Specter gets less money from GOP

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has given Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s primary campaign less than half the $1.3 million that the committee was prepared to give, a Republican campaign official said yesterday.

Facing a conservative challenge in a primary Tuesday from Republican Rep. Patrick J. Toomey, Mr. Specter has seen his lead dwindle to six percentage points in the most recent poll.

The NRSC wired the Specter campaign $200,000 last week and $100,000 this week. It might send up $300,000 more before Election Day, the Republican official said.

But money has never been a problem for Mr. Specter, who has outraised and outspent his challenger by a wide margin, and who enjoys the strong support of President Bush and other major Republican leaders.

Mr. Specter has raised about $14 million and spent about $12 million. Mr. Toomey has raised nearly $4 million and spent a little more $3 million.

Nevertheless, Virginia Sen. George Allen, the NRSC chairman, issued on Wednesday an “all-hands-on-deck” appeal to fellow Republican senators to help Mr. Specter beat back the Toomey challenge.

Party sources said the main concern is that voters who support the four-term incumbent will be complacent and not turn out in large numbers, while Mr. Toomey can expect a strong turnout from his highly motivated conservative partisans.

“We are not hitting the panic button, but we are going to make sure he has the resources he needs going into the final five days” before the primary, said Dan Allen, NRSC communications director.

Mr. Specter, meanwhile, is counting on Democrats to help him win the Republican primary. Pennsylvania law allows voters to switch party registration 30 days before a primary and switch again 30 days before a general election. Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel is running uncontested in the state’s Democratic Senate primary.

Before the March 29 deadline for registration, the state Republican Party, the AFL-CIO and Mr. Specter had made direct appeals to union and Jewish voters to change their registration for the Tuesday primary.

“We did encourage Specter’s Jewish friends to make sure they were all registered GOP,” campaign manager Christopher Nicholas said. “He did this at fund-raisers and at meetings of the Republican Jewish coalition.”

Among union leaders, Transportation Communications International Union President Robert A. Scardelletti sent Pennsylvania members a letter saying Mr. Specter “needs as much support in the April 27 primary as possible. Enclosed is a voter-registration card that you can use to register to vote in the Republican primary if you so choose. I realize that this is a somewhat unusual request, but I can assure you that it is vitally important.”

Measuring the success of the party-switch effort is problematic. In heavily Democratic Philadelphia, county officials said, the number of voters indicating a party switch on registration forms was small, with 919 switching to Republican and 1,106 to Democrat, county officials said.

In the Republican-leaning suburbs of Montgomery County, 3,940 voters indicated that they were shifting to Republican, while 5,425 voters said they were changing to Democrat.

Mr. Nicholas said, “It’s very hard to tell about registration efforts, especially in a presidential year when there are so many groups with their oars in the water.”

Republican officials say Mr. Specter’s re-election is important because he has broad enough appeal to win in November, helping hold or increase the Republicans’ 51-48 edge in the Senate. Some say that having the former Democrat from Philadelphia on the November ballot can help boost Mr. Bush’s chances of getting Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes. The state went to Democrat Al Gore in 2000.

The smart money in Pennsylvania is still betting on Mr. Specter’s re-election. Even some conservatives who support Mr. Toomey are predicting a Specter victory, partly because he has the backing of the state party organization and of Sen. Rick Santorum, a conservative who was first elected to the Senate in the 1994 “Republican revolution.”