Begich announces run against Sen. Stevens (AK)

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Source: The Hill

National Democrats have their man against Sen. Ted Stevens, and he appears set to give the party its first real shot at the senator in his 40-year career.

Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich announced Wednesday that he is entering the race against Stevens (R-Alaska), setting up an exploratory committee and ending months of speculation about whether Democrats could field a formidable candidate against the embattled lawmaker.

A federal investigation into Stevens’s ties to the Veco Corp. pushed the seat into the realm of possibility for Democrats. Begich’s entry makes it an official race.

In launching his committee, Begich said in an e-mail to supporters that the exploratory committee is a significant step forward that he doesn't take lightly.


Read more: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/begich-announces-run-against-sen.-stevens-2008-02-27.html

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A heart felt good luck to the people of Alaska!

[Parche]

1. Big Itch For Alaska!!!

:hi:

[Hawkeye-X]

2. I'll donate money to unseat "Intertubes" Stevens

This guy is so wrong for Alaska and needs to be removed, indicted, and imprisoned in Seward, Alaska or someplace cold until he turns ice permanently.

Hawkeye-X

[L. Coyote]

3. Dem Anchorage Mayor Plans Run Against Sen. Stevens (R-Crook)

babylonsister .... Wed Feb-27-08 06:34 AM

Dem Anchorage Mayor Plans Run Against Sen. Stevens (R-Crook)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2929289


Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich is expected to announce this afternoon that he'll be running against Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), setting up a political battle between an iconic figure in Alaska politics against one of the rising Democratic stars statewide.

Begich has called a news conference for 2:30 p.m. EST to “announce his plans regarding the United States Senate seat held by Sen. Ted Stevens,” according to a campaign statement.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has been recruiting Begich for the last several months, believing he has the best chance of unseating Stevens. Begich’s father, who was a congressman, died in a 1972 plane crash while campaigning in Alaska.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, anticipating Begich’s campaign, has recently set up a website titled begichbaggage.com, designed to alert voters about Begich’s political record. It is still under construction.

A December Research 2000 poll, commissioned by the liberal website Daily Kos, showed Begich defeating Stevens, 47 percent to 41 percent, in a head-to-head contest.

more... http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0208/Anchorage_mayor_expected_to_announce_run_against_Ted_Stevens.html

[skipos]

4. So what is the word on this guy? nt

[Winterblues]

5. In a very Red State he was elected Mayor of it's largest city

Alaska has a population of about six hundred thousand people. anchorage is close to five hundred thousand people alone. That speaks volumes to me..

[ReadTomPaine]

6. Nick Begich's legacy lives on..

Mark is the son of the late Nick Begich, former House rep who disappeared with Hale Boggs in a suspicious plane crash while still in office in 1972.

Here's a clip from Wiki:

In 1970, Begich was elected to the at-large seat for the state of Alaska. In 1972, he faced a tight race against the Republican candidate, state senator Don Young. On October 16, 1972, he was aboard a twin engine Cessna 310 along with Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana, the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, when the plane disappeared during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau. The only others on board were Begich's aide, Russell Brown, and the pilot, Don Jonz;<2> The four were heading to a campaign fundraiser for Begich.

In the largest search ever mounted by the U.S. military, Coast Guard, Navy, and Air Force planes searched for the party. On November 24, 1972, after thirty-nine days, the search was abandoned. Neither the wreckage of the plane nor the pilot's and passengers' remains were ever found. The accident prompted Congress to pass a law mandating Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELTs) in all U.S. civil aircraft. All were presumed dead on December 29, 1972, Begich was forty years old. The accident prompted Congress to pass a law mandating emergency locator transmitters (now called emergency position-indicating rescue beacons) in all U.S. civil aircraft. Posthumously, Begich won the 1972 election with 56% to Don Young's 44%. However, after Begich's declared death, a special election was called which was won by Young.

Nick Begich's younger son, Mark Begich, is the current mayor of Anchorage, Alaska.

The circumstances surrounding this disappearance have been suspect for years, with recent evidence indicating the FBI suppressed information that could have led to the discovery of the crash site during the rescue operation.

[Kolesar]

9. I heard that FBI tyrant J.Edgar Hoover hated Boggs because Boggs was investigating Hoover

...or something like that.

Hale Boggs was the father of Cokie Roberts, a political commentator on NPR that I have a great deal of contempt for.

[ReadTomPaine]

10. Cokie "Constant Dollars" Roberts.. you're not alone on that account.

Here's a link and excerpt from an article published about her in The Nation

Lippmann/Dewey fans will remember that the very idea of a watchdog press breaks down when the watchdog starts acting like--and more important, sympathizing with--the folks upon whom he or she has been hired to keep an eye. With Cokie, this was never much of an issue. Her dad was a Congressman. Her mom was a Congresswoman. Her brother is one of the slickest and wealthiest lobbyists in the city. Her husband, Steve Roberts, holds the dubious honor of being perhaps the only person to give up a plum New York Times job because it interfered with his television career. And together they form a tag-team buck-raking/book-writing enterprise offering up corporate speeches and dime-store "Dear Abby"-style marriage advice to those unfortunates who do not enjoy his-and-her television contracts.

...

Cokie came to public attention at NPR, where she developed some street cred as a Capitol Hill gumshoe, but apparently grew tired of the hassle of actual reporting, which only helped her career. With no concern for the niceties of conflicts of interest, she and her husband accepted together as much as $45,000 in speaking fees from the very corporations that were affected by the legislation she was allegedly covering in Congress. Moreover, she claimed something akin to a royal prerogative in refusing to address the ethical quandary it obviously raised. (A spokesman responding to a journalist's inquiry said that Queen Cokie's corporate speaking fees were "not something that in any way, shape or form should be discussed in public.")

...

Apparently, nobody ever told Cokie that the job of the insider pundit is to at least pretend to be conversant with the major political, economic and intellectual issues in question before putting these in the service of a consensually derived story line. The pedantic George Will and the peripatetic Sam Donaldson at least give the impression of having considered their remarks ahead of time, either by memorizing from Bartlett's or pestering politicians. Not Cokie. Once, when a reporting gig interfered with one of her many social and/or speaking engagements, she donned a trench coat in front of a photo of the Capitol in the ABC studios in the hopes of fooling her viewers. She was not a real journalist; she just played one on TV.

...

All this is relevant to those of you who are not dewy-eyed about Cokie's departure--or Dewey-eyed about democracy, for that matter--because Cokie's inadvertent honesty helps us understand how George W. Bush ever made it to the White House in the first place. Why are we hearing about Harken Oil only today? Why did the press ignore the evidence of Bush's personal and professional dishonesty back in 2000, when it still mattered? Meanwhile, these same reporters concocted stupid stories about Al Gore's penchant for "exaggeration," misreporting the simplest facts on his (essentially accurate) claims about the Internet, Love Canal and Love Story. It's not as if evidence of Bush's unsavory past was unavailable. I wrote about it twice on MSNBC.com, in the fall of 2000, following a damning Talk magazine exposé of Bush's suspicious business ethics, written by Bill Minutaglio and Nancy Beiles, and based on documents made public by the Center for Public Integrity. But nobody cared. The Times, the Post, the Journal, CBS, ABC et al.--who had all championed Ken Starr's $70 million investigation of a $30,000 unprofitable land deal--did not think Bush's fortune-making sweetheart deals were worth more than the most cursory of investigations. (Let's not even bring up the dubious Texas Rangers deal or the missing years in his National Guard record.)

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020805/alterman

[democrank]

7. YAY!

Hope this will spell the end for Mr. Ted Stevens.

[Tempest]

8. According to my sister in Anchorage

Begich has been putting out feelers for several months and people are excited about him running.

He can win Anchorage, but the rest of the state will be difficult. Stevens will handily win in Fairbanks and the surrounding area. Begich will have to win Anchorage with a good size margin and win in some of the smaller areas like Eagle River and Homer to beat Stevens.