Adam Schwartzbaum's Blog
Adam Schwartzbaum's Blog
The In-Specter
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For Specter, hypocrisy on missing votes?
We’ve all heard the daily canard from Arlen Specter about Joe Sestak’s missed votes in the House. Sestak has been absent quite a bit attending to the needs of his campaign, and Specter has made much political hay over it. Just last month, Specter was on TV saying of Sestak: “He’s missed 105 votes; worst record of any Pennsylvania member of the House of Representatives. He’s AWOL, been absent without leave. If he were still in the Navy, he would be court-martialed. Now he wants to be promoted. How can you be promoted with a voting record like that?”
Those are some harsh words coming from Specter—suggesting your opponent be metaphorically court-martialed is a pretty strong assault on his character.
But is Specter guilty of throwing stones in a glass house?
Today at 3 p.m., the entire Senate will be shutting down early per Harry Reid’s orders to allow time for Arlen and pals to attend a long-awaited fundraiser here in Philadelphia. [Full disclosure: I was invited to attend this event with a group of young professionals and declined to make the $100 contribution.]
You heard it right: Arlen Specter got the Senate leadership to actually shut down the Senate so as not to interfere with his fundraiser.
Specter has every right to criticize Sestak for missing votes, but when you’re closing down an entire branch of the U.S. government to raise money for your own political campaign, it hardly seems fair to cry foul.
September 15, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Tags: Arlen Specter, Joe Sestak
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Bio: Adam Schwartzbaum is a law student at the University of Pennsylvania who has worked on various Democratic campaigns.
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jmarks89
Sep 15th, 2009
I’m really surprised Sestak is actually talking about missed votes – not a very flattering topic for him.
Sestak has missed 108 votes in this year alone. 108 times he didn’t show up to work. To put that in perspective, that is the worst attendance record of all of Pennsylvania, and 10th worst in the entire country! That means Joe’s skipped more votes than 425 other Congressmen and women.
Jack
Sep 15th, 2009
I’m really surprised jmarks89 posted the same Specter campaign talking points on the Patriot News article on the same topic.
WESTPADEM6
Sep 15th, 2009
I agree jmarks89, it seems okay to Sestak and his cheerleaders to be able to miss at leisure, but then to try and say that it is “unacceptable” for Democratic Senate leader Reid to let the Senate out a little early at 3pm.
Tip to Joe: When you have excellent attendance, you can get an hour or two off every once and a while. Its like those Ponderosa free meal certificates you used to get in grade school for perfect/ exceptional attendance.
Whereas, Sestak would have to repeat the same grade over because he failed to show up enough days.
WESTPADEM6
Sep 15th, 2009
Jack,
You were hard on Diano… did you fellas patch things up?
David Diano
Sep 16th, 2009
BTW, in case anyone else is about to put their head up their @ss…
Sestak missed yesterday’s Joe Wilson vote to attend a service for his father that died recently. Sestak is showing up in the news reports as a “no-vote”, without explanation, which looks odd after Sestak just criticized Specter about voting.
Tim McNulty of the Post-Gazette hit Sestak for missing the Wilson vote. In what will probably shock the Sestak fans (and my anti-Sestak fans), I figured out Tim’s email address, contacted him, and “colorfully suggested” he retract his story (which he did).