Former Senator Ted Stevens Killed in Plane Crash

A few years ago, I interviewed a professor about a book she'd just published. In the course of our conversation, she mentioned that she'd taught for several years in rural Alaska. I got very excited and started pumping her for information, because I still harbor a fantasy of moving there (too many re-runs of "Northern Exposure," I guess).

She really seemed to miss it, so I asked her, why did she leave Alaska? "Too many of my friends died in plane crashes," she said. It would probably happen to her sooner or later.

I remembered that conversation earlier today when I first saw the news that former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens was believed to be on a plane that crashed in a remote area of southwest Alaska yesterday. Initial reports suggested that some of the passengers had survived, but, given that Stevens is 86 years old, I had a hard time believing he could be one of them.

Sadly, he wasn't. Former NASA head Sean O'Keefe was also on board, as were either six or seven others.

I admit I don't know a lot about Stevens other than that he was the longest-serving Republican in the Senate and that he narrowly lost in 2008 after a conviction on corruption charges (which Attorney Journal Eric Holder overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct). His first wife also died in a plane crash in 1978. For that matter, Rep. Nick Begich, the father of current Sen. Mark Begich (the guy who defeated Stevens in 2008) is also believed to have died in a plane crash in Alaska. ("Believed" because they never found the plane. That's when you know your state is giant and rugged.)

What I do know about Stevens is that he used the clout he accumulated in the Senate put his stamp on his adopted state through billions in appropriations, much like fellow senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd did. Stevens was so powerful that, after he lost his chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Committee in 2006, Alaska's per capita federal "pork" dropped by more than half, from $985 to $489 - still leading the nation, though. After Stevens left the Senate, Alaska slipped to No. 4. (Byrd's West Virginia was in the top five that same year.)

In one year, we've lost three of the longest-serving members o the Senate in history, two of whom (Kennedy and Byrd) were still in office. All three weren't shy about using the Senate's earmarking rules to benefit their constituents at the expense of tax-payers in other states. I'm still not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

My prayers go out to Stevens's family, and the families of the plane's other passengers. It can't hurt to remember the rescuers now making their way over terrain so rough that it took 12 hours to reach the crash site.