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Date Posted: 15:45:06 04/30/09 Thu
Author: Cody Hill
Subject: 200,000 political party changes
In reply to: 's message, "100 days" on 20:22:52 04/29/09 Wed

Posted on Wed, Apr. 29, 2009

http://philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20090429_Specter_quits_GOP__will_run_as_Democrat.html

Specter quits GOP, will run as Democrat


By Thomas Fitzgerald

Inquirer Staff Writer

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter announced yesterday that he was leaving his longtime home in the Republican Party to become a Democrat, a stunning switch in loyalties that highlights the rightward drift of the GOP and promises to boost President Obama's agenda.

Specter, 79, cast his move as one of principle. He also said he received "bleak" poll results Friday that showed he had almost no chance of winning the Republican primary next spring against former Rep. Pat Toomey, who recently led the conservative Club for Growth.

"I am not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate, to have that record decided by that jury," Specter said in a Washington news conference.

Conservative ideologues such as Toomey, he said, "make no bones about their willingness to lose the general election if they can purify the party."

Specter said he made the decision over the weekend after talking with his family and close aides. But prominent Democrats led by Vice President Biden and Gov. Rendell had recently intensified efforts to recruit him. The White House quoted Obama yesterday as promising Specter "my full support."

Specter's famous habit of bucking the party line has irritated Republicans, particularly conservatives, for years. But his crucial February vote for Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan had inspired a new level of anger.

"As the Republican Party has moved farther and farther to the right, I have found myself increasingly at odds with the Republican philosophy and more in line with the philosophy of the Democratic Party," Specter said.

Specter said he "slept on" his decision Sunday night and informed Senate leaders of both parties Monday evening. An agreement with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) could have him headed for a key committee chairmanship.

Specter's decision shook the Capitol and gave Democrats the chance - assuming a lingering Minnesota race goes their way - to have the 60 votes needed to cut off GOP filibusters. Specter said, though, that "I will not be an automatic 60th vote."

His move also threw into sharp relief the Republican Party's political problem as its moderate ranks dwindle and it battles a popular Democratic president. GOP leaders insisted that polls show that voters value a counterweight to the majority's power.

Elected to the Senate in 1980 on Ronald Reagan's coattails, Specter will actually be moving back to his political origins.

He was elected district attorney in Philadelphia on the Republican line in 1965, though he was a registered Democrat; leaders of the city's Democratic machine at the time did not want to slate him. In 1967, Specter narrowly lost the mayor's race to Democrat James H.J. Tate. At one point, Specter was a mentor to now-Gov. Rendell, a Democrat whom he hired as a prosecutor. The two men have been close for years.

"I'm pleased, and we welcome him to the Democratic Party," Rendell said at an awards dinner at the National Constitution Center last night. "I think he's been a good senator for the people of Pennsylvania who's had to walk a fine line."

Polling aside, Rendell said Specter was shocked by the "viciousness" directed at him for supporting the stimulus plan. "He got such hate and vituperation from the far right in Pennsylvania, I think that just broke his spirit," Rendell said.

Seeking his sixth term, Specter already faced hostile political terrain. With about 200,000 voters switching their registration from Republican to Democrat in the last 15 months, the Pennsylvania GOP electorate is smaller and more conservative than in 2004. Specter's Southeastern Pennsylvania base had at least 85,000 fewer registered Republicans than in 2004, when he barely held on to the party's nomination.

Republicans yesterday cast Specter's move as the crassest of all political moves, aimed at self-preservation.

"Let's be honest: Sen. Specter didn't leave the GOP based on principles of any kind," Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said.

Toomey, who lost to Specter in the 2004 GOP primary by 17,000 votes out of more than one million cast, said the move was not surprising on one level.

"Sen. Specter has been a left-of-center politician his entire career, and now he's acknowledging that by switching back to the Democratic Party he once belonged to," Toomey said. But he called the move a "betrayal" to thousands of Republicans who had supported Specter for the more than 40 years he had been with the party.

"He was traveling the state as recently as last week saying he was going to remain a Republican," Toomey said in an interview. "The question on Pennsylvania voters' minds is going to be, How can we trust this guy?"

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