The Republican-turned- Democrat has blamed a fervent anti-incumbent mood for primary defeat, writes PAUL KANE
SENATOR ARLEN Specter changed his party affiliation but didn’t change his style. He battled and battled, like he always has, until the very end.
If Democrats wanted to defeat Republican Senate nominee Patrick Toomey, he argued to voters, they’d need a fighter, one who happened to have spent the past 45 years as a Republican. In what was probably the final campaign of a storied career, the Republican-turned-Democrat eschewed the conventional wisdom of this election season – that incumbents were endangered, the electorate angry and restless, experience no longer in vogue. Instead, Specter bragged about his three decades of senatorial seniority and his ability to deliver federal dollars to his state.
“Remember Popeye, who used to say, ‘I am what I am’? I don’t think anyone could dress me in different attire. I am what I am,” Specter told reporters before the polls closed.
Specter is still what he is, but on Tuesday, Pennsylvania’s Democratic voters ended one of the most colourful national political careers of the past several decades. Specter’s gamble that Democrats would embrace him for what he was didn’t pay off, as his primary opponent, Congressman Joe Sestak, claimed momentum in the closing days of the race and never looked back.
His campaign blamed the defeat on the fervent anti-incumbent mood that is sweeping the country, in both parties, as demonstrated by the defeat this month of Utah’s three-term Republican senator Robert Bennett at his party’s nominating convention and last week’s primary defeat of veteran Democratic congressman Alan Mollohan in West Virginia.
“It’s everywhere,” Pennsylvania governor Edward G Rendell, Specter’s longtime friend and close political adviser, said after Specter’s concession speech.
Specter and his 30 years of incumbency became a “lightning rod” for voters angry about the lasting effects of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Rendell said, adding that the party switch played into voters’ distrust of career politicians.
Specter’s advisers blamed a malaise among Pennsylvania’s Democrats. But Specter loyalists may find clues to his demise in the senator’s shifting alliances.
The son of Jewish immigrants, he was raised in rural Kansas. Settling into Democratic- dominated Philadelphia, Specter bolted the Democrats in the mid-1960s so he could secure the Republican nomination to become district attorney, a post he never tired of referencing. As the moderate Republican brand slowly disappeared, he lined up with conservative Republicans to secure the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, overseeing the Bush White House’s confirmation of federal judges.
But some in the GOP didn’t trust him. The final straw with Republicans came in February 2009 when he voted for Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan, one of three Republican senators to put the legislation over the top. Toomey, whom Specter had narrowly defeated in 2004, soon entered the race for a rematch.
Specter’s support had plummeted among the party’s conservative electorate.
“A senator is supposed to be able to exercise his judgment without being excommunicated, and when I voted for the stimulus that was the end of my relationship with the Republican Party,” Specter said on Tuesday.
Facing near-certain defeat in this year’s Republican primary, Specter switched back to the Democratic Party. It was that final blurring of the lines that proved electorally fatal. Democratic voters who had spent three decades trying to defeat Specter the Republican never really warmed up to the latest Specter.
“I’ve crossed the aisle perhaps once too often. That’s a laugh line, guys,” Specter told reporters.
Specter was built for the committee room. From his tough cross-examination of law professor Anita Hill during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas to his citation of Scottish law in opposing Bill Clinton’s impeachment, Specter practised throughout his career a fierce brand of legalistic and legislative fisticuffs. He has jousted with Supreme Court justices and attorneys general, with political opponents on his right and on his left, earning the nickname “Snarlin’ Arlen” from friend and foe alike.
As the polls closed, Specter appeared at peace with whatever verdict that would come his way, suggesting that he would not do a single thing differently. “I wasn’t sent to Washington to play it safe,” he said. “I have something to show for what I’ve done.”