Republican Senator Specter Announces Switch to Democratic Party
By James Rowley and Christopher Stern
April 28 (Bloomberg) -- Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, a stubbornly independent lawmaker who has long bucked the Republican Party, said he is becoming a Democrat because his former party has “shifted very far to the right.”
The addition of Specter to the Democratic caucus, if combined with the seating of Al Franken in Minnesota’s disputed Senate race, would give the party the 60 votes required to break filibusters that can stall legislation in the Senate. He is up for re-election next year and said he will run as a Democrat.
Specter, though, told a packed news conference in Washington that, “If the Democratic Party asks too much, I will not hesitate to disagree and vote my independent thinking.” The 79-year-old lawmaker said he is full of “vim, vigor and vitality.”
Specter and two other Republican senators voted for President Barack Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus measure, fueling opposition from party voters in Pennsylvania. Polls showed he faced an uphill primary fight to win renomination as a Republican for the Senate next year.
“My change in party affiliation does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the Democrats than I have been for the Republicans,” Specter said a written statement earlier today.
A 60-vote Democratic majority in the Senate would keep the Republicans from using “knee-jerk filibusters at every whim” to block legislation, said Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters today that President Barack Obama would campaign for Specter if asked. In addition, “If the president is asked to raise money for Senator Specter, we’re happy to do it,” Gibbs said.
Campaign Help
Specter, at his news conference, said Obama had promised to help him win re-election as a Democrat.
Obama was informed of Specter’s decision today during an economic briefing, said a White House official who declined to speak publicly. Obama called Specter and told the senator, according to the official, “You have my full support” and that the administration was “thrilled to have you” as a Democrat.
Republicans accused Specter of putting expedience above principle in switching parties. Texas Senator John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement that Specter’s decision “represents the height of political self-preservation.”
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Specter’s switch “sets up the potential for the majority to run roughshod over the minority” in that chamber.
Close Primary
Polls showed Specter, who first won his seat in 1980, losing the Republican primary next year to Pat Toomey, a former congressman. Specter defeated Toomey, 50.8 percent to 49.2 percent, in Pennsylvania’s 2004 Republican primary. Always popular with many Democrats in the state, Specter won the general election that year with 52.6 percent of the vote.
Originally a Democrat, Specter became a Republican to run for district attorney in Philadelphia in 1965. Specter made that political shift after concluding the local Democratic “machine wanted a DA it could control,” he wrote in his 2000 book “Passion for Truth.”
Last month, Specter said he wouldn’t switch parties. “I am staying a Republican because I have an important role, a more important role, to play there,” he told The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress. “The United States very desperately needs a two-party system.”
Republican Party Leader
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele reacted to Specter’s announcement today by saying, “Republicans look forward to beating Senator Specter in 2010, assuming the Democrats don’t do it first.”
Schumer predicted Specter would win re-election as a Democrat “by a wide margin” because “Arlen Specter is very popular in Pennsylvania.”
Schumer, a former chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said that over the last year he talked with Specter “several times” about the possibility of switching parties. “I just felt he didn’t feel at home any more” as a Republican, said Schumer.
Specter’s vote on the stimulus bill was his most recent high-profile break with Republican Senate leaders. He opposed Robert Bork’s confirmation to be a Supreme Court justice in 1988, which helped thwart the appointment. He declined to support the Republican effort to remove then-President Bill Clinton from office in 1999 in the Senate trial that followed the House’s impeachment of Clinton. Specter also supports abortion rights.
‘A Long Dialogue’
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said today he and Specter had “a long dialogue” over the years about his place in the Republican Party. He said Specter informed him of his plans yesterday and said, “Senator Specter is back where he started, as a Democrat.”
Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary Committee on which Specter is the top Republican, said, “I expect him to be as independent as ever.”
“I got the impression” that Specter “felt the Republican Party, had left him, not the other way around,” Leahy said.
To contact the reporters on this story: James Rowley in Washington at jarowley@bloomberg.net; Christopher Stern in Washington cstern3@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: April 28, 2009 15:35 EDT |
