News that former Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, died in an August 9 plane crash in southwest Alaska should prove shocking for both his home state and the Washington, D.C. establishment that has known the power broker since he arrived in the Senate in 1968.
Stevens survived a plane crash in 1978 at Anchorage International Airport, though his wife, Ann, was killed.
At the end of his congressional tenure, no other senator filled so central a place in his state's public and economic life as Stevens; quite possibly no other senator ever has. "They sent me here," Stevens said in one impassioned debate, "to stand up for the state of Alaska." He was the longest-serving Republican senator in the United States. He was President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and thus third in line for the presidency, from 2003 to 2007. He was chairman of the Appropriations Committee for 6 1/2 years (1997-2001, 2003-2005), and chairman of the Commerce Committee for two years (2005-2007); he chaired or served as ranking member on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee for more than 20 years. For a quarter century, Stevens was the leading public policymaker for and about Alaska. "We ask for special consideration," Stevens is not too shy to say, "because no one else is that far away, no one else has the problems that we have or the potential that we have, and no one else deals with the federal government day in and day out the way we do." Probably more than any other senator, Stevens shaped the public institutions and private economy of his state.
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