Mr. Stevens’s former aides are hardly the only Washington lobbyists to rise and fall with a single Congressional patron. Representative John D. Dingell, the powerful Michigan Democrat first elected in 1955, long sustained a coterie of lobbyists sometimes known as the Dingell Bar. They, too, are feeling the pinch at the moment from his recent loss to Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, of the gavel as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

But Mr. Stevens  Alaska’s “Uncle Ted”  is in a class by himself. For most of the last decade he was a dominant voice on both the Senate appropriations and commerce committees, which govern federal spending and business regulation. He had formed such a tight alliance with Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, a Democratic counterpart on both panels  they called each other “brother” or sometimes “co-chairman”  that their influence barely waned when one or the other party lost power.

“One of the things that made a Stevens lobbyist so valuable is that he could deliver,” said Ross K. Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers who studies the Senate. “When somebody who had his ear said something would happen, it usually happened. You could really trade on it. It was the coin of the realm.”

Mr. Stevens’s preference for one lobbyist over another was big news in industry trade publications, and he did not hesitate to exert his influence.

Image Lisa Sutherland worked for Senator Ted Stevens for more than 20 years. She left about 18 months ago to start a lobbying firm. Credit... Sam Bishop/News-Miner, via Associated Press

When his friend and former aide Mitch Rose was angling for a job as president of the National Association of Broadcasters three years ago  one of the loftiest perches on K Street, which had paid its previous occupant more than $1 million a year  Mr. Stevens and his staff all but threatened to shut out any other hires. “Regardless of what the N.A.B. does or doesn’t do, Senator Stevens’s go-to guy on broadcasting issues will still be Mitch Rose,” a top Stevens aide, Lisa Sutherland, told the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, warning that Mr. Rose’s rival “starts with a serious handicap, not knowing the issues and not knowing the people.”

When the group passed over Mr. Rose nonetheless, Mr. Stevens toasted his protégé to a room of communications industry lobbyists at a start-up party for his new one-man lobbying shop. Bolstered by the endorsement, Mr. Rose reaped more than $1.2 million in lobbying fees over the next nine months, according to his filings.