Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, died after a small plane carrying him and eight others crashed in a remote part of Alaska Monday.
Four others died with the former Alaska senator in the crash outside Dillingham, authorities said. Four survivors were transported to a hospital in Anchorage, about 330 miles northeast of the crash site.
Authorities said the others who died are the 62-year-old pilot, Terry Smith; and Bill Phillips, a former Senate aide to Mr. Stevens. Dana Tindall, 48, a vice president at GCI, the Anchorage telephone and cable company that owned the plane, died along with her 16-year-old daughter, Corey.
The survivors include Sean O'Keefe, the former National Aeronautics and Space Administration chief who is now head of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co.'s North American unit, and his son Kevin. Mr. Phillips' 13-year-old son, Willy, and another former Senate aide, Jim Morhard, also survived.
Ted Stevens represented the best and worst of the Republican Party and the Senate. On the one hand, he was a flinty-eyed bad ass living on the last American frontier. On the other, he was a power-hungry tax and spender who happily spent other people's money. And, while he was an effective Senator - his job was to represent Alaska's interests in DC, and he certainly did that - he was also a beneficiary of the inertia and incumbency that has infected The World's Greatest Deliberative Body.
Still, I think Stevens deserves a mention of the outrageous manner in which he was evicted from his Senate seat via a prosecution that was later voided for prosecutorial misconduct which included witness tampering, the withholding of exculpatory evidence, and even a sexual relationship between a prosecutor and a government witness. Stevens' conviction held up less than a year, but it was attached to him long enough to cause his narrow 2008 re-election loss to Mark Begich (whose father died in another Alaskan bush plane crash, along with Hale Boggs). That was enough for Alaskans to send a Democrat to the Senate who would otherwise never won his seat, and who provided the crucial 60th vote for Obamacare.
This political prosecution was an unfortunate coda to Stevens' career, but it was even more disastrous for America's political and social life.
UPDATE: funny how these things work - Dan Rostenkowsi has died. "Rosty" served in the House almost as long as Stevens served in the Senate. He also left office under the cloud of a felony prosecution. The only difference? Rostenkowsi actually served time in prison. No need for prosecutors to cheat to nail this guy. He was as corrupt as you could imagine a Chicago pol could be. But, he was also "beloved" by Dems and the media, so his corruption will undoubtedly be downplayed as much as Stevens' fake corruption was shouted from the rooftops.
