Specter vs. Toomey
By Byron LaMasters
The primary is today, and it's a dead heat. I've personally beem torn about this race. For those of you that haven't been following. Right-wing Congressman (with a populist touch) Pat Toomey is challenging relative moderate Senator Arlen Specter for the GOP Senate nomination in Pennsylvania. The Democratic nominee is Joe Hoeffel.
Many Democrats are all but openly cheering for a Toomey victory. The conventional wisdom is that Democrats would have a much better shot at picking up the seat against a relatively unknown right-winger (with heavy Club for Growth support), than against the popular moderate Specter. Others think that Toomey will energize the Republican base and cut into some Democratic union support helping Bush in the state as well as sending a more conservative Republican to Congress. Toomey argues that his Allentown based congressional district was carried by Al Gore in 2000, yet he's won it without too much trouble. He credits his success to "Reagan Democrats" that responded to his populist conservative message. Specter on the other hand, has the full support of President Bush and our good friend Senator Rick Santorum. Many pro-choice suburban Philadelphia voters that would vote for Specter are unlikely to vote for Toomey. Also, the money that flows to incumbents and presumptive winners that Specter would have in the fall would be much less likely to go to Toomey. Some Republicans have openly speculated that Pennsylvania would be out of play in the presidential election if Toomey wins tonight. Several million dollars that would be spent getting out GOP voters probably won't be there for Toomey (although the Club for Growth would make up for some of it, much of the money would go to Hoeffel). Finally, today is a test for the Bush campaign team. The Bush campaign has prepared for this election as a test run for its election day campaign team. They're testing the effectiveness of their blockwalking, phonebanking, television, radio, direct mail, etc. strategies. A victory for Specter is a victory for the Bush campaign team. A victory for Toomey is a defeat for the Bush campaign team. For that reason, if for no other, I'll be pulling for Toomey tonight. I'll post the link for returns when I find it.
Posted by Byron LaMasters at April 27, 2004 10:56 AM
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As I understand it, Club for Growth is limited in what they can do in the fall anyway, since BCRA purports to limit a lot of GOTV and advertising activities by limiting them to hard money only. If CfG runs through its hard money donors during the primary season (and it's blowing a lot of money in Pennsylvania and spent a lot in Texas already, not to mention the fun in Iowa), it won't have the cash it needs for fall mischief. I imagine they'd like to play in the Colorado Senate campaign, but wonder if they'll have the money.
