Former Senator Ted Stevens is dead, the victim of an August plane crash. Yet there he is on TV, enthusiastically endorsing defeated Republican Senator Lisa Murchowski as she runs as a write-in candidate against Joe Miller, the man who beat her in the primary for the GOP nomination.

I don’t care that Ted Stevens taped an endorsement of Murchowski’s primary candidacy before he died, and it doesn’t matter that Stevens’ family approved the use of the zombie endorsement now. Murchowski’s use of the video is doubly unethical. It is misleading and dishonest, because it implies that Stevens endorsed the Senator for her write-in campaign…impossible, because he died before she lost the primary. It is also unfair and disrespectful to Stevens, manipulating an endorsement he agreed to do at a specific time for a specific election under circumstances known to him. into being an endorsement of a different campaign, at a different time, under different circumstances that he never learned about or had a chance to weigh or consider. Stevens has not endorsed Murchowski’s write-in campaign, because he didn’t live long enough to know about it.He could not consent to this use of his endorsement beyond the purpose for which he agreed to make it, because he isn’t alive.

It is also highly questionable whether Ted Stevens would have endorsed any write-in campaign against the Alaska Republican Party’s nominee. Stevens was a loyal Republican his entire career, and an old school loyalist who believed in doing what was in his party’s best interests. His family cannot and should not decide what Stevens would have done if he were alive, much less make it seem to voters as if he has done it.

Approving the misleading use of Steven’s earlier endorsement was terrible judgment by his family, and requesting the approval  shows Murchowski’s appalling lack of integrity, honesty and fairness. Worse, it shows her willingness to exploit the trust of a dead friend and political ally, turning his preserved image into her zombie spokesman for personal gain. This is a betrayal. There is no other good word for it, except, perhaps, the word is shameless.