Our "Third Senator" Indicted by Grand Jury

The most senior (and it's said most powerful) Republican in the U.S. Senate, Ted Stevens was indicted by a federal grand jury for not mentioning the $250,000 in labor and materials he received from a construction company. Veco Corp. actually lifted Stevens' house in the air while a new first floor was built, and no money changed hands. They also threw in a Viking grill. If you have had any remodeling done lately, you know that's a pretty sweet deal. Normally, you pay contractors through the nose, and to get them to finish before your kids start calling the hotel "home," you throw in the grill.

This indictment is the result of a larger corruption probe that seems to have included everyone in the Alaskan legislature, past and present, and some shady caribou besides.

Stevens has long had close ties with Washington state's powerbrokers, though he and Maria Cantwell do not get along. When Cantwell wouldn't get on board with Stevens' plan to drill the ANWR, the octogenarian got all red in the face and pronounced her roadkill. Stevens and Veco chairman Bill Allen helmed an Anchorage fundraiser for Maria Cantwell's Republican opponent, Mike McGavick. When the FBI started digging into Veco's spending habits, McGavick gave back $14,000 from Veco execs.

As Joel Connelly remembers in the P-I, the door swung both ways: "When he last sought reelection in 2002, Stevens collected more than $250,000 from Seattle-area business interests at a series of closed-door fundraisers in the Washington Athletic Club." (The WAC has a really tasty Santa Fe chicken wrap in their cafe, by the way. If you're ever there to support a public-trough-swilling politician of your own, we encourage you to try it out.)

So long, Uncle Ted.

Photo: Susan Walsh / AP