Stevens Update

This is encouraging:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that Republican Senator Ted Stevens is trailing by two percentage points in his bid for re-election. Stevens attracts 45% of the vote while Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich (D) earns 47%. A month ago, it was Stevens with 46% support and Begich at 45%.

Any incumbent who polls below 50% is considered potentially vulnerable, especially when they trail a challenger early in the campaign season. Stevens is supported by just 68% of those who plan to vote for John McCain. Twenty-four percent (24%) of McCain voters say they’ll be splitting the ticket to vote for Begich.

Stevens — along with the rest of our congressional delegation — has become a majestic national embarrassment, and his miserable standing seems even to have made an impression on Alaskans, who typically regard Stevens as the state’s great official sugar daddy. I’m pessimistic enough to guess that Stevens will eventually win re-election in November, but the fact that he’s even facing a serious challenger is still really good news. In 2002, his strongest challenger was this guy, who cleared 10% of the vote:

Facts, reality, science and objective truth are avoided or ignored religiously. Like Galileo, Gen. Billy Mitchell, Andre Sakharov and Nelson Mandella before me, I and anyone else telling the truth to, or about, powerful fascist criminals within the government become political prisoners, are sent to psychiatric wards, or worse.

I voted for him, but I would have voted for a talking peanut ahead of Stevens.

In other Alaska political news, it looks like Don Young set up a special “legal fund” — separate from his campaign funds — so that potential donors would know that they weren’t contributing to any legal problems that might be looming on the horizon. Having done that, he went ahead and paid his legal bills with general campaign funds. Integritude!