The skies have gotten a little sunnier for Sen. Arlen Specter, who defected to the Democratic Party last week only to watch his new colleagues strip him of the committee seniority essential to his re-election bid.
Democrats on Thursday started to show Specter a little more love. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., announced that he was giving up his own Judiciary subcommittee gavel for Specter.
Specter got some additional good news Thursday when former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, a popular Republican in the state, announced he would not jump into the Senate race, eliminating a potentially formidable challenger.
Durbin’s move will give Specter a chairmanship, which will help him make his case to voters that he should be sent back to the Senate for a sixth term. The former prosecutor will be running the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Crime and Drugs panel.
“He’s a man of immense talent and long experience on the Judiciary Committee, and I am sure he will do a fine job,” Durbin said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who helped talk Specter into becoming a Democrat, said Durbin made the move “because it was the right thing to do.”
Specter, who had been the top Republican on Judiciary, had initially believed he would keep his seniority on all his committees when he became a Democrat, but Reid said that wouldn’t even be considered until the 112th Congress, if Specter gets re-elected.
In the meantime, Senate Democrats have been in an uproar over the idea that Specter might someday leapfrog in front of them when it comes to the assignment of committee chairmanships. On Tuesday they voted to assign him the most junior spot on his five committees.
Specter has done little to endear himself to Democrats in the past week, voting against President Barack Obama’s budget plan and telling a New York Times reporter that the Minnesota Supreme Court should declare Republican Norm Coleman the winner over Al Franken in that state’s disputed Senate race.
Specter said he misspoke, but he has stuck by his pledge to remain independent and he disputed Reid’s assertion that he would vote with Democrats on all of the critical procedural matters.
But Democrats need Specter. After the likely seating of Franken, Specter will provide the party with the critical 60th vote needed to roll over a Republican filibuster.
And Specter needs all the help he can get from Democrats in his bid for a sixth term. He switched parties when it became clear conservative Republican Pat Toomey would beat him in a GOP primary, but a poll released earlier this week showed Specter could still be in trouble as a Democrat on the general ballot if he faces a moderate Republican. A Public Opinion Strategies poll of 700 likely voters showed Ridge would beat Specter 48 percent to 41 percent.
The poll showed Specter beating Toomey 48 percent to 41 percent.
