Republican former U.S. senator endorses Sestak

Republican former Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska crossed party lines Tuesday to endorse Rep. Joe Sestak in the U.S. Senate race, saying that the Democratic nominee's independence made him an ideal leader for a government that must move beyond partisanship.

"I have never met a public servant so committed to making a better world than Joe Sestak," Hagel said during an event at Philadelphia's Washington Square before the Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier.

Sestak is the kind of leader "not afraid to take on past assumptions and the status quo, not afraid to take on party when that is required," Hagel said.

It was the second prominent cross-party endorsement that Sestak's campaign has rolled out over the last week, aiming to project an image of independence at a time when polls show voters annoyed with both major political parties. Last week, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a former Republican, campaigned for Sestak in Philadelphia.

Sestak said Hagel was the person he most admired in Congress; both men recounted a trip they had taken together to Iraq not long after Sestak, a former Navy admiral, first won election to the House in 2006.

Although the issues before the country are knotty, "I think there's a pragmatic way to approach them," Sestak said, to an appreciative crowd of about 50 people. He said it was time for "civility ... to reach across the aisle."

"Are we going to do it? You bet we are," Sestak said.

As Hagel was extolling Sestak, about a half-dozen supporters of his opponent, Republican Pat Toomey, edged into view behind the soldiers' monument, holding signs mocking Sestak's record of voting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and his endorsement by the liberal group MoveOn.org. Sestak supporters tried to block them from the view of TV cameras with a large banner.

Toomey's campaign said in a statement that it was laughable for Sestak to portray himself as independent with a record of "voting down the line" for Democratic policies in Washington.

Several recent polls have shown Sestak falling behind Toomey, losing ground in particular with independent voters. The campaign events with Bloomberg and Sestak come after weeks of TV ads from Toomey and Republican allies painting the Democrat as a big-spending liberal.

Hagel, a decorated Vietnam veteran who now teaches at Georgetown University, was known for bucking his party in the Senate, particularly criticizing President George W. Bush's prosecution of the war in Iraq. He is talked about in Washington as a potential successor for Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, a Republican who stayed on in the Obama cabinet but is expected to retire next year.

Hagel said he voted the straight Republican ticket when he filled in his absentee ballot while sitting on a tank in the Mekong Delta in 1968. "I am a Republican," he said, but identifies with President Dwight D. Eisenhower's moderate version of the creed.

"What mattered was governing, driving a consensus of all the different forms of opinion . . . to drive to a solution," Hagel said, "not the political nonsense, not the political opposition and confrontation. That solves nothing. It just sets American behind further."