Sen. Specter viewed as a model Democrat one year after switch

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) says he feels fully comfortable
with his new party since leaving the GOP almost a year ago.

And, facing a challenge from the left in the May Democratic
primary, Specter seems every bit the reliable foot soldier.

{mosads}He’s become a leading advocate for organized labor within
the Senate Democratic Conference and has developed close working relationships
with some of the party’s most influential leaders.

“My colleagues on the Democratic side have been very
receptive,” Specter said in an interview.

“They were glad to see me buck the Republican obstructionism
and provide key support on the stimulus and the 60th vote on healthcare
reform,” he said.

When he was a Republican, Specter gave GOP leaders and the
conservative base fits with his independent stands, such as not voting to
convict former President Bill Clinton during Senate impeachment proceedings.

Despite vowing independence when he switched parties on
April 28 of last year, Specter has become a model Democratic
senator.

During Specter’s 29-year career as a Senate Republican, he
voted with Democrats 35 percent of the time. Since switching parties in 2009,
he has cast more than 95 out of 100 votes with Democratic leaders.

Specter said his political outlook became “irreconcilable”
with the GOP when most of his Republican colleagues refused to support economic
stimulus legislation that he says “saved the country from a 1929 depression.”

When an estimated 210,000 Pennsylvania Republicans switched
their party registration to Democrat during the 2008 presidential campaign,
Specter realized he couldn’t win this year’s GOP primary.

“On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my
29-year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary
electorate,” Specter told reporters last year. “I have not represented the
Republican Party. I have represented the people of Pennsylvania.”

Specter said Friday that his Republican colleagues have
understood and accepted the reasons for his shift.

He’s not heard a word of criticism from them in private and
still has “easy conversations” with Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Jeff Sessions
(R-Ala.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in the Senate gym early in the morning.

“It’s very congenial,” he said.

Specter said he considers Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and
Susan Collins and Ohio Sen. George Voinovich (Ohio) his closest friends on the
Republican side of the aisle.

Among Democrats, he counts Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and
Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), with whom he has served for years on the Senate Judiciary
and Appropriations committees, his closest partners.

In recent months, Specter said he has begun working closely
with Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.),
the No. 3 member of the Senate Democratic leadership.

He also considers Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), a longtime
Senate aide, as someone who has been “a friend for years.”

Specter gave Democrats control of 59 seats — which later
became 60 when Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) was declared the winner of his contested
race. This would prove decisive in passing healthcare reform.

In return, Specter asked for President Barack Obama, Vice
President Joe Biden and other Democratic leaders to support his reelection.

Obama has already attended a fundraiser for Specter in
Philadelphia and Biden has raised money for him in Pittsburgh.

Specter considers giving Democrats the 60th vote on
healthcare reform his greatest achievement since joining the party.

Behind the scenes, he has become a leading advocate for
labor legislation that would make it easier for workers to organize, a high
priority of unions.

“He’s a very effective negotiator,” said Bill Samuel,
legislative director of the AFL-CIO. “He played a very helpful role, as I
understand it, in the internal conversations of the Democratic caucus on the
Employee Free Choice Act and helped move it forward with a number of moderates.”

Specter’s work earned him the endorsement of the
Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, a valuable imprimatur in Democratic primaries. He won the
endorsement with 79 percent of the union’s vote, which aides points to as a
sign that he is winning acceptance among the Democratic rank and file. The
union was a key backer for Specter during his 2004 reelection campaign, when he
was still a Republican.

The rest of the Democratic establishment in Pennsylvania,
including Gov. Ed Rendell, is supporting Specter.

More than 300 Democratic state party officials, including
Reps. Chaka Fattah and Tim Holden, former Reps. Ron Klink and Frank Mascara
and state party chairman T.J. Rooney, have endorsed Specter’s campaign.

“I visited all 67 Democratic organizations through the
state,” said Specter, who turned 80 years old last month.

Seventy-seven percent of the Pennsylvania Democratic
Committee voted to endorse Specter, 10 points more than the two-thirds support
he needed to win backing.

Sixty-seven percent of Democrats reported a favorable
opinion of Specter, compared to 18 percent who rated him unfavorably, in a
recent Quinnipiac University poll.

His Democratic primary opponent, Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.),
was rated favorably by 23 percent of Democrats. Seventy-three percent said they
had not heard enough about him to form an opinion.

But Dan Hirschhorn, editor of pa2010.com, a website that
tracks Pennsylvania politics, said: “A lot of people are counting out Sestak
way too early.” The primary is May 18.

Democratic strategists say that Specter became a more
reliable vote for the party after Sestak announced his challenge.

Sestak’s spokesman charged that Specter embraced Obama’s agenda
only out of political convenience.

“It’s pretty clear that Specter was moved by Sestak’s
intention of getting in the race,” said Sestak spokesman Jonathon Dworkin.
“Before Sestak said he was challenging him, Specter came out against the public
option.”

When he switched parties, Specter announced that he
would not change his position against advancing the Employee Free Choice Act.
He has since negotiated to produce a compromise but is seen by labor sources as
much more supportive of the legislation.

Chris Nicholas, Specter’s campaign manager, shot back by
accusing Sestak’s campaign of first accusing “Specter for not being Democratic
enough; now they’re accusing him for being too Democratic.”

Nicholas said that Specter has supported Democrats on
important issues such as the stimulus and healthcare reform and maintained his
independence on other issues. He noted that Specter split with Obama over the
decision to send additional troops to Afghanistan.

Still, Specter has become more of an ardent Democrat than
many colleagues expected when he announced his party switch last year.

“I will not be an automatic 60th vote for cloture,” Specter
declared on April 28 of last year.

Some political observers chuckle over that statement a year
later.

“He’s more of an Obama Democrat than Obama,” said Dr. G.
Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics & Public Affairs at
Franklin & Marshall College.