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A day—and a decision—that transformed the political landscape

When the sun rose Tuesday morning, all was well. The Democratic Senate primary was a snoozer. Everyone was talking about President Obama’s hundred days. And Arlen Specter was the state’s Republican senior Senator, a reliable GOP vote even if he ticked off the conservative base from time to time.

What a difference a day makes.

Specter’s decision yesterday to leave the Republican Party after more than 40 years and seek reelection as a Democrat was a game changer in every sense of the word. It shook the political world, from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia to Harrisburg and Washington. It reverberated across the blogosphere and echoed on cable news, prompting at least one cable host to notice that Specter had amazingly bumped the president’s first 100 days down the news cycle.

And by the end, Specter seemed to have offered a lesson in political survival, the kind of lesson that still surprises people even though he’s done it before. In the process, all conventional wisdom was turned on its head.

“This decision unsettles the politics of the state in ways that few political decisions in modern history have,” said G. Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College.

The speed at which events transpired was stunning, even in today’s 24-hour news cycle. Word started to spread late morning, with The Washington Post apparently getting the scoop. Within minutes, the phone lines at Specter’s campaign office were busy, surely tied up by reporters calling from across the country.

By early afternoon, Specter was on TV, denouncing the party to which he had belonged for decades, going so far as to finger the voters who had turned on him.

“I am not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate, not prepared to have that record decided by that jury.”

In case anyone missed it, he quickly repeated the target of his scorn: “The Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.”

Within hours, state Representative Josh Shapiro (D-Montgomery) said he wouldn’t run in the primary. And soon enough, Gov. Ed Rendell had moved the state’s Democratic Party apparatus behind Specter, his old boss from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office. All the while, political insiders were frantically working the phones, calling friend and foe alike to figure out just what the heck was going on.

By the time he spoke to reporters on a late-afternoon conference call, Specter, clearly enjoying the limelight, was boasting of impending endorsements from Rendell, Obama and the party’s Congressional delegation.

His foes cried political opportunism, and in his own politically savvy way, Specter didn’t deny the charge. He talked about the polling he had done and the realization of how “bleak” his political situation had become. Even as he lambasted what he called the GOP’s narrowly conservative ideology, rarely, if ever, did he imply the decision was guided by anything but politics.

How could he?

“This was a political calculation, pure and simple,” Madonna said.

His like-minded moderate allies, meanwhile, couldn’t help but be happy for him.

“I would hope that he’ll do whatever he damn well pleases now,” said Elliot Curson, a longtime Republican ad man who worked on Specter’s first campaign for the Senate in 1976. “He’s even more of a pivotal vote now.”

Specter had repeatedly said he wouldn’t change parties, and to hear the Senator tell it, his decision was a relatively quick one. His campaign finished compiling and analyzing poll data late last week, and presumably saw numbers as troubling as those in numerous independent polls. Gauging support throughout the state, he said, the hopelessness of a Republican primary became clear. Rendell, Vice President Joe Biden and others had already spent years encouraging him to make the switch.

Specter told reporters he spoke with his family last weekend, slept on the decision Sunday night, and told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday.

He called Rendell and Obama Tuesday morning, and the circus was on.

For Specter, it was a journey come full circle. With voter registration closed until after next month’s primary, he’s still technically a Republican. But when he does switch, it will come 44 years after he ran for Philadelphia District Attorney as a Republican—even though he was a registered Democrat. Only after winning the election did he register as a Republican, embarking on a decades-long quest to bring GOP politics back to Philadelphia, a drive he’s often the first to admit has failed miserably.

“He’s chosen to write his last electoral chapter the way he began,” Republican political consultant Charlie Gerow said.

Now, he’s back and, at 79, presumably to stay. Win or lose next year, the first round of verdicts on his latest political calibration have largely been raving. In a moment not lacking in irony, MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews, who had been considering a Democratic run against Specter himself, seemed to call the race Tuesday evening.

“Didn’t he just win reelection today?” Matthews asked on Hardball.

The victory talk is premature, but the political skill it took to instantly line up the support of a party he had spent much of his life opposing was formidable, if not unexpected. The political chaos he leaves in his wake, however, is more complex.

Surely more Republicans will now oppose Pat Toomey for the Republican nomination, feeling license to enter a race that before had too many big personalities to yield any more spotlight. Either way, Toomey has lost in Specter his political foil and his lightning rod for support.

At the national level, Republicans spent Tuesday struggling to explain why Specter’s departure wasn’t their fault, with some saying it didn’t matter anyway. Descriptions of him as a “lefty liberal,” already common before his defection, proliferated on cable news.

And if Democrat Joe Torsella, a Rendell protégé, stays in the primary field as he has vowed, the risk of an intraparty split is real. Congressman Joe Sestak (D-7) could add fuel to that fire if he jumps in.

But for now, Specter can bask in attention and praise more glowing than he’s received in years. Even before his formal announcement at the afternoon press conference, after word of his decision had leaked out, he entered one event to hearty cheers of support. His banter throughout the day seemed unusually cheerful.

And on the conference call with reporters, after an aide to wrap things up for a second time, Specter was having none of it.

“Wait a minute,” he insisted. “Daily News is the last one.”

For now.

April 28, 2009 at 11:17 pm

--Dan Hirschhorn

Tags: Arlen Specter, Ed Rendell, Joe Sestak, Joe Torsella, Josh Shapiro, Pat Toomey

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