Conservative opposed to stimulus launches challenge to Specter
HARRISBURG, Pa. - Pat Toomey, who as a little-known congressman nearly defeated Senator Arlen Specter in the 2004 primary, announced yesterday that he will mount another challenge when Specter seeks the Republican nomination for a sixth term next year.
Toomey, who stepped down Monday as president of the Washington-based Club for Growth, appealed to his conservative base in a statement released just before 8 a.m., while he made a series of television appearances in the Philadelphia area.
"Pennsylvanians deserve a voice in the US Senate that will honor our values and fight for limited government, individual freedom, and fiscal responsibility. I will be that voice," Toomey said.
Toomey's announcement coincided with the deadline for filing federal income tax returns, as fellow antitax activists planned protests nationwide.
Toomey, 47, had said this year that he was considering a bid for the governorship in 2010. But his sights shifted back to the Senate in March, after Specter bucked party leaders and cast one of three GOP votes - all in the Senate - to pass the $787 billion federal economic stimulus package that President Obama signed in February.
Specter, 79, one of a dwindling number of moderates in an increasingly conservative GOP caucus, said he was voting his conscience, "not my own personal political interest." Toomey painted the stimulus package as part of a federal response to the recession that he said has put the nation "on a dangerously wrong path."
Toomey's announcement confirmed what had been virtually an open secret in recent weeks. At a gathering of Pennsylvania conservatives last month, Toomey received a standing ovation when he assured supporters that "it is very, very likely that very soon I will be a candidate for the United States Senate."
Specter was traveling in northeastern Pennsylvania and could not immediately be reached for comment, a campaign spokesman said.
Specter, who was elected to the Senate in 1980 and is the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, won a fifth consecutive term five years ago - making him the first Pennsylvanian to achieve that distinction - after spending $21 million in the costliest Senate campaign in state history.
But he only narrowly overcame Toomey's surprisingly potent challenge in the primary - by a margin of barely 17,000 votes out of 1 million cast - even after then-Senator Rick Santorum and then-President George W. Bush appealed to Republican conservatives to rally behind the incumbent. In that campaign, Toomey sought to brand Specter as a RINO - Republican In Name Only. The incumbent dismissed Toomey as too "far out" for Pennsylvania and pointed to the hundreds of millions of federal dollars he steered to Pennsylvania annually because of his seniority. Specter outspent Toomey by about 3 to 1 in the primary campaign.
In recent years, Specter has battled Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system, but maintains a busy schedule that includes daily games of squash.
Toomey said yesterday that he expected to benefit in the primary from Republican disenchantment with Specter's support for Democratic bills dealing with the economy. 