Mayor Begich forms exploratory committee to decide on Senate race
ANCHORAGE - Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich looked and sounded like a candidate for U.S. Senate on Wednesday, but left himself an out if he decides not to run.
With his wife, Deborah Bonito, at his side, the 45-year-old Democrat announced he was forming an exploratory committee to help decide whether to seek the Senate seat held by Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican in Senate history and the target of an FBI and Internal Revenue Service search last summer.
Begich said he's not considering a run because of issues with Stevens, but his list of reasons for putting a toe into the water echoed complaints about the man who has held the job for nearly 40 years.
"Alaskans keep telling me that business as usual isn't working in Washington, D.C.," Begich said. "They tell me we need a senator with new ideas, a senator who's in touch and listens to everyone. They tell me they want a senator who works with all sides of the issues to find solutions and get results."
In a prepared statement, Stevens said he looks forward to a campaign focused on Alaska, a sparsely populated state that needs a senator with experience and clout.
"I believe I have a strong record of listening to Alaskans and working to do what Alaskans want," Stevens said.
The deadline for filing is June. 1. Forming the exploratory committee, Begich said, will allow him to raise money and travel to ask Alaskans if they believe it's time for a change in leadership.
Stevens, 84, was appointed to the Senate in 1968. He won a special election two years later and has been re-elected six times.
His legacy was tarnished last year when the FBI and the IRS searched his home in Girdwood, a ski resort community on Anchorage's southern edge. Bill Allen, the former CEO of the oil field services company VECO Corp., testified in a corruption trial of a former state lawmaker that he oversaw the renovation and expansion of Stevens home and sent employees to work on it.
Stevens has declined to discuss the investigation, but has said he paid every bill presented him for the remodeling project.
Stevens filed for re-election last week. He said Alaska's development and job growth has been stymied by "extreme environmentalists" and that Alaska was heading for a fall if residents didn't "wake up and deal with the enemy that is within us."
Begich called that "old thinking of how the world works." As a two-term mayor, he said, he doesn't have the luxury of proclaiming one group bad and ignoring it.
"One thing that I've done as mayor is sat down with very diverse groups to work out many of the challenges we face as a city," he said. "That's what we need to be having in Washington, D.C., not blaming one group or pointing fingers at another group, sitting down and getting results."
Stevens' seniority and committee positions have enabled him to secure millions of federal dollars to build infrastructure in a state that lacked basic amenities in many of its far-flung communities.
Begich acknowledged that Alaskans historically have voted with their pocketbooks but said there's more at stake than federally funded construction projects. That gush of dollars already is slowing, he said.
"There's going to be new fiscal responsibility that's going to come into play in Washington, D.C. It's already started. Even Sen. Stevens has acknowledged it."
Alaskans should be concerned with the federal role in the cost of energy, education, health care, transportation and outrageous national debt, he said.
"Every time you get your paycheck, 20 percent of what you pay in federal taxes goes to pay interest on the national debt," he said. "People should be outraged."
Begich is the son of Nick Begich, who represented Alaska in the U.S. House of Representatives when his plane disappeared over the Gulf of Alaska in October 1972. He and others on board, including then-House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, D-La., were never found.