I noted it yesterday over in Breaking Blue, but it looks like Ted Stevens, who is the longest serving Republican in the history of the Senate, is in a lot of trouble. The Alaska Anchorage Daily News' Richard Mauer and Erika Bolstad have the scoop.
Federal law enforcement agents raided U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens' Alaska home in Girdwood on Monday, hauling off undisclosed items from inside and taking extensive pictures and video.Officials wouldn't say what they were looking for or what they found.
"All I can say is that agents from the FBI and IRS are currently conducting a search at that residence," Dave Heller, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Anchorage office, said Monday.
With Stevens up for reelection in 2008 and reportedly under investigation for corruption, the Democrats are going to need to field a real candidate to jump in this race. And right now it looks like DC Dems (as well as those in Alaska) have been working overtime to try to recruit one such candidate: popular Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, son of onetime Alaska Congressman Nick Begich. The Washington Post's Paul Kane had the story on Begich last month.
With a trio of stories today involving ethical allegations against Alaska Republicans, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich's phone started ringing early with calls from Capitol Hill.Begich, a popular mayor who won his second three-year term a year ago, is being courted to challenge one or the other of Alaska's longtime Republican incumbents, who have more than 73 years of combined congressional experience. He's the son of the late Rep. Nick Begich (D-Alaska), who died in a 1972 plane crash with the late Rep. Hale Boggs (D-La.), in a remote part of the Frontier State. Begich, now 44, was 10 at the time.
Facing a term limit in the spring of 2009, Begich is in a minor bidding war between the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- which wants him to challenge Rep. Don Young (R), who took his father's seat after the crash -- and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee -- seeking a challenger to Sen. Ted Stevens (R), 83, the longest-serving Republican in Senate history.
I've been watching this race for a long time (I think my first post on the race was back in December of last year), and I have long believed that although Stevens is a long established incumbent his standing is a lot softer than folks might otherwise believe. The raid on his house yesterday only serves to underscore this fact.
And, frankly, it's not clear to me that a retirement by Stevens would do enough to save this seat for the Republicans in the case that this scandal continues to fester through election day -- particularly given that this is not the Alaska Republicans' only scandal. There is a theory that there are rare cases in which a party is best served by having an incumbent retire rather than run for reelection. Charlie Cook came on this site back in January 2006 and said as much, disagreeing with my theory that Bob Ney's corruption would be a problem for Ohio Republicans regardless of whether or not he was going to be on the ballot. (As it happens, Ney resigned and the very Republican-leaning seat still went to the Democrats by a 24-point margin.)
That's why, regardless of whether or not Stevens decides to run again, it's important that a strong candidate jump in this race for the Democrats. So the message from this humble blogger today is as follows: Mr. Begich -- Run!
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