Sestak unseats Specter

Rep. Joe Sestak beat longtime U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter in their hard-fought Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary race.

With 65 percent of precincts reporting, Sestak had received 339,402 votes, nearly 53 percent, and Specter 304,179 votes, about 47 percent. Specter then conceded.

Sestak will face Republican Pat Toomey, a former congressman from Allentown with strong backing from both the GOP establishment and conservative tea party activists. Toomey handily defeated conservative activist Peg Luksik.

Specter is the third veteran member of Congress to go down in less than two weeks. Sen. Bob Bennett (R., Utah) and Rep. Alan Mollohan (D., W.Va.) were denied their respective parties' nominations.

Specter's case was different from the others', however.

After 28 years on the Republican side of the aisle in the Senate, he switched parties last year, with the encouragement and support of the White House. So as much as anything else, his campaign for reelection turned on whether Democratic voters trusted his conversion.

It also was a test of whether President Obama, and the White House political operation, could deliver a victory to an ally.

For all of its knife-edge drama at the close, the Specter-Sestak matchup was sleepy until the final three weeks. Specter had a wide lead and Sestak remained unknown outside his congressional district in the Philadelphia suburbs.

Then Sestak began advertising on television and started to creep up in the polls. The race became too close to call after a 30-second attack spot that showed Specter with three conservative icons: former President George W. Bush, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.), and former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Footage followed of Specter saying, "My change in party will enable me to be reelected." The tagline: Specter switched to "save one job - his, not yours."

The latest Quinnipiac University poll, completed Sunday, showed the two candidates locked in a statistical tie, with Sestak supported by 42 percent of likely Democratic voters and Specter by 41 percent. But it also showed that 33 percent viewed Specter unfavorably, three times the number who viewed Sestak unfavorably.

Specter's vote for Obama's $787 billion economic-stimulus plan destroyed his standing in the Republican Party. His approval rating dropping by half within a month, and he concluded he could not beat Toomey in a GOP primary. He said so, bluntly.

But Specter also said that the Republican Party had strayed too far to the right for moderates like him, and said he wanted to continue to deliver for the state.

In the closing days of the race, Specter reframed the switch in light of the billions he has delivered for Pennsylvania, and the possibility of more - an old-fashioned appeal to voter self-interest in an anti-incumbent climate.

Obama endorsed Specter, who also had the support of Gov. Rendell, the Democratic state and county parties, and the AFL-CIO.

Sestak made Specter's switch the central issue of his challenge, saying he was a political opportunist who could not be trusted. He said that people were fed up with politics as usual and that it was time for a "new generation" of leadership.

Sestak, 58, would not sit down when party leaders asked him to defer to the veteran Specter. Sestak, serving a second term in the U.S. House, is a retired admiral who served for 31 years in the Navy, including a stint on the Clinton White House staff and command of a carrier battle group off Afghanistan in 2001.

Obama was omnipresent for Specter in television and radio advertisements, telephone robo-calls, literature, and election-day "door hangers."

But when the polls tightened, Obama and Vice President Biden stayed away from Pennsylvania, despite pleas from state Democrats and the Specter campaign. White House aides said they wanted to avoid risking the president's political capital in another losing effort.

Indeed, on Tuesday, Obama visited Youngstown, Ohio, 22 miles from the Pennsylvania line, to talk about the economy. Air Force One passed 22,000 feet over Pittsburgh at 460 miles per hour to carry the president to his stop.

After all, Obama has had a miserable track record of personal campaigning for Democrats. Gubernatorial candidates for whom he campaigned lost in New Jersey and Virginia last fall, and a last-minute visit to Boston could not help Democrat Martha Coakley hold the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's seat for the party in a January special election.

A cold rain fell across Pennsylvania Tuesday, testing Specter's voter-turnout operation, which was staffed by union supporters and party organizations.

Sestak, who polls suggested had more fired-up backers, relied on volunteers but spent the bulk of his cash, a little more than $4 million on TV and radio.

In the GOP race, Luksik argued that Toomey was not truly "pro-life" because he favors exceptions to a ban on abortion for rape or incest or to save the life of the mother.

Specter is barred by state law from running as an independent. Unlike Connecticut, where Sen. Joe Lieberman won reelection after losing the Democratic nomination in 2006, Pennsylvania prohibits candidates who run in a partisan primary from getting on the ballot as independents.

Until now, Specter had made a habit of winning close races in which his political obituary was pre-written. He beat Democrat Lynn Yeakel in 1992, the "Year of the Woman," by 3 percentage points. In 2004, Specter beat Toomey, 51 percent to 49 percent, in the GOP primary.

Voters in the Philadelphia region were torn between the clout that Specter's seniority promised and a sense that it was time for a change.

About 3:30 p.m., Gloria McDowell Savage stepped into Wanda's Simply 2000 Hair Salon on 60th Street near Walnut Street to cast her vote for Specter. She said he had helped her brother fix a tax problem several years ago.

"You don't forget a bridge that carries you across," she said of Specter.

Dave Bell voted for Sestak at Grace Epiphany Episcopal Church in East Mount Airy, turned off by what he saw as Specter's conversion of convenience.

"Sestak's consistently progressive," said Bell, 68, a retired biomedical engineer. "Even though Specter's votes for the last six months have been OK, I think he's in it more for himself. I'm not confident we can depend on him."

At the polling station inside the Mummers Museum at Second Street and Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia, Peter Krasowski, a retired cook from the Army Reserve, also voted for Sestak.

"There should be a cutoff point," Krasowski said, referring to Specter's age. "I'm 63 and retired. Why do you have to work until you're 90?"