Seattle's executive balcony, winding down her presentation to reporters on oil-spill-prevention legislation she had drawn up. First question, radio reporter: What will Ted Stevens think?
Pause. U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens from Alaska, in the to-hell-and-gone Great White North, closer to Asia than to the lower 48, the pro- Arctic-drilling, bridges-to-nowhere, ice-blue red state where a night lasts from November through January and Republicans outnumber Democrats and other wildlife 3-1? That Ted Stevens? What's he got to do with this?
Longevity, for starters. The cranky conservative and legendary pork barreler—$646 million in goodies for Alaska last year alone—has been a public servant dating back to the Eisenhower administration. He's been the petroleum state's senator for life for 38 of his 82 years, taking out his four opponents in the last election with 78 percent of the vote. As the most senior Republican in the United States Senate, he presides over that body as president pro tempore when Vice President Dick Cheney is absent. That makes him third in the order of presidential succession—two heartbeats away, behind the speaker of the House and Cheney's questionable ticker, should George Bush fail to finish his term.
Says Cantwell: 'We have to show Sen. Stevens that Washington state won't stand by silently and let one of our great treasures fall to the whims of greedy oil companies.'
One of the last true believers to think weapons of mass destruction will still be found in Iraq, Stevens is an Alaska legend mostly of his—and taxpayers'—making. His streaming financial appropriations helped create the Anchorage airport named for him, a new marine science center in Juneau named for him, and a science center in Kenai named for him and his wife, Catherine (his first wife, Ann, died with four others in a 1978 Learjet crash at the airport in which the senator was injured). Though Stevens stepped down as powerful chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee last January, Alaskans in 2005 still raked in $985 per capita in federal money—known to some as "Stevens dollars." It's true that the feds control 70 percent of Alaska's land, but still, that's 30 times the national average of $33, according to the Citizens Against Government Waste, a D.C. taxpayer-watchdog group, which labels Stevens "one of the biggest porkers to ever grace the halls of Congress." In contrast, Washington state, historically a pork-rich state, was ranked 28th, with $215 million, a mere $35 for each of us.
In transportation money alone, Alaska gets back $5 for every dollar it pays in gas taxes. Besides $1.8 million for berry research, Stevens' top pork scores for 2005 included $1.5 million for a new bus stop outside the Anchorage Museum of History and Art. The city's transportation director seemed perplexed about how to spend the money. Maybe, he said, they could put in a sidewalk heating system to melt snow.
Stevens is also legendary for his Senate- floor theatrics—the desk pounding, melodramatic threats, and power neckties depicting the Incredible Hulk or the Tasmanian Devil, depending on his mood. By his own description, he can be "a mean, miserable SOB." He was in high form recently, railing about Iraq and his belief that Bush's WMD suspicions will be borne out. Waving photos of Iraqi military planes found way back in 2003 buried in the sands outside Baghdad, he theorized: "If Saddam Hussein's troops buried one-tenth of their combat aircraft in the desert, who is to say there were no weapons of mass destruction similarly buried?" Well, belatedly, George W. Bush, perhaps? Seattle political consultant Bob Gogerty think Stevens "has become a political caricature of himself," and news clips of Stevens regularly make the Comedy Channel's The Daily Show. (Recently, host Jon Stewart asked: "Who the fuck is Ted Stevens?" then explained he's a senator "who wields power due to his seniority, because unlike in the real world, in the Senate, the older you get, the more people have to listen to your crazy ramblings.")
Then there's geography and politics, which have combined to effectively make Stevens a de facto third senator from the Evergreen State. Since Republican Sen. Slade Gorton's unseating by Cantwell in 2000, Stevens has become keeper of the state's conservative agenda in the U.S. Senate when he crosses swords with Cantwell and her fellow Democrat, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray. State Republican Party chief Chris Vance doesn't quite buy the notion of Stevens' impressive local influence. "We have never talked to him or his staff," Vance says. But they might think about it. Cantwell's 2006 opponent, Republican Mike McGavick, the former president and chief executive of Safeco, has already met with the Arctic strongman in D.C. to discuss regional issues. Additionally, Stevens is financially backed by some of Washington state's biggest businesses, including the Boeing Co., his largest single benefactor, giving $93,500 to his campaigns since 1989. According to federal election records, when he was re-elected to his seventh term in 2002—he'll be up again in 2008 at age 85—about $436,000 of his relatively modest $3.2 million campaign fund came from Anchorage and $220,000 from the Seattle area. That's about 7 percent of his funding from here. (For contrast, Cantwell raised $643,000 from the Seattle area in 2000, but because she amassed $11.6 million in total contributions—$10 million of it her own money—Seattle's percentage for her was less than for Stevens, 5.5 percent, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political cash.)
