Club For Growth Targets Young, Stevens With Poll

The conservative Club for Growth has set its sights a little higher for 2008.

One year after knocking off a freshman Republican from Michigan, the small-government advocacy group released a poll Thursday targeting Alaska's senior senator and lone House member - both Republicans - as symbols of profligate spending.

Calling Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young "Congress' most notorious porkers," the Club released a poll Thursday that found more than 70 percent of the the 300 likely primary voters surveyed would like to see Congress reduce spending even if that means the state gets less money.

In addition, two-thirds of those polled disapproved of the state's so-called "Bridge to Nowhere," a proposed span that was later scrubbed to connect Ketchikan with the sparsely populated island of Gravina.

And the likely voters were split on the question of whether Stevens had served in Congress too long, with 47 percent of the likely primary voters agreeing with the statement that “Ted Stevens has done some good things for Alaska, but after forty years in Washington, it’s time for a change.”

The poll - like any more sustained effort to unseat them - is not likely to sway many Alaskans, who dutifully return both lawmakers to Washington every time they have the chance. But the electorate isn't either members' primary concern.