Everybody knows a federal grand jury is examining the relationship of Sen. Ted Stevens and Veco. Everybody knows Stevens insists he has done nothing wrong. He said so again on the front page Thursday.

Stevens insisted he paid for all the improvements Veco made to his Girdwood home under the direction of Bill Allen. The house doubled in size in the hands of the corporate chieftain.

As Alaskans, how should we react to Stevens' protests of innocence? Feel sorry for him, understanding that what happened to him with Veco could happen to anyone? At least anyone who happened to be a powerful senator who received campaign contributions from the contractor who remodeled his place?

Well, Ted Stevens doesn't wear pity well. And doesn't deserve pity now. As a realist from the hardboiled school, Stevens knows he can't blame others for the grand jury's interest in him. He has nobody to blame but himself.

Senator Theodore Fulton Stevens, courted by presidents, four-star generals and chief executive officers, the longest-serving Republican senator in the history of the country, the former chairman of the government's perpetual-motion money machine, the Senate Appropriations Committee, the lawmaker who during a period of four decades influenced every major piece of federal legislation affecting Alaska, the man whose grateful constituents showered him with encomiums and honors too numerous to catalog, including "Alaskan of the Century" -- Ted Stevens showed appalling judgment by becoming involved with Alaska's arch corrupter Bill Allen, briber of legislators.

Bill Allen's character was on public display to all long before he was arrested. You didn't have to smell sulfur to know he did the devil's work. Allen, the hardnosed former roustabout who built oil field service company Veco into one of Alaska's largest corporations, paid the largest fine in Alaska history (to that time, the mid-'80s) for illegal campaign contributions, some $28,000. More recently, through subservient lawmakers, he made state lobbying laws less restrictive via "the Bill Allen bill" -- a measure that allowed him to keep raising money for his favorite candidates and then call in his chits while lobbying in Juneau.

After Allen paid the APOC fine, he turned to showering elected officials with legal campaign contributions. In Stevens' case some $156,000 from Veco-related donors between 1989 and 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington. That's $156,000 thanks to a man who is now a self-confessed criminal headed for jail.

What did Stevens think Bill Allen expected from the recipients of his contributions? Government programs for the halt, the lame and the blind? And why did Allen become involved in remodeling Stevens' house? A Habitat for Humanity project? No, Bill Allen expected government policies that would benefit his company, his profits.

Ted Stevens has never been one to complain about the role of money in politics -- except to complain he doesn't have enough of it. And he's never been one to complain about the rich -- except to complain they have more money than he does.

He has shown close to zero interest in campaign finance reform. He has shown close to zero interest in restricting the influence of money in Washington. If he ever worried about corruption, he kept his concerns to himself.

Now Stevens is paying a price for his indifference to the interlocking system of money and political power in which he thrived for almost 40 years -- the system that brought Bill Allen to his home, just another millionaire willing to give a needy senator a helping hand.

http://www.adn.com/opinion/comment/story/9153795p-9070238c.html