Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch parties and run for reelection next November as a Democrat, he announced today, a decision that could have wide-ranging consequences for the Senate and President Obama's agenda.
Specter told reporters that he received a "bleak" poll Friday from his advisers that showed virtually no chance of him winning in the GOP primary next spring against Pat Toomey, a former Republican House member who recently led the conservative Club for Growth.
He said that the loss of several hundred thousand GOP voters, who left the party in 2008 to vote for their favored candidate in the intense Democratic presidential primary between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, left the Pennsylvania Republican Party too conservative to support a moderate such as him. "I have found myself increasingly at odds with the Republican Party," Specter said.
After more than 28 years in the Senate, Specter acknowledged he was "not prepared to have that record" obliterated by the conservative primary electorate. He reached the decision over the weekend in consultation with his family and top aides, many of whom are staying with him despite his party switch.
He said informed Republican and Democratic Senate leaders around dinnertime last night.
The move brings Democrats to 59 seats in the Senate, just one shy of the 60 they need to exert filibuster-proof control over the chamber. In Minnesota, Democrat Al Franken holds a 312-vote lead over former senator Norm Coleman (R), but Coleman has appealed the result to the state Supreme Court. Oral arguments in the case are expected to begin in June.
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