newsminer.com

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Mark Begich is hoping Alaskans will realize Election Day that Ted Stevens' time in the U.S. Senate has come and gone.

The 46-year-old mayor of Anchorage with the boyish face thinks Alaskans can do better Tuesday than return a partisan politician and convicted felon to office.

"The race is about the future of this state," Begich said less than a week before the election. "His judgment has been clouded. He's been there too long."

However, Begich said he won't join the chorus calling for Stevens to resign.

"That decision needs to be made by Senator Stevens," Begich said.

Begich, who was born in Anchorage, began in politics two decades ago with a seat on the Anchorage Assembly. Now, he's challenging Stevens, who took a chance and lost that a jury would find him innocent of corruption before the election. The jury found him guilty Monday of lying on Senate disclosure forms about accepting and hiding gifts.

Will Alaska voters stand by Stevens? Or, will they send the 84-year-old senator who has spent nearly half his life representing Alaska in the U.S. Senate packing?

Even before Stevens was found guilty of trying to hide more than $250,000 in home renovations and other gifts from friend and former oil services company executive Bill Allen, polls indicated the race for the U.S. Senate was tight.

Mark Drygas, president of the 500-member Alaska Professional Firefighters Association, said he has always voted for Stevens, but is switching to Begich this time.

"Times have changed and I think Ted Stevens has changed, too," Drygas said.

However, Drygas said the association's endorsement of Begich has to do with his record on public safety, not Stevens' corruption.

"We would have endorsed Mark Begich trial or no trial," he said.

Under Begich, Anchorage has two new fire stations and others have been remodeled.

Begich was born into a political family. His father was Nick Begich, Alaska's third congressman who died in a plane crash in 1972 while running for re-election when his airplane disappeared in the Gulf of Alaska. Mark was 10 years old at the time.

After his father died, Mark Begich went to work right out of high school. He never attended college. Instead, he ran the family's 32-unit apartment building business in Anchorage. His mother, Pegge, said her son helped with the family income.

"He rode around with a trunk full of tools and did a whole lot of maintenance. His dad used to do the same thing with the apartments," Pegge Begich said.

"He got right in there and went to work, and he was very good at it. I was doing a lot of traveling at the time, so he pretty much took over."

Begich was 26 when elected to the Anchorage Assembly in 1988, and he served 10 years.

He was elected mayor in 2003 and was re-elected in 2006.

Twice during his tenure, voters have unanimously approved bond proposals for projects ranging from road construction to adding police officers to building a new civic center.

While taxes have increased, Begich said he's been able to diversify the city's economy, so less falls on the shoulders of property owners.

"I am a problem solver," Begich said. "I work across party lines."

He points out that when he became mayor the city faced a $33 million deficit, which he eliminated through a variety of means, including layoffs and freezing wages.

John Reeves, 55, of Fairbanks said he's always been a Stevens supporter but will vote for Begich.

Reeves said he's looking for honesty and ethical behavior, qualities he said have been lacking lately among Alaska's lawmakers.

"We have had a bunch of legislators that have been hauled off to the crowbar hotel and I don't think the FBI is done with those guys. I am just one of those Alaskans that are sick of it."

Not everyone feels that way. John Cherben, 62, of Anchorage, said the trial was a sham.

Why is he sticking by Stevens?

"All the money he's brought into Alaska," Cherben said.