In 1972, Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens was up for reelection. He was concerned that if Nick Begich, Alaska’s lone member of the U.S. House of Representatives who also was up for reelection that year, did not have an opponent Begich, a stalwart partisan Democrat, would spend his time trying to orchestrate Ted’s defeat. But Ted had no luck finding a Republican willing to be a candidate in an election he knew he would lose — until he asked Don Young.
After an undistinguished six-year career in the Alaska Legislature, Don had decided to retire from politics. So he agreed to do Ted the requested favor. And in the November election, he was beaten by 12,000 votes by a dead man since three weeks before the election the plane in which Begich had been flying from Anchorage to Juneau disappeared.
But four months later, in the special election held to fill the vacancy Begich’s death had created, Don was narrowly elected. Over the next 49 years, he would be reelected twenty-four more times. And by his death in 2022, the “Congressman for All Alaska” — as Don Young advertised himself — was the dean (most senior member) of the U.S. House of Representatives.
But what now is forgotten is that from 1973 to 1995, Don Young was a backbench legislator whose bills were reported, and whose amendments to bills were adopted, by the committees on which he served only if the Democrats who controlled those committees wanted them reported or adopted.
That changed in 1995 when, for the first time in forty years, Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. As a consequence of his seniority, Don became chairman of the Natural Resources Committee. When he termed out as chairman of that committee in 2001, Don became chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. After that, from 2007 until his death in 2022, Republicans controlled the House during eight of those sixteen years.
By contrast, Mary Peltola, who in 2022 was elected to succeed Don and who would serve only a single term, was a freshman Democrat in a U.S. House of Representatives that Republicans controlled.
During the election last November that she lost to Republican Nick Begich III, as her principal accomplishments then-Rep. Peltola touted persuading the Biden White House to approve the Willow oil development project and persuading the Federal Trade Commission to oppose the Kroger-Albertsons supermarket merger. But even if true — and both are a stretch — neither of those accomplishments had anything to do with being a member of Congress.
More tellingly, during her one term, Peltola introduced 23 bills. Twenty died without a hearing. The three bills that obtained a hearing all involved amendments to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. And it was ANCSA corporation lobbyists who were instrumental in persuading Rep. Bruce Westerman, the Republican chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, to hold those hearings. So Rep. Peltola’s only actual accomplishment was to be a dependable vote for Rep. Hakeem Jefferies, the Democratic minority leader, on bills of national importance, most of which did not directly affect Alaska.
Since Republicans control the new Congress and he is a Republican, Nick Begich III will have more influence than the none-at-all his predecessor had. But not all that much more. That will be the situation for years to come as (if he is reelected) Rep. Begich slowly gains seniority as Don Young did. And during future Congresses that Democrats inevitably will control, Rep. Begich will have the same no-influence that Rep. Peltola had.
Which is why if Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski runs for a fifth term in 2028, MAGA Republicans — who have had no use for her since 2002, when her father gave her his seat in the Senate, in 2021 she voted to impeach Donald Trump, and most recently she voted against the confirmation of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense — need to set aside their antipathy and join with the rest of us in voting for her.
Because Lisa is now the third most senior Republican member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and when Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell retires at the end of 2026, she will be the second most senior Republican member. And today Lisa is chair of the committee’s Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies subcommittee, and a senior member of the committee’s Defense and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs subcommittees.
Don Young never served on the House Appropriations Committee. But in 1973, the year Don was elected to the House, Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens arranged to be appointed to the Senate Appropriations Committee. From that position, Ted began making flow into Alaska the billions of federal dollars on which the state has never stopped depending.
In 1997, when he became chair of the committee, that flow became a torrent. Ted Stevens became “Uncle Ted,” the mega-rich relation who handed out federal money for any reason or no reason. All an Alaskan had to do was ask. As I did in 2002 when, after I made a less than five-minute presentation of the project, Ted gave one of my clients $8.5 million to build a ferry.
The days of federal money just for the asking are over. But in 2009, when Ted Stevens left the Senate, Lisa arranged to inherit his seat on the Appropriations Committee. So the flow of federal dollars on which the Alaska economy depends continued.
Today, Lisa’s website contains a portal that enables any Alaskan who wishes to do so to submit a funding request for Lisa to include in one of the FY 2026 appropriations bills.
It is instructive that before Ted Stevens became chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Oregon Republican Sen. Mark Hatfield was the chairman. During his chairmanship he spread federal money throughout Oregon just as Ted would throughout Alaska. But in 1996 Mark Hatfield retired. In his absence, no Oregon senator or member of the House had a seat on the Senate or House Appropriations committees. The consequence was as if the great hand of god had come down from on high, turned off the spigot, and the flow of federal dollars that Oregonians had come to consider their due instantaneously became a trickle.
That is an outcome that even a MAGA Republican who has no use for Alaska’s senior senator should want to avoid.
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