Stevens plans creative strategy to keep campaign during trial

Sen. Ted Stevens will spend October trying to convince Alaska voters that he deserves another term in office while defending himself in Washington against federal charges that he knowingly concealed gifts from a now-defunct oil services company.

Stevens (R), who has pleaded not guilty to all the charges, is not waiting for the verdict to rev up his campaign.

{mosads}As federal prosecutors begin to make their case against Stevens, his campaign team is assembling a broad grassroots effort marked by yard signs and bumper stickers to show visible displays of support for the senator. They are planning a series of advertisements that highlight his record of “delivering” to the state during his four-decade career in the Senate, according to a campaign aide.

The trial is scheduled to end daily at 5:30 p.m. in Washington — that’s 1:30 p.m. Alaska time. Stevens’s team is exploring ways to get its message in the next day’s news cycle in his state.

That could include, according to the aide, video conferencing and teleconferencing so he can interact with constituents and voters from 3,500 miles away.

And Stevens’s team is reviewing requests to hold debates with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich (D) via satellite. Begich, who holds a narrow lead over Stevens, has already agreed to participate in seven debates.

But much of the strategy — including whether Stevens will attempt to fly 10 hours home on the weekends to campaign — will depend on how the trial unfolds and whether the 84-year-old Stevens will be consumed with his defense.

The emerging strategy came as Stevens made an appearance Monday in federal court for the first time since his arraignment on July 31. Lawyers from both sides are narrowing down a list of more than 150 prospective jurors as they prepare for opening arguments, which are expected to begin Wednesday.

On Monday, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia announced that a list of more than 200 potential witnesses includes Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), who is Stevens’s closest friend in the Senate. The senior senators likely would testify on Stevens’s behalf, including possibly discussing the likelihood for making errors on financial disclosure forms.

In addition, witnesses might include former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Alaska Gov. Bill Sheffield and Bob Penney, a powerful political operative in Alaska and a longtime friend of Stevens’s. Stevens, his son Walter and his wife Catherine also may take the stand.

Stevens’s attorneys also are considering calling up witnesses who could discredit the government’s star witness, Bill Allen, by bringing up an accusation from the 1990s that the former Veco Corp. executive had sex with an underage girl. Allen has already pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy and gave critical testimony against two Alaska state legislators in a wide-ranging corruption case in the state.

After the first three weeks of the trial, Stevens’s team will have just one week to make its case. GOP operatives in the state hope that the campaign can turn that final week into fresh momentum for the fall campaign, which they say will be buoyed if he has either all or most of the charges against him dismissed. If only a couple of charges stick, Republicans hope that they can convince the Alaska public that the government spent millions of dollars and only pinned a paperwork violation on the senator.

If he’s convicted of most of the counts, however, his chances for winning a seventh full term will be seriously diminished.

“Anchorage is blanketed with signs — he’s got all kinds of support,” said Carl Shepro, a professor of political science at the University of Alaska-Anchorage. “It’s going to take a conviction” to change that support.

Stevens, a legendary figure in the state who has served in the Senate for 40 years and funneled billions of dollars back home, has pleaded not guilty to seven counts of felony that he knowingly kept the gifts off of his Senate financial disclosure forms. While he’s not charged with trading legislative action for gifts, the government plans to present evidence that he performed actions on Capitol Hill that could have benefited Veco in an attempt to show motive for keeping the gifts off his disclosure forms.

Begich’s campaign disputes assertions that the outcome of Stevens’s race will hinge on the outcome of the case.

“If he were acquitted, we don’t think he would automatically win,” said Julie Hasquet, a Begich spokeswoman.

Over the next several weeks, Stevens will be hit by negative campaigning from outside groups, including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which unleashed an ad last week accusing Stevens of using his power in the Senate to benefit himself.

But Stevens is benefiting from some outside advertising as well, including from John Binkley, a former GOP gubernatorial candidate in Alaska who credits Stevens for helping push through a natural gas pipeline in the state. The government plans to point to the pipeline as one of Stevens’s efforts to benefit Veco, a motivation it says was meant to keep the gifts off his financial disclosure forms.