The Curious Case of Ted Stevens

Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, against all odds and against all polls, has apparently been reelected. Despite all of the corruption scandals involving Republicans in that state, its electorate seems bound and determined to keep Democrats out of power.

Why were the polls so wrong? Stevens's Democratic opponent Mark Begich was polling about even with Stevens (hey, that almost rhymes!) after Stevens was indicted on July 29. Then, after the senator's conviction on October 27, Begich shot upward in the polls. My guess is that those late polls underestimated Stevens's support because of some combination of voters 1) deciding at the last minute to stay with the incumbent, and 2) being embarrassed to tell pollsters that they planned to vote for a convicted felon.

The result could still be overturned by the official count or a recount. But the Stevens lead that currently shows up in the unofficial returns, which is 3,353 votes and 1.6 percentage points, while by no means a landslide, seems just a bit too big to be overturned.

If that result stands, then the only means to remove him from the Senate is the expulsion process. The Constitution, in Article I, Section 5, Clause 2, says that "each House may ... with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member."

Here is an explanation, from the Senate's historians, of that body's historical use of its expulsion power.

To me, at first glance, that seems to make sense. But thinking it through a bit further, as applied to a situation such as this one, it's really a bit strange. The Alaska electorate, with full knowledge of Stevens's conviction, has apparently decided to reelect him anyway. In light of that, why should the senators from the other states be able to tell those voters they can't do so?

I'm reminded of the late U.S. Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Democrat of New York. When he was first elected, in 1944, to represent a district centered on Harlem, Powell was the first African American congressman since 1935. Representative Oscar De Priest, Republican of Illinois, had been the last remnant of the movement to elect African American Republicans that began during the Reconstruction period that followed the Civil War. Powell, on the other hand, was in the vanguard of the trend to elect Democratic African American members of Congress from largely black districts, first in the north and then, after the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, also in the south.

During the 1960s, corruption allegations surfaced around Powell. After he was reelected to a 12th term in 1966, the House voted to "exclude" him. I'm not sure whether there is a technical difference between "exclude" and "expel" but they both seem to have the same effect. Powell won the special election that followed his 1967 exclusion from the House. His district also reelected him in 1968.

Then, in 1970, Powell lost the Democratic primary to Charles Rangel. Rangel still holds that seat, and has accumulated enough seniority to become chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

As is the case with Stevens in Alaska, the voters of Powell's district knew of the charges against him, and reelected him anyway. They told the House, in essence, "thank you very much, but we knew what we were doing, when we reelected Powell at the 1966 general election". Later, when they decided they preferred Rangel, the democratic process took its course.

I'm not inclined to defend Stevens, but I'm pointing out that the question is more complicated than some would make it out to be.