WASHINGTON (AP) — Potentially facing a tough Senate primary, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter announced Friday that he will run for a fifth term when he is up for re-election in 2004.
Questions about Specter’s candidacy have been quietly percolating in Pennsylvania as Rep. Pat Toomey eyes a Republican primary challenge against the state’s senior senator.
“There’s no question in my mind,” Specter said Friday. “I am running.”
Specter dismissed as speculative questions about a potential race against Toomey.
“I’ve had primaries in the past, and I’m proceeding with my own game plan,” Specter said, adding that he has been raising money, traveling the state, and maintaining a 99 percent voting participation record.
Specter said he and Toomey get along well.
“I work with him all the time,” he said.
Specter, 72, is a moderate Republican who was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1980. If he wins in 2004, Specter would be the first Pennsylvanian elected to five Senate terms. He had $5.1 million in his campaign bank account as of June 30, the latest totals available.
Toomey, 41, a conservative Republican, said when first elected in 1998 that he would limit himself to three House terms. Now entering his final term after cruising to re-election by 14 points over Democrat Ed O’Brien, Toomey has $609,999 in his campaign war chest — more than three times more than any other House lawmaker in the state delegation.
Toomey would not rule out a 2004 Senate campaign Friday.
“I’ve had a number of conversations about a variety of different political options,” Toomey said. “I’ve considered a wide variety of options. At this point, my primary focus is on doing a great job in my third term in the House. I just haven’t made any decisions about what I’m going to do in 2004.”
Asked about his relationship with Specter, Toomey said
“There’s certainly no personal friction or animosity that I’m aware of.”
Specter supports abortion rights and has relied on help from traditionally Democratic constituencies such as labor unions in past elections. That makes him more vulnerable against a well-known conservative candidate in a GOP primary than against a Democratic challenger in a general election, said Tripp Baird of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington.
“If a conservative like (U.S. Sen. Rick) Santorum can win pretty handily, logic would assume that a viable conservative candidate would give Specter problems,” Baird said. “It just would.”
But with Specter expected to chair the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee in 2004, he’ll a hard person to defeat, Baird said.
“It’d be hard, if I was a voter, to say, “Let’s fire him right when he gains some real clout,”’ Baird said. “Specter’s been one of these politicians who’s been able to find the middle on some issues. It makes conservatives howl sometimes, but nonetheless, from a political standpoint, he’s an operator.”
Specter easily defeated two little-known Republican opponents in his 1998 Senate primary before handily winning re-election, with 61 percent of the vote, over Democratic state Rep. William Lloyd.
