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Specter ad attacks Toomey's Wall St. ties

Facing a threat from the right in next year's primary, Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) yesterday launched a preemptive strike with a television ad that attacks his likely opponent for ties to Wall Street.

Facing a threat from the right in next year's primary, Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) yesterday launched a preemptive strike with a television ad that attacks his likely opponent for ties to Wall Street.

The 30-second spot says that Club for Growth president Pat Toomey sold "risky derivatives" as a trader and fought for reduced oversight of Wall Street as a member of the U.S. House, thus helping create the nation's financial mess. It also blasts his support for adding private-investment accounts to Social Security.

Toomey has been traveling the state for more than a month, exploring a run for the Senate amid conservative anger at Specter's critical role in passing the Democrats' $787 billion economic stimulus, bank bailouts, and other federal spending.

In the 2004 primary, Toomey came within 17,000 votes of defeating Specter. Since then, the Pennsylvania GOP electorate has shrunk and grown more conservative.

"Pat Toomey. As a Wall Street trader, he sold risky derivatives called credit default swaps - the same swaps that have now plunged us into this financial crisis," a narrator intones, accompanied by ominous music. "In Congress, Toomey fought for less oversight on Wall Street. He even wants to gamble our Social Security accounts in the stock market."

The ad is running for about a week statewide on the three major cable news channels - Fox, MSNBC, and CNN - at a cost of about $100,000, Specter campaign manager Chris Nicholas said.

"While I worked in banking 20 years ago, I have never sold a single credit default swap to anyone in my life - they hadn't even been invented yet," Toomey said in a statement. "This is a desperate and silly attempt by Sen. Specter to change the subject away from his support for Wall Street bailouts and massive new spending and debt in Washington."

The conservative Club for Growth advocates on its Web site the establishment of private retirement accounts as part of Social Security.

While Specter has said he is seeking a sixth term, Toomey has yet to announce he is a candidate.

Last week, a Quinnipiac University poll found Specter trailing Toomey by 14 percentage points among Republican primary voters, 41 percent to 27 percent. At the same time, the poll found three-quarters did not know that much about Toomey - offering Specter's strategists a chance to try to fill in the blanks.

"After six weeks of nonstop attacks, we decided to respond," Nicholas said. "I don't think Pennsylvanians are going to elect a tool of Wall Street to the United States Senate."