One week out, Specter is in trouble

One week before the May 18 primary in Pennsylvania, two new polls show Rep. Joe Sestak opening a lead on Sen. Arlen Specter in their fight for the Democratic Senate nomination.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone poll of likely Democratic primary voters has Mr. Sestak up 47 percent to 42 percent, with 8 percent undecided. Mr. Sestak is holding a similar margin in a Muhlenberg College/Morning Call tracking poll.

Is Mr. Specter, 80, about to join Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and Utah Sen. Bob Bennett as the latest victim of 2010’s backlash against “moderate” candidates?

In February, the five-term senator held a commanding 51 percent to 36 percent lead over Mr. Sestak and seemed to hold all the keys to winning his first Democratic Party nomination since switching from the Republican Party in 2009. He’d been endorsed by President Obama and Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Ed Rendell, and his campaign was getting cash and support from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

But Mr. Sestak, a two-term member of the U.S. Congress and a former admiral running as “the real Democrat,” has steadily closed the gap on Mr. Specter, and last week edged into the lead for the first time.

The 58-year-old former vice admiral, who plowed into the race without the support of the state or national Democratic Party establishment, seems to be running a more politically astute campaign.

Taking a page out of Republican Marco Rubio’s playbook in Florida, Mr. Sestak’s ads prominently feature a 2004 campaign trail photo of Mr. Specter and former President George W. Bush, arm-in-arm. Mr. Sestak used the endorsement of a veterans group last week to fire back at Mr. Specter, who had questioned the former career military man’s service in his ads.

Those ads seem to have backfired on Mr. Specter, with critics accusing the incumbent of “Swiftboating” Mr. Sestak, the highest-ranking military veteran elected to Congress.

Democrats who said Mr. Specter had gone negative outnumbered those who saw Mr. Sestak’s ads as negative 4 to 1, 41 percent to 10 percent in the Rasmussen poll.

The “Swiftboat” counterattack even drew Sen. John Kerry into the fight Monday, with the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee weighing in on behalf of his Senate colleague, Mr. Specter.

“I’ve been reluctant to get involved in a primary between friends, and even more reluctant to be drawn into arbitrating the definition of the term “Swiftboating,” Mr. Kerry said in releasing his endorsement of Mr. Specter. “I’d like to see us get back to a better place in politics where the word “Swiftboating” is retired from the political dictionary.

Sen Kerry’s presidential campaign was knocked off-track by veterans who questioned his service aboard a Vietnam War swiftboat.

On Monday, when Mr. Obama announced his new Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, the Sestak campaign seized on another opportunity to question Mr. Specter’s Democratic Party credentials.

Mr. Specter, then a Republican, voted against Miss Kagan in March 2009 when she was nominated by the president as solicitor general.

Mr. Sestak said he expects his opponent to “backtrack from his earlier vote on Ms. Kagan this week in order to help himself in the upcoming primary election, but the people of Pennsylvania have no way of knowing where he will stand after May 18.”

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