To Many of His Constituents, 'Uncle Ted' Is Far From Done

PALMER, Alaska -- The sign on southbound Trunk Road is shaped like a slice of bread and browned to perfection. "Ted's Toast," it says, advertising not a breakfast special but an assessment of the situation facing Ted Stevens, the U.S. senator being tried on corruption charges and facing reelection Nov. 4.

But not even the man who pounded the sign into the roadside thinks Stevens is, in fact, done.

"I've lived here seven years," said Bill Stanfill, 57, a retired insurance broker who moved from Florida. "Had I been here 37 years and I'd seen him bring all these goodies for all these years, I'd see him the way everybody else does.

"Who doesn't like Robin Hood?"

With Stevens facing the strongest reelection challenge of his long career, his fate might appear to be in the hands of the federal jurors who last week began hearing evidence in Washington that he failed to report gifts worth $250,000 from an Alaska oil services company.

But appearances can be deceiving. To the people who have voted to send Stevens to the Senate seven times, it remains difficult to imagine what might keep them from sending him back yet again at age 84.

"I think he's electable," said Florence Hall, 77, picking stray spuds from a potato field before the coming frost. "I have my doubts about a trial outcome in Washington, D.C., I really do. I've heard reminders that Washington, D.C., is full of politicians and it's Democratic territory and they're going to focus on hanging a Republican.

"A 30-year record of doing good for Alaska carries a lot of weight," Hall said. "If you've had a job and been working 37 years without making a mistake, I'd like to meet that person."

In a political year unlike any in Alaska's short history, Stevens's extraordinary resilience might prove as reliable as his indictment was upsetting. The man who first went to Washington in 1956 to lobby for statehood has, as the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, shipped home the highest number of federal dollars per capita in the nation, nurturing along the way a paternalism that earned him the nickname "Uncle Ted."

"To me, he shouldn't be there in the first place at his age," said Andrea O'Malley, 33, of Anchorage. "But I know older people and people who came to Alaska in 1950, and they're going to vote for him. They just believe him. They trust him."

A survey taken on the eve of Stevens's trial showed him essentially tied with Mark Begich, the popular Anchorage mayor who easily won the Democratic primary. Pollster Ivan Moore said support for the octogenarian should fade as evidence against him is laid out at trial. In opening arguments, a prosecutor mentioned an audiotape recording of Stevens telling Bill Allen, then chief executive of an oil services company alleged to have paid for the renovation of the senator's Alaskan home, that they might face jail time if their collusion were discovered.

"I think the only way he gets out of it with any kind of positive push at all is if he's acquitted, or if he's convicted on some minor counts," Moore said.