Recently in Arlen Specter Category

Last night, York County Democrats held their annual fall dinner at the Valencia Ballroom in downtown York. Just from walking around the room, you'd never guess they're still the minority party in York County.

The 150 or so people seemed to still be nursing a collective endorphin buzz left over from last November. Not only did they see their party win the presidency and both houses of Congress, but the local party also picked up thousands of new registrations.

The keynote speaker was Joe Sestak, the congressman and former admiral from the Philly burbs who plans to take on Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary next year. I couldn't help but reflect on the irony of seeing him get pretty much the same reception that Pat Toomey always got at Republican gatherings.

I just got this press release from the Republican Party of Pennsylvania. It's kinda weird.

I'm not exactly sure what the nature of President Obama's offense is. The implication seems to be that he grossly insulted the hard-working men and women of our great Commonwealth by failing to stop by a monster truck show or something while he was in town for a Specter fundraiser.

And is it me, or is it a bit early to be talking about "last ditch" efforts in Specter's attempts to get re-elected NEXT FREAKIN YEAR?

Interesting. I got this e-mail today from the Joe Sestak campaign. (I'll post the text in just a minute.)

Sestak is the congressman planning to run against U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary. Pat Toomey is the conservative Republican whose likely primary challenge convinced Specter to switch from Republican to Democrat earlier this year.

What I find interesting is that both appear to have formed a tacit agreement to gang up on Specter. Interesting, but not surprising.

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter stopped by York County Democratic headquarters for about an hour this afternoon.

I found it kind of disorienting. I was talking to Democratic County Commissioner Doug Hoke before Specter showed up. Hoke mentioned that it would be his first time meeting Specter in person.

At first I thought -- What? Specter's been in York plenty of times! Then I realized that Hoke never met him because Specter had always showed up at Republican functions in the past.