Even if he wins reelection, Stevens faces hard landing in Senate return

Ted Stevens’s future in the Senate will be short-lived even if he pulls off a surprising reelection win next week, several senior GOP aides said Tuesday.

Despite the chumminess of the Senate and his stature in the chamber, Republicans say it will be too risky politically to allow Stevens — now a convicted felon — to continue to serve and help set national policy.

{mosads}“If he does win, there is no chance he stays,” a top Republican aide said.

If he returns next January for a seventh full term, GOP and Democratic aides expect an expulsion resolution to hit the floor rather swiftly, possibly even bypassing the Senate Select Committee on Ethics entirely. It takes two-thirds of senators to expel a member from his or her seat, which has not been done since the Civil War.

“My guess is if he’s reelected, it would be hard for him to avoid expulsion, unless there was some real legs to the appeals process,” another senior GOP aide said.

Charles Abernathy, a spokesman for Stevens, chalked up the talk to “unsubstantiated rumors.”

“We are confident that other senators understand Sen. Stevens’s constitutional rights and will allow him to go through the legal process,” Abernathy said.

Still, the prognosis from top aides casts an even cloudier outlook on Stevens’s future. On Tuesday, Stevens heard a chorus of calls for his resignation, including from both parties’ presidential nominees, from Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), and from Sens. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). GOP senators facing tough reelection bids, like Coleman, are distancing themselves from Stevens as their Democratic opponents highlight their ties to the convicted senator.

Stevens’s reelection campaign responded to losing the support of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and other top Republicans by sending out a news release late in the day announcing the endorsement of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission (AEWC) and a retired lieutenant general in the Air Force.

Senate GOP leaders have stopped short of calling for Stevens to step down, but have also offered no support for a man who was once among the most feared and powerful senators on Capitol Hill.

Even if he loses next week, leaders from both parties will have to decide whether to reprimand Stevens before his term expires at year’s end, or allow him to participate in a post-election lame-duck session where the Senate will likely vote on a massive economic stimulus measure.

Stevens had already lost his leadership positions on key committees when he was indicted in July. If he wins reelection and is not expelled before January, Senate Republicans would have to decide whether to allow him to continue to sit on those powerful committees, which include Appropriations, Commerce and Homeland Security.

For those reasons, Senate Republicans appear eager to cut him loose, as top campaign strategist Sen. John Ensign (Nev.) seemed to do Monday by saying the senator’s career had ended “in disgrace.”

Despite the political odds against him, Stevens and his Alaska GOP allies are hoping to capitalize on Alaskans’ distrust of the federal government by claiming that the Justice Department presented an unfair case that was riddled with erroneous evidence to the jury. Stevens hopes voters will look past his conviction and reelect him because of his four decades of service, which includes billions of dollars he has sent back home to build Alaska since its inception in 1959.

Stevens, 84, was convicted Monday of making false statements on his annual financial disclosure forms by failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts from long-time friends. The conviction adds to the GOP’s election-year troubles, and gives Democrats a greater chance of picking up another Republican seat if Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich wins next week.

{mospagebreak}No polls have yet been released since the conviction, but Begich was leading by 1 percentage point in the days leading up to the verdict.

Stevens returns to Alaska Wednesday in the hopes that his dwindling support from his colleagues won’t translate into an electoral loss.

In a statement after the verdict, Stevens asked his colleagues for support while pleading his innocence.

{mosads}“I ask that Alaskans and my Senate colleagues stand with me as I pursue my rights,” Stevens said.

So far, Stevens has not gotten much help from Capitol Hill. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the junior Alaska Republican, and the Alaska Republican congressman, Rep. Don Young, have so far issued the strongest statements in his support, saying they would stand by him as he appeals the verdict.

Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), Stevens’s closest friend in the Senate who attested to Stevens’s character at the corruption trial, said Monday’s verdict “may not be the final decision as this matter is subject to appeal” and that Alaskans should “remember his contributions, and look upon him as a friend.”

The federal judge overseeing the corruption trial has scheduled a Feb. 25 hearing on motions for retrial that will be filed by Stevens’s lawyers, and will defer jail sentencing until after that hearing. He faces up to five years in prison for each count, but most legal experts expect him to serve far less time, if any at all.

But since Election Day is just one week away, few Republicans — like McCain — seem willing to stake their political fortunes on Stevens’s appeals process.

“It is clear that Sen. Stevens has broken his trust with the people and that he should step down,” McCain said.

If he wins reelection and his expulsion seems inevitable, Stevens might cave to the pressure and resign, as New Jersey Democrat Harrison Williams did in 1982, the last sitting senator to be convicted of a felony. If that happens, the Alaska governor would call a special election within 60 days.

Whenever he leaves office, Stevens will be able to hold onto his pension since the new ethics law only withholds pensions for lawmakers convicted of certain felonies that occur after September 2007. None of the crimes Stevens was convicted of happened after that period.