Posted on 08/27/2008 3:40:25 AM PDT by kms61
Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska won the Republican primary in his home state on Tuesday, soundly defeating six Republican challengers less than a month after he was indicted by a federal grand jury for concealing more than $250,000 in gifts from an oil services company.
The victory for Mr. Stevens, 84, means he now moves to a tough general election campaign against Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, who easily won the Democratic primary on Tuesday and leads the senator in polls. Mr. Stevens enters the general election also having to prepare for his trial, which is scheduled to begin in late September.
Mr. Stevens, who has been in office for 40 years and is revered for bringing home billions of dollars in federal spending, had received 63 percent of the vote with 61 percent of precincts counted.
"People have been voting for Ted for 40 years and their inclination is to keep doing it," Dave Cuddy, a former state lawmaker who finished a distant second to Mr. Stevens, said in a phone interview several hours before the polls closed.
Representative Don Young, the state's lone House member and a 35-year incumbent, was locked in a close primary race with Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell late Tuesday. Mr. Parnell led by less than 400 votes out of more than 70,000 cast in the 61 percent of precincts that had reported results.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I swear to god, some people don’t think more than 5 minutes into the future. Why, oh why, in the world, would they vote for a guy indicted on federal corruption charges, I don’t care if he’s using the congress as a retirement home.
There’s one senate seat the Republicans will lose this November.
Way to go, Alaskan Republicans.
/s
Sorry, I did a title search on “Stevens” and nothing came up. Admins, feel free to remove.
Is cross-over voting allowed?
I did a quick search, and found one site that says it’s a closed primary, and another that says Independents can vote.
Cant he remove his name from the ballot? Its the least he can do.
I can imagine that ‘independents’ would want to make sure he won.
Just another stinking “spend spend spend” above the law, crony RINO .... and the sheople replied .. he IS a RINO, and a dirtbag but he is OUR RINO.
Of course the same will tell us we HAVE to vote another dirtbag ...McLame
Waike up ameeeerika
Well, that was my initial reaction, too.
But then with not much digging I discovered that Stevens’ only rival was never a serious candidate and was a Florida Democrat who switched parties and moved to Alaska just to run against Stevens. And he had an even smaller chance of defeating Bigich, the popular Democrat mayor of Anchorage.
Most of Alaska’s population lives in Anchorage, so the mayor is a major political player. Plus Alaskans really only care about their disproportional Washington pork, and they’ve decided that the charges against Stevens are underwhelming.
The best case scenario is that McCain uses Stevens as a foil in his campaign against Washington pork, proving his independence and yet oddly enough, endearing him to his own party for doing it, Stevens wins a longshot victory anyways, and then is convicted and Governor Palin appoints a decent, less corrupt replacement.
Don’t blame that. He won in a landslide cause stupid people worship him. Palin should have come out strongly against him and all challengers should have deferred to the strongest.
I hope this doddering old man k*cks the b*ck*t or is jailed before he has a chance to lose this seat to the ultra-leftist rat.
Nah, its because his only rival in the GOP primary was a carpetbagging Democrat.
2008 then could be the year of “Democracy” in AK! Hapless Republicans there seem out to lunch.
And VA and NM are already lost too.
Regards,
He’s royalty, and firmly entrenched. Absent the proverbial dead girl or live boy, he gets to keep running. That’s jus the way the machine works.
My gosh. Are the people of Alaska as stupid as the people of Massachewsits and West Virginia?
84 is young compared to Sen Byrd who will never retire of course. Specter and Kennedy show no signs of giving up either, despite both being way up there in years and having bad health scares.
It would be pretty odd after all this if Stevens were to get re-elected. Maybe McCain’s coattails would help. I just hope Stevens doesn’t drag down McCain.
Bye, bye, seat. This corrupt spend-crazy old pork king RINO ought to have quit for the good of the party. The bright side I suppose is that it looks like we will be rid of him forever.
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