Specter faces tough vote on unions

HARRISBURG (AP) — Twenty-nine years into his U.S. Senate career, Arlen Specter cast what he calls his most difficult vote ever — a “yes” on the $787 billion economic stimulus bill that made him the only Republican facing re-election in 2010 to support it.

Now, with GOP anger still simmering, Specter is under pressure to buck the party again and support “card check” legislation to make it easier for workers to form unions.

It is only the latest tight spot for the 79-year-old Specter, a political moderate and maverick who is used to being on the political rack, stretched between the wishes of an increasingly conservative party in an increasingly liberal state.

He is in meetings every day about the card check bill, he said, hearing more about it than any other issue and not revealing to anybody which way he is leaning.

“I’ve been in this line of work long enough that people ... know my arm’s not twistable,” Specter said in an interview Thursday.

It is that streak of independence that the fifth-term Specter flaunts and Republicans fear.

Republicans are unified against the card check bill, which is expected to surface later this year, and worry that Specter will be in a position to exert influence over its final form and whether it comes up for a vote, as he was on the stimulus.

“I think he again could be the swing vote on the issue,” said Bill Darr, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican party’s 11-county southwest caucus.

The stimulus won support from no House Republicans and just two other Republican senators — Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, who do not face voters until 2012 and 2014, respectively.

Many Pennsylvania party elders have been unwilling to publicly criticize Specter and have not forsworn Specter as the party’s candidate in 2010.

Still, he is not receiving unequivocal support.

Pennsylvania’s GOP chairman, Robert Gleason, would not say whether he will work against Specter’s candidacy in the spring 2010 primary, or whether Specter must vote against the card check bill to win the endorsement.