Obama Made Arlen Specter Big Promises for Switching Parties. Now, Specter Wants Him To Pay Up
Barack Obama and Ed Rendell were delighted when they convinced Sen. Arlen Specter to switch parties earlier this year. But now that coup falls into the category of "be careful what you wish for," because the president and the governor of Pennyslvania have a problem on their hands: Arlen Specter. Here's the problem: Specter is up for reelection next year, and he was promised the full campaign backing of Obama and Rendell—not just in the general election but in the primary next May, if there was one. Well, there is one, and it is shaping up as a fierce one, against Rep. Joe Sestak, who represents the Philly suburbs. Specter, a notoriously tough and nasty campaigner, will expect his two big backers to support him to the hilt. And Specter, a 79-year-old cancer survivor with enough fortitude for the three of them, has leverage: he's the "60th vote" in the Senate. Read one way, Specter has no choice but to support Obama down the line; read another, Specter has the power, should things get ugly, to snarl the president's legislative agenda.
The word in my hometown of Pittsburgh is that Rendell, a devoted sports fan, would love to be baseball commissioner when he leaves public office next year. So perhaps it's appropriate that his big political challenge these days is dealing with the intraleague playoff between Specter and Sestak. It's a battle Rendell tried unsuccessfully to head off. Right now, Specter leads Sestak in most polls, but it hasn't gone unnoticed among Democrats that Sestak holds his own against the likely GOP candidate, Pat Toomey, in many polls—something that could no doubt affect the primary. Sestak, a retired admiral with degrees from the Naval Academy and Harvard, is raising money and garnering lots of attention in the same netroots that launched Obama. He was recently endorsed by Ned Lamont, the wealthy Connecticut businessman and former darling of the netroots, who ran an unsuccessful but very tough race against Sen. Joe Lieberman in 2006. Lamont is not the kind of guy who will ring a lot of bells in blue-collar Pennsylvania (he's not much of a bowler, he admitted to me) but he does have connection to antiwar online donors and activists who allowed his own campaign to mount a serious challenge to another longtime incumbent. "Joe Sestak's got guts," Lamont told me. "We don't need 3-year-incumbents, we need people who aren't professional politicians."
Specter, a former prosecutor famous for his questioning of Anita Hill, will run a furiously negative campaign. He's already called Sestak a "hypocrite" for having registered as a Democrat only in recent years (after he left the Navy in 2005). Sestak, for his part, already has showed his willingness to fight by disregarding pleas from both Rendell and Obama not to run. He's careful to pay homage to both of Specter's patrons. "I understand and don't begrudge where Ed is coming from," Sestak told me. "I expect him to be standing beside me when we take on the Republicans next fall. And as for the president, I understand that he had to make a tactical decision about the Senate. But I think he would agree that audacity is important." One other thing: Sestak's campaign adviser is Doc Sweitzer, among whose early clients was none other than Rendell. So we already know who the peacemaker will be if Sestak wins the primary.
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
Fineman is married to Amy L. Nathan, a senior counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. They live in Washington with their two children, Meredith and Nicholas.
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