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Specter `pleased and proud' to be a Pa. Democrat
Sen. Arlen Specter told Pennsylvania's Democratic leaders Saturday he's "pleased and proud" to be back in the party he left shortly after launching his political career more than four decades ago."I'm no longer a Republican in name only. I'm again a Democrat," the fifth term senator said in an introductory speech to the Democratic State Committee at a downtown hotel. Specter's speech capped two days of speechmaking and socializing in which the atmosphere of party unity that Gov. Ed Rendell and state party Chairman T.J. Rooney sought was clouded only by a small union rally and low-key campaigning by prospective Specter challengers in the 2010 primary. Specter, 79, said his immigrant parents were FDR Democrats, and that he was a JFK Democrat. He said he stayed in the party until after he won his first elective office -- Philadelphia district attorney -- on the Republican ticket in 1965 and he enrolled in the GOP after the general election. In a speech punctuated frequently by applause, he ticked off a list of issues -- increases in the minimum wage, abortion rights, environmental protection, stem-cell research -- on which he has voted with the Democrats even though he was a Republican. "It is really my independence that has made me strong, made me better able to represent Pennsylvania, to deliver for Pennsylvania and strong enough to come back to the party," he said. At a Friday night dinner honoring the late Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll, Rendell said Specter "has voted and acted to support the constituencies that we care about" during his 29 years in the Senate. He said the senator showed courage in casting one of three GOP votes for the $787 economic stimulus package. "He cast the vote knowing that it would put his political career in peril," the governor said. Posted by: 2009-06-07 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=271390 |