Arlen Specter Abandoned by Obama, Imploding In Pa. Senate Race

Thursday, 13 May 2010 07:34 PM
By: John Mercurio

In his increasingly uphill bid for reelection, Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Penn., can’t seem to catch a break. He’s a five-term incumbent during a time of fierce anti-establishment sentiment. He’s running as a Democrat, for the first time in four decades, in a year when the party is on the defensive.

And less than one week before a tightening Democratic primary, the White House announced that President Obama will not travel to Pennsylvania to campaign for him. If that wasn’t bad enough, Specter also must maneuver carefully around Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, whom he opposed for solicitor general last year. As his primary challenger, Rep. Joe Sestak, reminds Democrats, Specter’s 2009 vote is one on a long list of party-line votes he cast as a Republican.

New polls show Specter’s once formidable lead in next Tuesday’s primary has vanished. Despite a sizable financial advantage, the 80-year-old senator now is locked in a dead heat with Sestak, 58, a retired three-star Navy admiral who ousted a ten-term Republican in 2006 in the moderate Philadelphia suburbs and then won re-election by 20 points.

Specter started the race last year as a formidable frontrunner. He lined up key support from the White House, organized labor and Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, who predicted that if Sestak ran “he would get killedâ€