Pennsylvania Senate: Did The White House Try To Buy Off Specter’s Democratic Rival?

im all for sestak’s newfound progressive bent. But i don’t know that his record is more progressive than specter’s. anyhow, if the white house did that, that would be pretty off-putting because we all gain from a contentious primary.
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And besides, i don’t think anyone disputes that sestak’s got more class, more convictions and is definitely more likely to beat that repub dude than arlen specter will ever be.

Sestak has to get some attention somehow. He didn’t come close to getting the party endorsement in PA. I saw him in an appearance at a progressive conference a few weeks ago, followed by an appearance by Specter. I was prepared to be impressed by him and not pleased with Arlen. The opposite happened. Arlen won the room. It was really surprising to me from what I had anticipated.

In May he said – “Sestak also said he has not received a telephone call from White House officials asking him not to run. But the congressman added that he has traded messages with New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, who oversees the Senate Democratic campaign efforts.”

He is not doing well in polling. I’m not sure either can beat Toomey, but I don’t think Sestak can.

Beats me, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It seems to me though that the WH can not control the message no matter what it is.

I remember being mad when Schummer big-footed Paul Hacket away from Sherrod Brown.

It certainly is anti-democratic (small d) but they were right about Sherrod being a good Senator who could also win statewide.

Is it really that hard to believe? It’s commonly acknowledged that the White House tried to convince David Paterson not to run for Governor of NYS. It’s known that they’ve run interference for Kirsten Gillibrand to keep other Democrats from trying to primary her off.
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I love the irony of a former insurgent candidate wielding the establishment to shut out other insurgent candidates. If that had done that to him he’d still be the Junior Senator from Illinois and we’d be talking about a Clinton in the White House again.

Ivy I am always pleased when you weigh in on Penn politics-you were gold 2 years ago-thanks for adding local context.

Poll from late January –

Toomey leads both longtime U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., 45 percent to 31 percent, and Specter’s challenger, U.S. Rep. Joseph Sestak, D-7, of Edgmont, 41 percent to 19 percent, among likely voters.

Specter also leads Sestak 30 percent to 13 percent in the primary race, according to the poll, though half of registered voters remain undecided.

Toomey and Sestak remain largely unknown statewide, according to the survey, with 65 percent saying they don’t know enough about the GOP candidate to give an opinion and 76 percent saying the same for Sestak.

http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2010/01/28/news/doc4b6114c37bf45526523334.txt

The White House can buy me off to not run too. I accept cash, jobs in both the work and hand variety, and cookies.

I’m sure that every Whitehouse has tried to exert some influence over the who runs for what seat at some time or another. Every party in every state has a slightly different way of choosing who’s going to run for what seat. That’s just intra-party politics. I’m not sure I see why they would prefer Specter to Sestak though. I would think that by definition, someone who flips from R to D would see themselves as a moderate D at best. “The devil you know” is the only reason I can think of for preferring Specter but in this case I wouldn’t think that would be particularly reassuring unless they let him keep his committee assignments and seniority in exchange for his cooperation on various things…

So now that I write it out, yeah I can see why they might want to keep Specter. Maybe they did make Sestak an offer? The details are so vague (or really completely absent) so it’s impossible to say what if anything happened.

Cue the conservatives shrieking “Chicago politics!!!”

Hahahahahah. Priceless yogi, priceless.

It’s not “Chicago politics”, it’s “machine politics” and in my experience it’s practiced everywhere that one of the parties has a sizable advantage over the other one. The Democrats get more blame for it because their base is in urban areas that tend to have more media coverage, but the GOP is just as guilty of it. Anybody who was ever run for political office in small town USA realizes this.
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Of course the whole primary/party system combined with gerrymandering is a huge part of our current problems. It produces candidates that win by catering to the extreme wings of their respective parties and whom have no inclination to seek common ground with the other side. Those rare few that do have such inclination are quickly brought to heel or primaried off.

This smacks of insider “this is how politics has always worked” bullsh!t on someone’s part, someone with a tin political ear or whose instincts have been proven wrong recently, trying the same tired crap.
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Anyone know what Rahm and Axelrod were up to/doing during this period?
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This clusterf*ck has their fingerprints all over it. Buying votes on issues has just been soooo successful recently.

Specter is neither progressive nor conservative, he is politically expedient. I am not a fan of Sestak but he has more integrity than Specter can dream about having. Quite frankly, if the Democrats stick with Specter they will get what they deserve. Bush and the Republicans came to his aid the last time he was having electoral problems. He thanked them by switching parties.

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Thankfully Toomey is leading both in the polls..

A press release from Sestak today. A number of his staff resigned recently, maybe the proofreader was among them.

http://blogs.mcall.com/capitol_ideas/2010/02/this-is-why-they-invented-spellcheck.html

What? Surely not the same old politics as usual? Only this time not played very well. Well they really didn’t want to do it.