Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens conceded the senate race Wednesday to Democrat Mark Begich, the mayor of Anchorage, who made a dramatic comeback Tuesday defeating the seven-term Republican by more than 3,000 votes.
Stevens acknowledged that the 2,500 remaining absentee ballots that still need to be counted won’t help him catch up to Begich.
“Given the number of ballots that remain to be counted, it is apparent the election has been decided and Mayor Begich has been elected,” Stevens said in a statement. “”I wish Mayor Begich and his family well. My staff and I stand willing to help him prepare for his new position.”
Begich’s campaign began raising money for the possibility of a recount, which they believed was certain even with a Begich victory.
In an e-mail sent to supporters last week, Begich campaign manager Heather Rauch said, “we expect that this will be a very close race and there will be a recount.”
“We are starting to prepare for this scenario, and will really need your support to make sure every vote is counted fairly,” Rauch’s e-mail said.
Alaska election law says the losing candidate or a consortium of 10 registered voters can petition the Division of Elections for a state-funded recount if the election is won by .5% of the total votes cast.
Stevens’s campaign also solicited donations from supporters for a recount effort. However, Stevens was advised Wednesday by his aides that a recount would be futile since Alaska uses machines to count ballots, erasing any chance that results would be altered. Last week, Sevens’s campaign said it intended to demand a recount when the final results were tallied.
Stevens held a razor-thin lead against Begich in the days following the Nov. 4, election. The election results led some Alaskans to suggest the race was stolen based on some pre-election polls that showed Begich leading Stevens by double-digits going into Tuesday’s election.
But the Alaska Division of Elections explained that more than 80,000 absentee ballots still had to be counted, many of which were from parts of the state that backed Begich. They began the process last week, counting more than 50,000 ballots and counted 24,000 ballots Tuesday afternoon.
Begich’s surpassed Stevens by a little more than 200 votes when the first batch of absentee and questioned ballots were counted. On Friday, he widened his lead to 1,022 votes and on Tuesday, after the remaining absentee and questioned ballots were counted, Begich won the contest by 3,724 votes out of more than 315,000 ballots cast. Begich received 150,728 to Stevens’s 147,004 vote tally.
Stevens, the longest serving Republican in the U.S. Senate, lost the election on his 85th birthday. The results of the race were announced exactly two weeks after Election Day.
For Stevens, the loss marked a dramatic end to a four-decade political career.
Stevens was convicted by a Washington, D.C. jury last month of seven felony counts of making false statements on Senate financial disclosure forms related to $250,000 in gifts he received from oil-field services company Veco Corp. and the company’s former Chief Executive Bill Allen.
Begich is the first Democrat from the state of Alaska elected to the U.S. Senate since the 1970s. His victory leaves Democrats just two seats shy of a 60-vote filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate. There are still two undecided races in Minnesota and Georgia.
In a statement Tuesday, Begich said he is “It’s been an incredible journey getting to this point, and I appreciate the support and commitment of the thousands of Alaskans who have brought us to this day. I can’t wait to get to work fighting for Alaskan families.”
