Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) has told labor activists that he thinks they’ll be “satisfied with my vote” on the union-organizing Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
But then the ever-mysterious Specter threw in a qualifier.
Welcome to How Will Specter Vote?, episode 1,324. This episode takes place over the weekend in Pittsburgh, and is captured at the end of this video.
Here’s how the senator phrased it, after some audience participation that wasn’t exactly friendly:
“I believe that you’ll be satisfied with my vote on this issue,” Specter says. “And if you’re not, I recognize your right, in a free society, to cast your vote as you choose. But I think you will be satisfied with my vote on this issue…”
The first and last parts of this quote suggest Specter votes for EFCA. The middle part suggests he’s not sure.
Specter had said before switching parties that he would not support the hot-button bill, but he has since suggested he would be open to a compromise.
These comments might be an allusion to that conversion, and he offered plenty of evidence, including a shout-out to the importance of labor in his campaign.
“I agree with (Pennsylvania AFL-CIO head) Bill George when he says, if you want to be elected in this state, you have to come to labor,” Specter said. “I know that.”
Specter credited his reelection in 2004 to the endorsement he received from the AFL-CIO.
At that point, a member of the audience said and repeated, “You want my vote; I want yours” – an allusion to EFCA.
Specter says in response: “I understand your job’s on the line…”
Specter is then cut off by the audience, which tells him that, in fact, it’s his job that is on the line. Indeed it is, after Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) told a Pennsylvania political website that it would take “an act of God,” to keep him out of a primary against Specter.
One presumes Sestak doesn’t think President Obama is God.