Editing Ted Stevens (section)

==U.S. Senator==
===Service===
[[File:Ted stevens 1962.jpg|upright|thumb|left|Stevens in 1962, the year of his first run]]
Stevens's service as a United States Senator was, at first, marked with instability and controversy. [[Mike Gravel]] stated that he had no issue with Stevens being the senior senator, because he was seven years Stevens's junior, and Stevens had been in public service for longer than he had.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Project Jukebox {{!}} Digital Branch of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Oral History Program |url=https://jukebox.uaf.edu/interviews/851 |access-date=2023-05-19 |website=jukebox.uaf.edu |archive-date=May 12, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230512140812/https://jukebox.uaf.edu/interviews/851 |url-status=live }}</ref> Even after losing the [[1968 United States Senate election in Alaska|1968]] Republican primary, Stevens embarked on a state-wide campaign for the Republican nominee, [[Elmer Rasmuson]], attacking Gravel on his time as [[Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives]]. When they were being sworn in together in 1969, Stevens approached Gravel and apologized, asking if they could "let political bygones be bygones", so that they could work together. However, Gravel replied "I don't want to be your friend, Ted. I didn't appreciate you going around the state and lying about me." Gravel and Stevens never recovered, with Gravel later recalling "We'd talk about things. I'd joke with him. He's got a sense of humor." However, Gravel would add "He didn't use it on me unless I was the butt of it."<ref name="leader" />

[[File:Jay Greenfield, Ted Stevens & Emil Notti, 1969.jpg|thumb|Stevens (centre) with Jay Greenfield (left) and AFN President [[Emil Notti]] (right) discussing [[Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act|ANCSA]] in 1969]]
During the inaugural meeting of the [[United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies|Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs]] during the [[91st United States Congress]], Stevens commandeered the meeting, booming: "The first priority has to be settlement of Alaska Native land claims. This committee hadn't had the guts to do it at statehood." By the end of the meeting, Stevens and Gravel had ended up in a shouting match, constantly interrupting and disrespecting each other, boiling out into the hallway, fists raised, giving statements to the press in a makeshift conference before Chairman [[Henry M. Jackson|Henry "Scoop" Jackson]] interrupted and broke up the fight.<ref name="leader" /> In one incident, Stevens began lecturing Jackson, the chairman. Jackson put his foot down, stating "Now just a minute. You're new here and I want to tell you how these things are handled." Ed Weinberg would recall that Jackson treated Ted Stevens like he was a rebellious schoolboy and, as such, would make him "sit in the corner with a dunce cap on." "Jackson wasn't about to let Ted Stevens take over the hearings and the framing of this legislation."<ref name="leader" />

Following the [[1974 United States Senate election in Alaska|1974]] campaign, where Stevens begrudgingly campaigned for the Republican nominee, leading John Birch Society member C.R. Lewis, Stevens again tried to put their rivalry aside, sending a letter inviting Gravel and his wife to a "nice dinner" with him and his wife. However, Gravel turned it down, later recalling he showed Stevens that he "didn't want to socialize with him." Gravel felt Stevens did not behave appropriately during the campaign, adding "I wanted nothing to do with him socially."<ref name="feud">{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1979/09/30/the-great-alaska-feud/58a42ecf-d387-4815-9b1b-4afd3ae120c9/|first=Nicholas|last=Lemann|date=September 30, 1979|newspaper=[[Washington Post]]|title=The Great Alaska Feud|access-date=January 15, 2023|archive-date=March 26, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326031547/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1979/09/30/the-great-alaska-feud/58a42ecf-d387-4815-9b1b-4afd3ae120c9/|url-status=live}}</ref>

On October 13, 1978, the last day of the second sitting of the [[95th United States Congress|95th Congress]], the [[Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act]], an act to conserve around a third of Alaska as 'America's last huge, untouched wilderness', an act which Stevens championed after providing a compromise with [[Mo Udall]], was killed by Gravel. One theory why was that Gravel killed the bill in an attempt to spite Stevens, but it is more widely accepted that Gravel had killed the bill as part of his 1980 re-election campaign. The day before, Gravel had written to Stevens that he 'supported Stevens' and was reconsidering his opposition of any attempt of a compromise.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2021-06-27 |title=Mike Gravel, former US senator for Alaska, dies at 91 |url=https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-mike-gravel-alaska-government-and-politics-49428bf81c2081f064d1fa8fd05a26a1 |access-date=2023-05-19 |website=AP NEWS |language=en |archive-date=May 12, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230512140805/https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-mike-gravel-alaska-government-and-politics-49428bf81c2081f064d1fa8fd05a26a1 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="feud"/> On the day, the bill was granted an extension for a year by the House, but when the Senate debated the extension, Stevens did not present Gravel's objections to the Senate. In response, Gravel stood up and killed the extension, stating that astounded him how members of Congress could "meet so much on a subject" that "affected someone else's state." Gravel would then add that he "had been willing to rise above this and work on the compromise", even though he believed the bill "...was anathema to what I thought was right and in the best interests of Alaska..."<ref name="feud"/>

[[File:President Gerald Ford stands with Don Young and Ted Stevens.jpg|thumb|left|Stevens with then-President [[Gerald Ford]] and U.S. Representative [[Don Young]] in 1975]]
[[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic]] [[New Hampshire]] Senator [[John A. Durkin]] rose. "The whole chamber knows what the senator is up to. He is out to torpedo this bill!" Gravel rebutted "I will not admit that!", continuing to speak until [[Party leaders of the United States Senate|Senate Majority Leader]] [[Robert Byrd]] took the bill off of the floor. The Senate descended into rage, Gravel unsuccessfully trying to talk over the Senators' angry commotion. Stevens then rose and stated that "I feel like a father who has just arrived at the delivery room and found out his son has been stillborn." He accused Gravel of lying, adding Interior Secretary [[Cecil Andrus]] and President [[Jimmy Carter]] would take away 'millions of acres of Alaska from development'. Durkin then rose again; "We worked out an extension to protect Alaska, and he is torpedoing that now. I hope the press is listening, as well as every village in Alaska, so when the secretary (Andrus) invokes the Antiquities Act there will be no ticker-tape parade." Hard to hear over the anger of the Senate, Durkin then finally added that Alaskans should know that the compromise "foundered on two words, after forty-seven markups, and those two words are 'Mike Gravel.'"<ref name="feud"/> Gravel argued that Stevens was selling out, and, in rebuttal, Stevens told the press that Gravel had broken his word, adding "Gravel is an international playboy who needs psychiatric help.", following "I'm not even sure if God could fathom his thinking."<ref name="feud"/>

=== 1978 plane crash ===
[[File:Ted stevens aug 12th 1983.jpg|upright|thumb|Stevens in 1983]]
On December 4, 1978, Stevens had a meeting in [[Anchorage, Alaska|Anchorage]] with executives of the major pro-development lobby "Citizens for the Management of Alaska's Lands". On the same day, Governor of Alaska [[Jay Hammond]], would be sworn in for a second term in Alaska's capital, [[Juneau, Alaska|Juneau]]. [[Langhorne A. Motley|Tony Motley]], the Chair of CMAL, arranged for a friend's private plane to pick them up after the inauguration had finished, and then fly them from Juneau to Anchorage so Stevens could attend the meeting. During takeoff from [[Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport|Anchorage International]], the plane had risen only a few feet above the runway when it was hit by a sudden, strong gust of wind, which flipped the plane around and pointed it straight up in the air. In an attempt to re-orient the plane, the pilot pulled back the throttle, but the plane stalled and crashed violently into the ground. Out of the seven people on board, including the pilot, only Stevens and Motley survived the crash. The other five passengers, a group which included Ann Stevens, who was Stevens' wife of {{frac|2|1|2}} decades, died on impact.<ref name="feud"/>

[[File:Bob Dole shaking hands with Ted Stevens.jpg|thumb|left|Stevens with [[Bob Dole]] and [[Arlen Specter]] in 1984]]
Stevens's wife's death hit him very hard. On the day of the crash Gravel was on a trip to Saudi Arabia, but he flew back to attend Ann's funeral. Afterwards, Gravel asked a Stevens aide if he could express his condolences personally, but he was informed that Stevens didn't want to see him. Upon Stevens' return, he seemed "bitter and in terrible emotional pain", hinting in both Alaska and D.C. that he believed that the only reason he made the flight was that he had to rebuild the effort for a land bill back together, and that thus the primary reason was Mike Gravel killing the bill. Most of his remarks were not printed by reporters, who saw them as statements of someone "half-crazy with grief".<ref name="feud"/>

[[File:Senator Ted Stevens speaks during the commissioning of the nuclear-powered strategic missile submarine USS ALASKA (SSBN 732).jpg|thumb|upright|Stevens speaking at the commissioning of the [[USS ''Alaska'' (SSBN 732)|USS Alaska]], 1986]]
However, on February 6, 1979, Stevens spoke to the [[United States House Committee on Natural Resources|House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs]], which Udall chaired, which had just begun to debate the new edition of the lands bill, and he brought up the plane crash. "It was on that trip to Alaska to reconstitute the efforts for the coming year that I and Tony Motley, who passed away ... were involved in an accident", he said, the fact that Motley had survived seemingly lapsing his mind. "The trip was neither spur-of-the-moment nor stopgap. It was and is to me the beginning of this year's effort to achieve an acceptable D2 lands bill. As I am sure you realize, and many of you can imagine, the solution of the issue means even more to me than it did before." He shortly talked about the bill, before finally adding: "I think if that bill had passed, I might have a wife sitting and waiting when I get home tonight, too."<ref name="feud"/><ref name="authentic">{{cite magazine | url=https://newrepublic.com/article/77016/ted-stevens-authentic-alaska-senator | title=The Jerk | magazine=The New Republic | date=October 10, 2007 | last1=Crowley | first1=Michael }}</ref>

[[File:Appropriations Chair, Ted Stevens, in 1997.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Stevens as Appropriations chairman, 1997]]
In 1979, Stevens began to recruit primary challengers for the Democratic nomination to Gravel for his re-election campaign [[1980 United States Senate election in Alaska|the following year]]. After some courting, Stevens decided to back [[Clark Gruening]], the grandson of Ernest Gruening, who Gravel had defeated in the primary 12 years prior. Stevens had also reportedly (and unsuccessfully) attempted to court [[Langhorne A. Motley|Tony Motley]], the other survivor of the 1978 crash to run as the Republican nominee, but Motley stated he had only briefly touched upon entering the race with Stevens and that he was not a candidate.<ref name="feud"/> The junior Gruening would defeat Gravel in the primary by a margin of 11 points.<ref name="Primary1980">{{cite web|url=http://www.elections.alaska.gov/results/80PRIM/80prim.pdf|title=State of Alaska Official Returns by Election Precinct|website=www.elections.alaska.gov|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170919234201/http://www.elections.alaska.gov/results/80PRIM/80prim.pdf|archive-date=September 19, 2017}}</ref> Gruening would then lose the election to banker [[Frank Murkowski]] by 7 points.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/1980election.pdf|title=Statistics of the Congressional Election of November 4, 1980|website=clerk.house.gov|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220320200405/https://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/1980election.pdf|archive-date=March 20, 2022}}</ref>