Senate race to be close
Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA
The competing messages of experience and trust were the calling cards of the state’s two Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate on the last day of campaigning before today’s primary election in the too-close-to-call race.
Sen. Arlen Specter, who has served in the Senate since 1981, and his challenger, U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, also dueled Monday over who is more dedicated to Democratic Party values while many Democrats wonder who can beat the Republicans in the fall.
Barry Alfonso, a regular at the Tazza D’Oro Cafe & Espresso Bar in Pittsburgh, where Sestak met with voters Monday morning, said: “It’s not the only issue, but it’s the most important.”
The election is Specter’s first running as a Democrat after he switched parties last year. He nonetheless is endorsed by President Barack Obama, the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO.
Known as a political survivor and a centrist, Specter, 80, has used his willingness to cross party lines to bolster his clout in Congress and has won numerous narrow victories over the years by appealing to moderate voters.
However, many Democrats remain undecided in the race and suspicious of a man they have voted against before.
At his six stops around the state Monday, Specter reminded voters of the battles he has fought and won for Pennsylvania, from a Delaware River dredging project expected to bring tens of thousands of jobs to Philadelphia’s port to directing federal spending to Penn State University research.
“With Jack Murtha gone, I’m the only guy left standing with seniority and experience,” Specter told a small group of supporters and reporters inside an airplane hangar building in suburban Harrisburg.
U.S. Rep. John Murtha died in February.
Sestak, a former Navy admiral and second-term congressman from suburban Philadelphia, dismissed Specter’s accomplishments simply as the kind of “hard work” that any senator should undertake and turned the discussion to whether Democrats can trust Specter.
He repeated his accusation that Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party was a cold, political calculation intended to ensure re-election, not advance the Democratic Party values he said Specter has worked against for decades.
Voters “really do want someone that they’re willing to lose their job over doing what’s right,” Sestak told reporters outside the New Hope Baptist Church in south Philadelphia.
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