Harrisburg, Pa.—“It’s time for a change. . .It’s very, very likely I will be a candidate for the U.S. Senate.”
With those words, Pat Toomey on Saturday morning (March 28) electrified the crowd of nearly 600 conservatives who jammed the ballroom of the Four Points Sheraton Hotel here. The former three-term U.S. Representative had just come the closest so far to making it official: that in 2010, he will challenge liberal Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, who edged out Toomey by a heartbreakingly close 51% to 49% in the ’04 primary.
“Go, Pat, Go!” shouted the crowd, many of whom whistled and jumped to their feet. They were gathered in Harrisburg for the 20th annual Pennsylvania Leadership Council, the summit of conservatives of all stripes from across the Keystone State. To say the least, the PLC is “Toomey Country,” and, upon entering the hotel on Friday afternoon, I immediately noticed that “Pat Toomey for U.S. Senate” buttons dotting guests in the lobby.
“Many of the folks you will meet here - pro-lifers, home-schoolers, and anti-taxers - were volunteers on Pat’s last race against Specter,” LeMoyne, Pa. attorney and longtime conservative activist Richard Stewart told me, “It was truly a grass-roots effort. What put Specter over the top was the campaign help he had from George W. Bush and [then-Republican Sen.] Rick Santorum. Both are now out of politics, so the playing field has been leveled.” A Quinnipiac Poll two weeks ago showed Toomey leading the five-term senator among registered Republicans by a margin of 41% to 27%.
Quite a few elected officials I met at the PLC were willing to go on record with their support of insurgent Toomey against incumbent Specter.
“Two things made me change from Democrat to Republican in ’03,” said State Sen. Mike Folmar, “One, was getting upset watching [Democratic attack dog] James Carville on television. The other was Pat Toomey’s Senate race. He was for everything I was for - limited government, fiscal conservatism, and that he was a term limit guy. Pat limited his time in Congress to three terms and kept his promise. Sen. Specter has been there for thirty years. It’s time for him to go.”
State Rep. Brad Roae of Crawford County agreed, saying “I’m for Pat Toomey because he’s a lot more conservative that Sen. Specter and that whole stimulus package is horrible.” [emphasis added]
 |
| At Pennsylvania Leadership Conference in Harrisburg (left to right): Rep.Glenn Thompson, former Rep. Bob Walker, Human Events Political Editor John Gizzi, and Rep. Joe Pitts. |
As PLC organizer Lowman Henry pointed out, “The PLC meetings had grown smaller in the late 1990’s. But it was Pat Toomey’s campaign that re-energized our annual meeting and since he last ran [for the Senate], the size of the PLC has grown.”
Roae was referring, of course, to Specter casting the decisive vote in the Senate to pass President Obama’s $700 billion-plus stimulus package. Toomey hit that hard in his remarks to the PLC and the Quinnipiac poll showed a whopping 70% of GOP primary votes in Pennsylvania disapprove of Specter’s vote on the spending measure.
The Case for Specter - Sort of
To be sure, “Team Specter” was concerned about the PLC and its largest-ever conclave. Two of the senator’s staffers who attended the conference talked up Specter’s recent decision to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA0, which contained the controversial “card check” to gut the secret ballot in union elections.
“Stopping card check motivated people in the business community like no issue I’ve ever seen,” said Gene Barr, vice president of Pennsylvania’s Chamber of Commerce. Of Specter’s reversal from supporting card check last year to opposing it in ’09, one of his aides quipped: “Now the unions hate us more than Republicans do!”
But did this switch really help Specter on the right? Not by a long shot - not with this crowd, at least. PLCers for the most part seized on Specter’s read-the-fine-print statement that “I would be willing to consider [EFCA] when the economy returns to normalcy” as a sign he could go back to supporting the measure once renominated. As State Rep. Curt Schroder of Exton said, “It’s never a good time to infringe on the secret ballot.”
The other case heard for renominating Specter is nervousness about the big edge Pennsylvania Democrats now have in registered voters.
“My biggest concern is whether Pat Toomey can win in November,” Pittsburgh CPA Bob Doddato said, emphasizing that he is neutral in the primary, “At a time when Democrats had a 1.2 million voter advantage over Republicans, there is something to be said for Specter being able to draw more Democrats in the general election. And if [Democratic Gov.] Eddie Rendell senses Toomey will win the nomination next May, he could strongarm a heavyweight Democrat like [State Auditor General] Jack Wagner into the Senate race.” (So far, the lone Democratic Senate hopeful is former Constitution Center CEO Joe Torsella; all signs are Wagner will run for governor next year).
But, as always seemed to be the case with arguments for conservatives to swallow Specter, there were second opinions. Over coffee following Toomey’s speech, Lancaster County GOP Committeewoman Ann Womble told me: “These new voters who have registered since ’08 are like those who turn out for American Idol. They were motivated by one ‘star,’ Barack Obama, but they won’t be driven to turn out the same way in an off-year for a lower office. The people who will be motivated are the people you see here who stood up and cheered Pat Toomey.”
