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February
28, 2003 9:20 a.m.
Toomey’s
Launch
Unseating
Arlen Specter.
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 at
Toomey will challenge Pennsylvania
senator Arlen Specter in the Republican primary in April. Toomey is doing
an official announcement tour Friday and Saturday. He thinks he can win
if enough conservative Republicans will decide that Specter is too liberal
to represent them.
The odds are against Toomey. Twenty-two years went by between the last
two times a sitting Republican senator lost a primary. (In 1980, Al D'Amato
beat Jacob Javits by running to his right in New York; in 2002, John Sununu
beat Bob Smith in New Hampshire by running on competence and electability.)
The White House is going to support Specter, probably more vigorously
than it supported Bob Smith last year. Pennsylvania's other senator, conservative
Republican Rick Santorum, is also backing Specter.
How enthusiastic Santorum's support will be is not yet clear. Will Santorum
cut ads for Specter? Share his fundraising list? Santorum's many conservative
admirers in Washington and New York will be disappointed if he does —
especially since he backed Sununu's challenge to an incumbent senator
last year.
However Santorum answers those questions, the endorsements are a problem
for Toomey. Part of Toomey's message to Republicans is going to be that
Specter doesn't support the Bush agenda as much as Toomey does. But it's
going to be hard to make the case that Specter doesn't support Bush when
Bush supports Specter.
"We've got our work cut out for us," says Toomey. But he thinks
he can pull it off, and there are reasons to think he might be right.
It's a closed primary. Then there's Specter's record. Whether the issue
is taxes, spending, racial preferences, national security, abortion, cloning,
hate crimes, labor law, or tort reform, there's something to offend most
Republicans. In previous years, a third of the primary electorate has
voted to replace Specter, even when presented with challengers who were
either single-issue pro-life candidates or no-name, no-campaign challengers.
Toomey's plan is to add economic conservatives to that social-conservative
base. Toomey's polling shows him with a double-digit lead over Specter
in his congressional district — which Toomey has represented for
four years and Specter has for 22.
Toomey can't match Specter's fundraising, but he figures he doesn't need
to. He just needs enough money to get his message out. The strong support
of the Club for
Growth — which likes Toomey's stand on taxes, spending, and especially
Social Security — will help with that.
Finally, Specter's age may help Toomey. Specter is 73. He's very physically
fit (past health problems notwithstanding). But if he wins another term
in the Senate, he'll be 80 by the time it ends.
Can Toomey win statewide? His performance in his district has been impressive.
His district went for Al Gore in 2000, and it's senior-heavy. But Toomey
has won three elections there even though he's been a strong supporter
of free-market Social Security reform. He's an articulate and focused
candidate. And those who worry that Toomey may be too conservative to
win in Pennsylvania should consider that Santorum ran ahead of Bush in
2000.
If Toomey makes it to the Senate, conservatives will have won an enormous
victory. Both senators from a big northeastern battleground state will
be conservatives. Social Security reform, having won in a union state,
will advance that much further. If Specter gets another term, on the other
hand, conservatives will regret it. Specter is in line to be the chairman
of the Judiciary Committee when Orrin Hatch's term limit kicks in. There's
been some idle talk about Republicans skipping Specter in favor of Jon
Kyl, but nobody familiar with the habits of the Senate GOP believes that.
Since the next term will, presumably, be Specter's last, Pennsylvania
Republican sentiment will no longer be even a theoretical discipline.
Which means that for conservatives, the worst of Arlen Specter may be
yet to come.
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