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PA-Sen: Toomey Eyeing a Rematch?

by: James L.

Mon Dec 01, 2008 at 5:25 PM EST


Hoo boy. This would be nice:

Former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), whom Specter defeated by less than two percentage points in 2004, said he hasn't ruled out a 2010 rematch, but has no timetable for a decision.

Toomey, the president of the conservative Club for Growth, insisted Specter faces more hurdles than he did four years ago.

"He's significantly more vulnerable now than he was in 2004," Toomey said in an interview.

He argued that Specter's core constituency in the GOP, which he called "liberal and moderate Republicans," have since left the party and will be unable to vote in Pennsylvania's closed Republican primary. That will make it more difficult for Specter to prevail against a conservative opponent, Toomey said.

Go for it, Pat!
James L. :: PA-Sen: Toomey Eyeing a Rematch?
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PA-Sen: Toomey Eyeing a Rematch? | 55 comments
I can't believe a guy like Toomey represented
Charlie Dents Democratic leaning district.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
I think he came in with the class of 1994
Never again.  
[ Parent ]
According to Wikipedia he was elected in 1998
and served until his run for Senate in 2004.

28, Unenrolled, MA-08
[ Parent ]
Different presentation
The district had been represented by a crazy Democrat, Paul McHale who was the only northern Democrat to vote to impeach Bill Clinton.  McHale seriously weakened and divided local Democrats (I was living in the district at the time).  McHale was so stupid he adopted the Republican claptrap about term limits, signed the pledge, and without much warning actually honored his term limits.

Toomey, I think, ran two campaigns.  To the general public he was a businessman (restaurant owner) who was mostly unknown.  His opponents advertised heavily on cable in the primary, Toomey did not.  Instead, he had more road signs and yard signs than I've ever seen oustside the local level.  The true believers nominated him.

I don't think he surprised his primary voters, but I think Toomey turned out to be much more conservative than the general public expected.

One difference between the part of the district I lived in 10 years ago and today is that there are a lot more hispanics.  Another difference is that an attempted economic revival has mostly fizzled.  

[ Parent ]
He was also pro-choice in 1998
He won in 1998 by being "the only defender of a woman's right to choose" in the race.

He turned out to be more conservative because he turned that way whilst still in office.

[ Parent ]
Toomey is right
PA's closed primaries could kill Specter. That's another advantage of the long primary season this year.

I think it's highly unlikely that Toomey could win the general election against a seasoned Democrat like Joe Sestak or Allyson Schwartz (my preferred candidate).  

I think Schwartz is running for Governor,
but I would like to see Patrick Murphy or Sestak run.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
I think she's more likely to run for Senate
because it's looking like it's Tom Corbett's turn to be Governor.  
[ Parent ]
Corbett
has never won an election with more than 50% of the vote. Schwartz will run and probably beat him with the Rendell 2002 formula; win the Philapdelphia suburbs about 62-38 while sacrificing many other parts of the state.

Not to mention that Chester, (I forgot it earlier), is now Democratic leaning too.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus

[ Parent ]
Your point about Corbett is simply wrong
He won THIS YEAR with 52% of the vote. He's the strongest the Republicans have in PA.
[ Parent ]
wow, 52% of the vote
against a weak Democrat. What an incredible performance. Rendell only won with 62% of the vote.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
Rendell was running for reelection in '06
as a Democrat in a Democratic year. It's simply not comparable.  
[ Parent ]
A great point
Corbett won 52% of the vote, as compared to the McCain only winning 44% of PA.  Math doesn't lie.

40, male, Democrat, NC-04
[ Parent ]
Matthews
Isn't Chris Matthews gearing up to run in 2010?

20 M MD-01
[ Parent ]
ugh, hopefully he won't make it out of the primary


Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
so that means that
Chris Matthews is basically Al Franken, but worse?

party: Democratic, ideology: moderate, district: CT-01
[ Parent ]
Al Franken,
just without the humor and progressive ideals.

Follow the elections in Georgia at the 2010 Georgia Race Tracker.
[ Parent ]
Chris never wrote any juicy porn, did he?
That should be on the background check list for all Senate candidates going forward...
[ Parent ]
Matthews could not even win against Toomey.
I'm not much of a believer in national parties butting in and favoring candidates in primaries but if the Dems want this seat, it is their patriotic duty to do anything in their power to keep that idiot from winning the nomination.
[ Parent ]
Disqualifications
What exactly makes him such an unappealing candidate? He has high name recognition and has Captiol Hill experience. It also would not be his first time running for political office in Pennsylvania.

20 M MD-01
[ Parent ]
Because he has no core beliefs
If you've ever seen him on Hardball you'll know he has no real core beliefs.  He has a bizarre obsession/hatred of the Clintons and his views on any issue shift from week to week.
[ Parent ]
Matthews is like a real-life Michael Scott from The Office.
During a recent Hardball segment on the Senate elections, he confessed to voting for Michael Steele in 2006 because he wanted more 'diversity' in the body. He voted for Bush in 2000 because he was cool and Gore was a gay nerd.

Issues mean nothing to him. It's all about the CW and personality.

[ Parent ]
Exactly
He has a man-crush on former Gov. Tom Ridge too.  Matthews hatred of the Clintons rivals only Dick Morris.
[ Parent ]
Fred Thompson too.
Can you smell the English leather on this guy, the Aqua Velva, the sort of mature man's shaving cream, or whatever, you know, after he shaved? Do you smell that sort of -- a little bit of cigar smoke? You know, whatever.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/g...

snort

[ Parent ]
Thanks
I was about to post that. That quote alternately makes me laugh and shudder.
[ Parent ]
I love the Club for Growth
of the Democratic Majority.

Joking aside, really, don't these guys get that they never, ever win?

Toomey beats Specter by 2 points, loses the general to a glass of water by 20 points.

Run Toomey Run!

DO IT
DO IT
DO IT
DO IT

MAN, THOSE (margins) ARE EVEN BIGGER THAN I THOUGHT!

party: Democratic, ideology: moderate, district: CT-01

[ Parent ]
I think Toomey winning
would really damage the state Republican party in the eyes of moderates and independents across the board. Not ot mention Chad Klinko could probably beat him, (that was a sneer). Patrick Murphy would be a fantastic candidate though, especially matched up against Toomey, who would probably only carry Central and South-Central Pennsylvania, that state's only Republican Strongholds. Republicans can't win statewide while losing Delaware, Bucks, and Montgomery counties by a large margin.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
not to mention Chester and Centre
too these days, those Centre is not a Philapdelhia suburb, but in northeast Pennsylvania.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
is there a Republican who can win statewide other than Specter?
I think an upset in the primary would be in large part, to our benefit here.  
Maybe one
that one being the Republican AG (Tom Corbett, I believe). However, even he's dicey as he won reelection by only 49-46 (or something similar) after being elected 50-48.

Charlie Dent's a possibility, but I'd imagine he'd get swamped by virtually any Dem.

[ Parent ]
Corbett could do it, but he's probably
running for Governor. (Heck, I expect him to be the next Governor).  
[ Parent ]
why are you so high on him?
I don't feel like Democrats are going to lose the Governorship following a popular run by Rendell and the strongest Democratic Presidential preformacne since LBJ in 1964.

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
I duonnno,
I'm still impressed by Jim Gerlach, maybe he only holds on due to the patheticness of Democratic candidates. He won't be for long. Lets finally get a real candiate, maybe someone who's not a Montgomery Candidate, but a district wide candidate who can maybe win or hold down his margins in Chester County, which voted for Obama this year along with Harrisburg, meaning Tim Holden's district probably got a lot more Democratic.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
By non-pathetic
do you mean a candidate that has more than 20% name recognition? :P

party: Democratic, ideology: moderate, district: CT-01
[ Parent ]
Oh please be true
Please please please...
Oh please do it
And we need Bob Smith to primary Judd Gregg (yes, I know Smith moved to Florida).

Follow the elections in Georgia at the 2010 Georgia Race Tracker.
Maybe Tom Mcclintock will carbetbag there...

[ Parent ]
I thought he only did in-state California carpetbagging
Alan Keyes is the go-to-guy for cross-country carpetbagging.

party: Democratic, ideology: moderate, district: CT-01
[ Parent ]
LOL! So true!


My blog
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28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
[ Parent ]
Well, now that people mention him,
there's also Alan Schlesinger (R-CT-Sen-2006), who said once that he would run in some Florida federal House seat.  Though he didn't.

Maybe we need to encourage him.

party: Democratic, ideology: moderate, district: CT-01

[ Parent ]
Arlen
Could Arlen run as an indy if/when he loses in the primary given that his health holds up?  What do the election laws in PA say about it?

Please donate to amcharities.org to help build more after school centers in the Miami area.  

23, Democrat, IA-2

MN 2008 all over again!

[ Parent ]
Specter for Pennsylvania™

[ Parent ]
Wouldn't be as successful.
   Unlike in Connecticut, Pennsylvania has very few independent voters (a mere 9% of the electorate!).  Losing your party label will lose you a lot of votes in Pennsylvania.  An independent could still win, but an independent would NEVER win a majority of the vote like Lieberman did.
  I'm not sure about the sore loser law in Pennsylvania.

24, Male, GA-05
[ Parent ]
And Lieberman had a dud Repub in the race which made it possible for him to win
I can't imagine a comparable situation arising in PA with Dems supporting Specter rather than a half decent Dem nominee.
[ Parent ]
Yeah
Lieberman's win was possible for a lot of reasons, but a key one was the fact that the GOP (pretty much knowingly) put forth a crap-ass candidate in Alan "Gold" Schlessinger, with the idea being that he would draw as few votes from Lieberman as possible.

Toomey, on the other hand, would run a seriously energetic campaign and have oodles of wingnut money and oomph behind him. And unless they nominate Chris Matthews (the Marty Chavez of 2010, and he hasn't even declared for anything!), PA Dems will probably have a stronger candidate than Ned Lamont.

All in all, I think it would resemble a mirror-image of the NY senate race in 1980, with an indie Specter cannibalizing votes mostly from Toomey. Though I doubt Specter would be interested in this sort of end-around if he gets thumped in the primary - but I'm sure Joe would encourage him to try!

[ Parent ]
Pat Toomey!!!!!!!!
   Toomey is right that Specter is even more vulnerable to a challenge from the right than he was in 2004.  Why doesn't he also admit that unlike in 2004, he is unelectable in a statewide election?  I know it was CW that Hoeffel would defeat Toomey in 2004, but from the ground Hoeffel looked weak and Toomey very strong.  Times have changed though.  
  It would be even better if this drove Specter to retirement.  I doubt that the state GOP will let a Toomey candidacy be shoved down it's throat; they'll probably want someone else.  Toomey candidacy = nasty primary no matter what.

24, Male, GA-05
Run, Pat, Run!!!


My blog
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28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)
Specter's health
Don't mean to sound ghoulish, BUT - Poor Arlan Specter is now battling a deadly form of cancer for the second time in less than four years.  And the prognosis at his age for a complete remission is not good...
Democrats should start getting their ducks in a row.  Any chance that Ed Rendell would consider a senate seat?  He is term limited in 2010 and he won reelection is a landslide.  He is the one person who could even beat Specter. True he is in his sixties but that is not old for a Senator.
Specter's pretty weak,
he's struggled the last few decades and a primary challenge would probably leave him very susecptible to several Democratic candidates, if, like Toomey said, he is even able to survive it this time.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
Of a mixed mind...
...on the one hand Toomey running against Specter would help us take the PA seat.  Particularly if Toomey somehow won.  On the other hand he's been doing a GREAT job with the Club for Growth.  And i'd hate to see him leave his day job where he's been doing yeoman work for the Democratic Party.

NY-13, Democrat. Blog @ http://infinitefunction.wordpr...
well hopefully
the Club for Growth will have him back after he gets his ass kicked.  We win twice that way.
[ Parent ]
How about the best of all worlds
Toomey acts as the shadow-president for the Club for Growth and pressures the NRSC to spend every last dime primarying out Arlen Specter and then wastes it on trying to elect Pat Toomey to Senate and on trying to primary out Johnny Isakson for not being wing-nutty enough. Hell, at the rate things are going, I can't dismiss that ;)

Politics and Other Random Topics

24, Male, Democrat, NM-01, Chairman of the Atheist Caucus, and Majority Leader of the "Going to Hell" caucus!

[ Parent ]
Excellent point
Our great CfG ally needs a full throttle wingnut in charge of they may lose their death spiral momentum.
[ Parent ]
PA-Sen: Toomey Eyeing a Rematch? | 55 comments

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