Mr. Specter acknowledged in an interview even before the Massachusetts election that the national mood could work against him. But he also expressed enormous confidence in his ability to survive. Other Democrats who are retiring, he said, are doing so out of fear of losing — they had not actually been beaten but were merely discouraged.
“I am not discouraged,” he declared.
Polls show Mr. Toomey either in a dead heat with Mr. Specter or somewhat ahead, although at this point neither Democrat is making a case against Mr. Toomey since they are focused on each other.
Mr. Sestak, a retired Navy Admiral, clearly faces an uphill fight against Mr. Specter, a fixture in state politics for four decades. Mr. Sestak was behind by 23 percentage points in a Quinnipiac University poll last month and he had raised only half the money that Mr. Specter had.
In addition, Mr. Specter is backed by the Democratic establishment, including President Obama, Gov. Edward G. Rendell and the party apparatus, though that may not be a big advantage with voters this year, given the signs of an anti-incumbent mood. But it could help Mr. Specter in his first test of intramural strength, which comes Feb. 6, when the roughly 400 members of the state Democratic committee are to make an endorsement.
T. J. Rooney, the state Democratic chairman, said in an interview that he expected Mr. Specter to win the endorsement. He said Mr. Specter would have a better chance than Mr. Sestak of holding the seat in November because he had a stronger campaign infrastructure and would be “more true to our base.”
Mr. Rooney also said that despite Mr. Specter’s 30 years in the Senate, “he has a better ability to run as an anti-incumbent” because he had voted against his own party, whichever one, many times. Mr. Sestak almost welcomed Mr. Rooney’s comments, saying, “The party boss doesn’t recognize what an albatross an Arlen Specter candidacy is.” On the campaign trail, he has hammered Mr. Specter as a creature of the establishment and a political opportunist with no core principles.
Mr. Obama, Mr. Sestak told voters here, “needs allies who aren’t going to be a flight risk after this primary.”
As a Democrat, Mr. Specter has been maneuvering himself to the left.
When he was a Republican, he had an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, but as a Democrat he voted last year against the powerful gun lobby on a measure it backed to allow concealed weapons to be carried across state lines.
He also first opposed and then supported the so-called card-check legislation, an important provision for labor unions that would make it easier for them to organize.
And he has staked out the liberal, antiwar position on Afghanistan, opposing Mr. Obama’s troop surge. Mr. Specter, who visited the war-torn region over the holidays, said in the interview that the war did not appear winnable and that he doubted whether it was worth the cost in cash and casualties.
Mr. Specter said his antiwar position was “not part of a political matrix,” though analysts see it as a calculated move to try to fire up the party’s liberal base.
“Specter’s calculation is that the angry left wing is the one that will show up,” said Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University specialist on wartime public opinion and a former adviser to President George W. Bush.
Despite being to the left of Mr. Specter on many issues, Mr. Sestak supports the Afghanistan troop surge. How much this matters to voters remains to be seen. At a town-hall-style meeting here, Randy Sklar, 57, a retired mortgage broker, asked Mr. Sestak if the surge was worth the cost and would make the United States safer.
Mr. Sestak gave a rambling response, which Mr. Sklar described after the meeting as “incoherent.” Nonetheless, he is supporting Mr. Sestak even though Mr. Specter better reflects his view on the war.
Why? “Because Arlen Specter is a hypocrite,” Mr. Sklar said, reflecting a sense that in this race, Mr. Specter himself is the issue.
Even as Mr. Specter tries to appeal to the left, he is also trying to win over conservative Democrats — especially the state’s powerful A.F.L.-C.I.O.
“This thing is not locked up,” said Bill George, the union’s longtime leader. He said that last year, when Mr. Specter opposed the card-check legislation, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. probably would have endorsed Mr. Sestak.
Now, he said, views are “gradually changing” because Mr. Specter is “working so hard” for labor’s support.
He also has to be careful not to alienate Democratic women, who support him for his backing of abortion rights despite what they view as his demeaning treatment of Anita Hill two decades ago during Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. The matter arose last week when Mr. Specter told Representative Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota conservative, to “act like a lady” during a radio debate.
She had interrupted him several times and he had lost his patience. He later called her to apologize.
Mr. Specter has based his campaign on his longtime experience and judgment, his service to constituents and his ability to bring federal money back to the state. But mainly he casts himself as an independent who acts according to his conscience, even if he does not make everyone happy.
“People have picked on me for a long time, from the single-bullet theory to when I was bald,” he said. The first reference was to his work as a young staffer on the Warren Commission, which concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy; the second was to his loss of hair after surgery to remove a brain tumor in 1996 (he has also undergone heart bypass surgery and has had two bouts of Hodgkin’s disease).
“I don’t pay attention to them,” Mr. Specter said of his critics. “I just go about my merry way, and so far, I’ve always managed to get 51 percent.” |
