Stevens, Theodore Fulton (1923-2010), served in the United States Senate from 1968 to 2009. Stevens, a Republican, represented Alaska. He served as president pro tempore (temporary president) of the Senate from 2003 to 2007. As president pro tempore, he ranked third in the line of presidential succession, after the vice president and the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Stevens served as Senate Republican whip (assistant leader) from 1977 to 1985.
“Ted” Stevens was born in Indianapolis on Nov. 18, 1923. He moved with his family to Redondo Beach, California, when he was 15 years old. Stevens left college in 1943, during World War II, to enlist in the Air Force and served until 1946. He then returned to the University of California at Los Angeles and graduated in 1947. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1950. Stevens practiced law in Washington, D.C., and then in Fairbanks, Alaska, until 1953, when he became the U.S. attorney for Alaska.
From 1956 to 1961, Stevens held several offices in the Department of the Interior. He then practiced law in Anchorage, Alaska, until 1964, when he won election to the Alaska House. In 1968, Governor Walter J. Hickel appointed Stevens to the U.S. Senate to succeed Edward L. Bartlett, who had died. In 1970, Stevens was elected to serve the remaining two years of Bartlett’s term. Stevens won reelection to his first full six-year term in the Senate in 1972. He was reelected every six years through 2002.
In October 2008, Stevens was convicted of seven felony counts of lying to federal prosecutors. Stevens had been accused of concealing his receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and services from a private company. In November 2008, after all the votes were tallied in a close Senate race, Stevens lost his bid for reelection to Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, a Democrat. In April 2009, a federal judge overturned Stevens’s 2008 conviction on the grounds that prosecutors had withheld key information from defense attorneys. Stevens died in a plane crash in Alaska on Aug. 9, 2010.
