The great Specter collapse
It is not happening for Arlen Specter.
The re-election campaign of the liberal Republican U.S. senator from Philadelphia is being defined by what is not happening for him, as opposed to what is. If the inertia continues through Tuesday -- a lifetime in Pennsylvania politics -- Rep. Pat Toomey, the Lehigh Valley challenger, wins by a landslide.
The most telling number in the latest Quinnipiac University poll is not the virtual statistical dead heat between them among likely GOP voters. Specter had 49 percent and Toomey, 44. The poll was conducted April 12-18, surveying 431 "likely" Republican voters. The margin of error is 4.7 percentage points.
Nor is it the almost 20 percent of voters leaning toward either candidate who said they could change their minds by the election on Tuesday.
The most troubling for Specter is his alarmingly low approval rating among Republicans. Only 40 percent have a favorable opinion of him. That is up one point from the previous Quinnipiac poll on April 7.
Specter has outspent Toomey nearly 3-1, according to The Morning Call of Allentown. How can such a powerful senator who has been in office since 1981, who has the support of President Bush and U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, who has a National Rifle Association endorsement -- and who has overwhelmingly outspent his opponent -- be on political life support so close to primary election day?
It is not happening for Specter in these polls, and it does not seem to be happening in the yards around here.
If Specter were this 800-pound political gorilla, you would think his yard signs would be popping up like zits on prom night. While the number of Toomey yard signs I have spotted is not overwhelming, the Specter signs are almost nonexistent, at least when I have been driving in the City of Pittsburgh, the South Hills and Washington County.
There could be a bumper crop of signs in Specter-friendly neighborhoods, but you would think that at least some would be everywhere.
The most telling response from my very informal polling of Specter supporters is their uniform lack of passion for their candidate. They talk about the substantial impact of his seniority and about all the federal dollars he sends back home. Usually, they speak in monotones.
The next genuinely enthusiastic one will be my first.
Even among his core supporters, liberals, it simply is not happening for Specter. He had been conducting a stealth campaign to encourage Democrats to convert to the GOP for the primary so they could vote for him. I called the boards of election in the 10 counties with the largest numbers of Republicans. Virtually all said that they did not notice any unusual registration activity. An Allegheny County elections spokesman was the only one who suggested that there might have been a significant increase in the number of voters registering as R's.
It is not happening in the polls, yards, and the level of enthusiasm among his supporters or even among Democrats he tried to convert.
It could be happening for Specter in other areas and among other people. Like a blind man trying to describe a beached whale only by feeling a part of it, perspective is limited to what one sees, hears, reads and smells. "Subjective" does not begin to describe it.
But where else is there to look?
