If conservatives still celebrated “Ted Stevens Day” this past Saturday, they unfortunately have a lot of soul-searching and education to go through. I would rather that the public allow him to rest in peace, and stop trying to hide the damage this man did to Alaska. But with an airport and a day named in his honor, I claim that it is fair game to attack not the man, but his true legacy.
OK, I will be accused of having a dog in this fight: I ran against him twice, first in 1990 as a Republican in the primary, and knocking him out of the Senate in 2008 as a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, allowing another big-spending, pro-abortion liberal candidate (Mark Begich) to take his place.
In 1990, with the superb Fairbanksan Mike States as campaign manager, we raised $66,000 and took 30% of the vote against Uncle Ted. His purse spent over $700K. The split was 81,000 v. 34,000. In 2008 my share of the vote was much smaller, but was 3-4 times the difference between Stevens and Mark Begich.
But did I really have a dog in this fight? I ran against Uncle Ted because it was apparent that he was anything but a conservative. He was attempting to codify Roe v. Wade, decades before the ultra-Marxist Democrats wanted to do exactly the same thing. Stevens was so ignorant about what Roe actually said, that he kept insisting (along with the mainstream media and the general public), that it did not legalize abortion-on-demand all nine months of pregnancy.
That argument is not even offered any more, and is thoroughly and completely won by the prolifers.
Now let’s go to what Uncle Ted did to, not for, Alaska.
As a neophyte Harvard law school grad, he tried to get a job in the DC Interior department, but settled for a law firm that handled national resource issues in the Beltway. He was sent (likely by the Deep State) to Fairbanks and within six months was named federal district attorney. It ruffled feathers in Alaska as longer-serving lawyers were passed over.
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
And lo and behold, Ted did get that Interior job in DC, going back to the Beltway, which was to become his true home for the rest of his life. There, he admitted that he illegally wrote part of the Alaska statehood act – an act that reserved control of the state and its resources to the federal government – cementing Alaska’s colonial status and entry into the union as a permanent 2nd class state, where we still need an act of Congress to build a 17-mile gravel road between two villages or to develop vital resources that lie even on the mere 25% of the land that was granted to us. Even liberal Mike Gravel lamented the ANILCA legislation under Jimmy Carter, an act that further ended any hope of Alaska ever being permitted to control its own economic destiny.
So, why do we have a Ted Stevens Day? Because with his seniority and influence, Stevens steered massive amounts of federal dollars to keep our economy afloat, creating the dependency and control that is the very hallmark of socialism.
Socialism is the system that Alaska was conceived into in the early 20th century, increased through the Alaska Railroad and Matanuska Valley Projects, furthered through the influence of the Rockefeller Public Administration Service, which gave us our State Constitution, and locked down by Uncle Ted’s federal spending service.
I will say this: when his usefulness was dried up, he was blind-sided by the Deep State with a fake corruption charge, thus exonerating him and overturning the one conviction he did not deserve.
Alaska is a small state. I was glad to have his grandchildren as students in my classroom and on my hockey team. As they read this, remember that your grandfather was, and still is, public property. I would prefer that the memory you certainly possess of him as a grandfather remain at peace. But I love this state too – have for 47 years now – and I want to see it freed from the nefarious claws of the federal leviathan, a socialist monster that cares not for any individual, even those that served it dutifully for decades.
The views expressed here are those of the author.
8 Comments
No Experience Needed, No Boss Over il Your FD Shoulder… Say Goodbye To Your Old Job! Limited Number Of Spots
Open……. shorturl.re/7dzpp
No Experience Needed, No Boss Over il Your FD Shoulder… Say Goodbye To Your Old Job! Limited Number Of Spots
Open……. Join.Payathome9.com
Ted Stevens was not the great Statesman that this state has made him out to be. I believe what Bob Bird has written, and would like to see a factual book written about Ted Stevens. All Teddy did was spend money our country didn’t have, levied it on the next generations and say look what I did for this state. Ted is one reason I quite donating to the Republican Party and now donate to the individual. Lisa Murkowski is the same type of sinister Senator that Ted Stevens was, she in the same category as Teddy.
We agree with Steve and also Bob’s write up. We were there and future generations need the truth not an image and narrative. History needs to be the truth about a person.
Let me know, Bob, when you find a politician who agrees with you 100%. I won’t wait–fruitless to do so. Sen Ted was decent and honest, he got the state funding for airports commensurate with what the other states got for highways, he pushed through the TAPS, he helped me and countless others who had issues with government entities, and he loved Alaska deeply. If you believe that Congress can do anything besides spend money, then you are a bit naive. At least Ted fought for our share. At best he supported individual Alaskan robustly. Pretty easy to take potshots now that he’s dead.
I appreciate your disagreement, but I am not taking potshots at a dead man — I made them HEAD-ON when he was alive, and in debates and speeches. He had NO ANSWER when I told him that federal properties in Alaska were largely unconstitutional. You might consider that an unknown such as me, challenging him, being outspent 12-1, made such traction in 1990 with a 70/30 split, because there were still enough Alaskans around who knew for what he was responsible.
That my campaigns were suppressed is obvious. Does anyone doubt that the media is liberal? Ted won by landslides because he was a RINO and received many liberal votes, just like Lisa. That most people thought what he did was wonderful is obvious, but a man who was decades ahead of current Democratic Party-proposed federal abortion legislation can never be considered a conservative. If he helped you through Red Tape, of course that is a “plus”, but is something which any member of Congress does.
History, however, is 20/20 only after the passage of time. Ted claimed to be battling ANILCA after it was passed because of its broken promises, yet Gravel accurately predicted what would happen. Read my essay online “Is Alaska Statehood a Fraud?” We have a stagnant economy now because of federal dependency and control. The Deep State was likely coaching Ted when he was in the Interior Dept. In the times we live in, it is naive to pretend otherwise.
https://www.akip.org/StatehoodFraud.pdf
This is a footnoted, readable, 15-page assessment, done before I ran again in 2008. “Taking potshots” at the dead is not a fair accusation because the legacy of Stevens lives on with a day and an airport in his honor, meant to smoke-screen how and why Alaska remains a hobbled 2nd Class state. Yes, keep Ted’s titles in place, if you will. But truth is revealed only through debate and argument, then make up your own mind. But why are we so afraid of the truth?
Bob, after my 60 years plus & our five generations of Alaskans prior to Statehood, the theft of my fathers homestead mineral rights by statehood ,we his posterity only hopes real freedom may someday come to Alaskans. You need to do a follow-up of the ” solutions ” that will break the bounds of the socialism you plainly & honesty state.
Our true problem is good / honest leadership that we may have never but for a short time held , namely Wally Hickel as I remember him! Where is he now, STANDING TALL in his grave looking back in disgust of DC. “I want to be buried standing up so I can fight for what I believe in forever.” Now that’s a real Alaskan Leader…does one say that today? A button created for the burial services of Wally featuring a young Hickel in a boxing pose, with the phrase “Alaska First!” emblazoned on it. That’s what is fitting about Wally !
A Hundred & 3 million acres will always keep us shadowed by the federal overlord unless WE Alaskans assert the equal footing doctrine & demand “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. ”
Yes, we the people! & not on bended knee,period. That is our Tenth Amendment not the federal governments! Another Wally is what we need.
As for Ted Day, it was just another day as far as I am concerned, lost of the spirit of my father’s dreams “north to the future “.
Liberty Ed Martin Jr