Ted Stevens, former Republican Senator from Alaska, died in a plane crash Monday.
The AP has the story here. Other stories are here and here.
Stevens is most recently know for his involvement in a Department of Justice investigation in which Stevens was convicted of seven counts of lying on Senate financial disclosure statements to hide gifts from friends, including an oil company executive.
However, a judge later overturned Stevens’ conviction on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct and corruption among DoJ attorneys.
The trial and conviction cast enough of a shadow on Stevens that he lost his bid for re-election in 2008, prompting outrage among some Republicans who saw the entire fiasco as dirty politics taken to new lows.
Stevens spent 40 years serving the citizens of Alaska in the Senate, where he was known for his ability to bring millions of federal dollars to Alaska for various projects. One of the projects that caught the most attention was the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.” The project was intended to build a $223 Million bridge to Gravina Island from the Alaskan mainland, despite the fact that the population of Gravina Island is only 50 people. That works out to $6.7 Million per inhabitant. That kind of government waste helped to drive the creation of the Tea Party movement.
Sen. Stevens was 86.
