Former Rep. Pat Toomey officially threw his hat into the 2010 Pennsylvania Senate race Wednesday in a bid to unseat five term incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter. "I am now a candidate for the U.S. Senate," the 47-year old Republican declared on a conservative radio show in his home town of Allentown. Specter has wasted no time in warning Republicans of the consequences of supporting Toomey, whom he claims is unelectable in a general election. "Without Sen. Specter's seat in the Senate, which Mr. Toomey would certainly lose, there would no longer be 41 Republican senators to filibuster and stop the Democrats from passing card check, raising taxes, and implementing President Obama's massive spending plans," Christopher Nicholas, campaign manager for Specter, said in a statement Wednesday.
Specter and Toomey are no strangers to this fight. They waged a bitter war against each other in 2004, with Toomey losing by just over one percent of the vote. This time around it promises be just as rough, with the mud already flying.
Toomey, as former head of the anti-tax Club for Growth, has directed his fire at the moderate Republian for months, fanning the flames of populist anger at taxpayer-funded corporate bailouts of Wall Street fat cats and a multi-billion stimulus bill, a dangerous political recipe for the incumbent who supported these controversial measures. "I think our federal government has taken a very dangerous lurch to the left," Toomey said on the "Gunther Show."
But Specter, ever the fighter, knew his votes were potential liabilities and launched a preemptive strike against Toomey's own resume, his experience as a Wall Street investment banker back in the late 1980's. The senator featured this line of attack earlier this month in a statewide television ad, a 2010 midterm first, with the primary still a year away and Toomey not even yet a declared opponent.
Central in Toomey's fight is Specter's support for the $787 billion stimulus bill earlier this year, a vote Specter defended this week alongside first responders at a police station in suburban Philadelphia. Indeed, Specter not only voted for the bill, he was central to the negotiated compromise that was approved by Congress with the support of only three Republicans in the end. "I know this may cost me politically, but I feel it is the right thing to do for the country in this economic crisis," Specter told FOX News at the time.