Specter's defection, by the numbers

[Joanne98]

At a reception in late February honoring Sen. Arlen Specter for his death-defying vote that secured passage of the $787 billion stimulus bill, Gov. Rendell joked that his old friend should just make it easier on himself by changing his registration from Republican to Democrat.

"In his heart, he knows he's a Democrat," Vice President Biden added when it was his turn to dish out the praise that day in an Irvine Auditorium recital room at the University of Pennsylvania.

Specter demurred that he would stay put because it was important to have moderates in the GOP.

But even as he was speaking, Specter's standing among Republican primary voters, often shaky, was eroding fast.

Last week, he jumped.

When he announced Tuesday that he was turning Democrat, Specter cited polling that showed his approval rating plummeting by half among Pennsylvania Republicans, with the party's increasingly conservative base inflamed by his stimulus vote.

The numbers convinced the five-term senator he could not win the 2010 primary against conservative former Rep. Pat Toomey, who had headed the Club for Growth, which targets moderate Republicans it considers soft on fiscal issues.

At the same time, top Democrats had engaged in a behind-the-scenes effort to persuade Specter to switch parties - especially Biden, a close friend from their Senate days. For years, the two men rode the Amtrak train home from Washington together, Biden to Wilmington and Specter to Philadelphia.

"I believe and I kidded him all along since January that he was going to switch," Biden said in an interview. "He said, 'No, I'm not going to switch from the Republican Party. I can change their minds.' It was clear to me that he was so principled and independent . . . that there would come a point where he hit a wall."

Specter, in an interview, confirmed that Rendell and Biden in recent weeks had intensified their efforts to persuade him to become a Democrat.

"Biden has been persistent," Specter said. Indeed, White House officials said the vice president had 14 telephone conversations or meetings with Specter since the stimulus vote Feb. 13.

"I didn't count 'em, but I have seen a lot of him just in the general course of business," Specter said of their contacts. "He didn't talk to me about changing all the time, but Biden has pushed it consistently."

There was no "hard sell," Specter said, adding that everybody knew such an approach would be counterproductive with him.

Biden agreed: "No one induces Arlen," though he said their conversations are "unfettered."

Biden said he started making the case for becoming a Democrat just before Specter's 2004 primary against Toomey, who would come within 17,000 votes of unseating him.

"I think for some time on the really big-ticket items relating to economics and social policy, safety-net issues, labor - a whole range of things - Arlen's been basically a moderate Democrat," Biden said. Until last week, Biden said, Specter thought he had room to broaden the GOP coalition "to build a big tent."

Specter, 79, said his decision to switch was sealed after final survey results from his own campaign pollster, Glen Bolger, came in April 24.

"The most important number was the approval rating - it dropped from the 60s to 31" percent just in the last few months, Specter said.

Not that long ago, Specter drew standing ovations from mostly conservative crowds around the state as he stumped with Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

But the stimulus vote was a "watershed," Specter said. "It all turned on that. The pollsters had never seen that kind of precipitous drop. It was stark."

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