Opinion: Ted Stevens, inmate senator

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Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who tried to convince a Washington jury that he didn’t have to report gifts from wealthy supporters because, well, he considered them loans (even though he never returned them), got what he richly deserved today when he was found guilty of all seven felony counts against him. But that raises some very interesting questions -- like, if Alaska voters elect him to another term anyway, what happens? Will he be voting on bills from a prison cell?

Stevens is in an extremely tight race against Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. Most candidates who are convicted of several felonies the week before an election can be safely ruled out, but not Stevens. He promises to continue his campaign, he is extremely well-loved in Alaska (a state that hasn’t had a Democrat in the Senate since 1981), and this is the state that put a little-known hockey mom from Wasilla in the governor’s mansion.

There is nothing in Senate rules that would prevent Stevens from serving if he’s elected, but Sen. Harrison A. Williams Jr. serves as an instructive example. Like Stevens, Williams was an institution in his home state, frequently referred to as New Jersey’s ‘senator for life.’ But then he got caught up in the Abscam sting, in which FBI agents posing as Arab sheiks offered bribes to members of Congress, some of whom, like Williams, took them. He was convicted in 1981 on nine counts of bribery and conspiracy, but refused to leave office. That set up a bruising effort to expel him by the rest of the Senate; Williams resigned in 1982 just as the Senate was on the brink of getting the 67 votes needed to kick him out. He would have been the first senator to be expelled since the Civil War.

Stevens will doubtless appeal, and he would have to exhaust his appeals before the expulsion process could begin. He could do himself, and the country, a big favor by dropping out now.

* Photo by Mark Wilson / Getty Images