The Democrat narrowly defeated by Arlen Specter in the 1992 Senate race is still against him despite the party switch.

Lynn Yeakel is scheduled to endorse Sestak Nov. 12 in Philadelphia.

A little-known businesswoman at the time, Yeakel challenged Specter after seeing him question Anita Hill during the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' confirmation hearings. Specter won that race by a slim margin of 49 percent to 46 percent.

"I¹ve known Joe for four years and he has the character and integrity to represent our party and our Commonwealth in Washington," Yeakel said.

A political consultant and Democratic activist with ties to the late Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and to Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak wants to succeed Sestak in the House.

E. Teresa Touey told the Pennsylvania political blog pa2010.com that she will relocate from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania's 7th District, of which she is a native.

Touey said that she feels "real strongly that economic development is what needs to happen in Delaware County over the next decade." Delaware County, located west and south of Philadelphia, accounts for more than 70 percent of the vote in the 7th, which also includes parts of Chester and Montgomery Counties.

When all the receitpts are counted, organizers are hoping they'll have $2.5 million from Tuesday night's Philadelphia fund-raiser that used the commander-in-chief as fundraiser-in-chief.

President Obama was the drawing card for the event designed to raise money for Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's 2010 campaign and other Senate Democrats.

Specter, who changed parties this spring, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are splitting the proceeds.

"Arlen is not someone who came to Washington to fight for a particular ideology. He came to fight for the working men and women of Pennsylvania. And he has a long and successful record of doing just that," Obama said, according to a transcript that was released by the White House press office.

Here's something you don't see every day: a candidate for Congress shifting his campaign from one district to another.

In Pennsylvania, Republican businessman Steven Welch announced Saturday that he was ending his campaign in the 7th District, which Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak is giving up to run for Senate, and continuing his 2010 campaign in the 6th District, which Republican Rep. Jim Gerlach is giving up to run for governor. Both districts take in suburbs of Philadelphia.

Welch, in a statement, said that his decision was motivated by "overwhelming outreach by grass-roots and community leaders," though he is pleasing Republican strategists by deferring to the 7th District candidacy of Republican Pat Meehan, a former federal prosecutor who plans to announce Monday that he is seeking Sestak's seat.

Coaxing Arlen Specter into switching parties and running for re-election as a Democrat was a major coup for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is bending the Senate's schedule to accommodate a presidential fundraiser for Specter Tuesday afternoon in Pennsylvania.

Reid announced Friday that the Senate would hold no votes after 3 p.m. Tuesday. His office later said that the scheduling decision was meant to accommodate a long-planned fundraiser that President Obama is headlining in Philadelphia to benefit Specter's campaign.

The move could delay efforts to finish work on the fiscal 2010 transportation spending bill, which the Senate began considering Thursday.

Two candidates who want to unseat Sen. Arlen Specter debated health insurance and then went out for a beer. Specter wasn't invited - either to the debate or to the Allentown Brew Works afterward.

During the town-hall style forum at Muhlenberg College in Allentown,his two major challengers, Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak and Republican Pat Toomey, agreed on little more than defeating Specter.

Sestak had invited Toomey, a former congressman, to debate the issue and left Specter out, according to Toomey's campaign. Neither of them mentioned the senator once during the civil, 95-minute event. Specter, who's seeking a sixth term in 2010 (and his first as a Democrat), issued a one-sentence statement shortly after the debate ended Wednesday night. "I look forward to returning to the Capitol next week and speaking to my colleagues about trying to pass a health care reform bill," he said.

Turns out Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak weren't the only Senate candidates in Pennsylvania who spoke to ideological bloggers Friday in Pittsburgh.

Pat Toomey, the Republican former representative who is likely to face the winner of the Specter-Sestak Democratic primary, did the same.

Except Toomey's audience on Friday night was a group of conservative bloggers who convened in the Steel City for the second annual RightOnline conference, sponsored by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation.

Facing a skeptical and curious audience of liberal bloggers, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter accentuated the left-leaning side of his long Senate career as he prepares to face Rep. Joe Sestak in a highly competitive Democratic primary.

In an appearance Friday before the "Netroots Nation" annual conference in Pittsburgh, Specter said that bloggers should support his 2010 re-election campaign because he has "a lot of experience, and when tough issues come up and President Obama needs a spokesman to face hostile crowds, I can go out and do it effectively."

Specter, who's seeking a sixth term (and his first as a Democrat), touted his support for abortion rights, embryonic stem cell research, an expansion of children's health insurance programs, the economic stimulus law and President Obama's efforts to overhaul the health care system and enact climate change legislation.

Specter even referenced his role 22 years ago -- when he was a Republican -- in scuttling the Reagan administration's Supreme Court nomination of conservative jurist Robert Bork.

Eye on 2010 reported last month on the regularity with which Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter voted with Democratic leaders since he left the Republican Party in late April.

The Senate has cast a lot more votes in the past month, and Specter, who faces a serious challenge from his left flank in the Democratic primary, has been even more of a party loyalist.

Since Specter's party switch was noted in the Senate voting rolls on April 30, he's participated in 63 votes that have essentially divided the two parties and sided with the majority Democratic position on 57 of them, for a CQ-defined "party unity" score of 90.5 percent. Since the July Fourth recess, Specter sided with the consensus Democratic position on 40 of 43 party unity votes in which he participated, or 93 percent of the time.

Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak isn't fazed by going up against Sen. Arlen Specter, who leads in fundraising and in the polls and has the support of Democratic establishment figures.

Speaking with reporters on a conference call Tuesday afternoon, a few hours after he made his Democratic primary challenge of Specter official, Sestak said that his political situation today isn't unlike 2006, when he defeated veteran Republican Rep. Curt Weldon in the 7th District.

"I love being the underdog," Sestak said. "A lot of room to grow. Seventy percent of the people don't know me enough to make a decision, and I'm going to give them that opportunity."

Joe Sestak is challenging Arlen Specter -- and this time it's official.

Sestak, a two-term House member, held a formal announcement event Tuesday morning to say that he will wage a Democratic primary campaign against Specter, who switched parties in April and is seeking a sixth Senate term as a Democrat.

Sestak told supporters that the electorate voted for "change" with his election to the House in 2006 and Barack Obama's election as president in 2008, and that Pennsylvania voters in 2010 "will vote for a change and accountability." He promised to be the "hardest working senator."

Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter's latest campaign finance report includes Democratic donors who are among his newest friends and Republicans who demanded and received contributions after he switched parties in late April.

Specter reported raising $1.74 million in this year's second quarter, or about eight times the $224,469 that his campaign committee refunded to donors (mostly Republicans who wanted their money back, though some money was refunded to donors who exceeded the contribution limits). Specter's campaign spent $907,000 during the three-month period and began July with $7.6 million cash-on-hand.

One prominent Republican who requested and received a contribution refund was Rob Gleason, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, which has even set up a Web site to help Republican donors request refunds.

If you needed confirmation that the 2010 Senate race will be a big-spending affair, it came in announcements this week from the campaigns of Democratic incumbent Arlen Specter, primary challenger Joe Sestak and likely Republican nominee Pat Toomey.

Specter's campaign said Tuesday that it raised $1.73 million in the second quarter of this year -- a three-month period that straddled Specter's late April announcement that he was switching his party affiliation from Republican to Democratic. He has $7.5 million left to spend.

Sestak, the congressman from Pennsylvania's 7th District, said on Monday that he raised $1 million in the second quarter and has $4.2 million left to spend. Though Sestak has neither officially announced his candidacy not set up a Senate campaign account, he is permitted to use the funds in his House campaign account for a Senate race.

This is no gentlemanly disagreement.

Pennsylvania's 2010 primary is still far off, but Sen. Arlen Specter and Rep. Joe Sestak are fully engaged in jockeying for advantage in their Democratic primary.

Specter on Thursday blasted Sestak as a "flagrant hypocrite" for questioning the senator's bona fides in the Democratic Party, which Specter joined in late April after 28 years in the Senate as a moderate-to-liberal Republican. Sestak has called himself a "true Democrat" and suggested Specter is not.

In a statement released by his campaign, Specter said that Sestak, a retired admiral who was first elected to the House in 2006, didn't formally affiliate with the Democratic Party until he became a candidate for office and also didn't vote in many elections.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter is proving to be a loyal Democrat.

Specter, who faces a serious challenge in a 2010 Democratic primary, has demonstrated a higher level of party unity during his brief time as a Democrat than he did as a Republican.

CQ data show that Specter, since bolting the Republican Party at the end of April, has sided with Democrats on 17 of 20 votes that have pitted most Democrats against most Republicans. CQ refers to these party-line or near-party-line votes as "party unity" votes.

It's an admittedly small sample -- the Senate voted just 51 times between April 30, when Specter's party switch became official on the voting rolls, and the July Fourth recess, and just 21 of those votes were party unity votes. But Specter's 85 percent party unity score post-switch demonstrates a large degree of party allegiance for the senator.

He may not have held an official announcement event yet, Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak has made it so abundantly clear he's challenging Sen. Arlen Specter in a 2010 Democratic primary that would-be successors in Sestak's 7th District are preparing campaigns.

A candidacy announcement came Thursday from Republican businessman Steven Welch, who promises that his run in the 7th District, a suburban Philadelphia constituency, will feature a "new style of campaigning that will focus on voter engagement and utilize cutting-edge technologies."

"I am running for Congress to ensure that we send people to Washington with a proven record of creating good jobs with good benefits, who have balanced the budget and met a bottom line," Welch said in a video statement on his campaign Web site, which includes several videos and links to Facebook and Twitter pages.

Arlen Specter has won the backing of Joe Torsella, who until recently had been vying with Specter for the Democratic Senate nomination.

In a statement released Tuesday morning by Specter's campaign, Torsella described Specter as a "hard working, effective and honest fighter for Pennsylvania in the United States Senate."

Torsella, the former deputy mayor of Philadelphia who later headed the city's National Constitution Center, and Specter have some personal history. Specter once hired Torsella's wife to be a counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee when Specter was the panel's chairman.

When Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter switched parties two months ago, he said he would issue contribution refunds "upon request."

Now the Club for Growth, the conservative political group that is a longtime Specter foe, wants to help any disgruntled Republican donors take now-Democrat Specter up on his offer.

The Club is asking the Federal Election Commission (FEC) if it can send a letter or make a telephone call to Specter's donors informing them that they can ask his campaign for a contribution refund.

Rep. Tim Holden, a nine-term Democrat from Pennsylvania, proved his mettle in 2002 when he survived a Republican redistricting map aimed at ousting him from office.

Holden's image as a Democratic centrist enabled him to win an incumbent-incumbent matchup with longtime Republican Rep. George W. Gekas in the 17th District, designed with an overall GOP lean, and boosted him to easy victories in his three re-election campaigns since.

Republicans, though, contend that they should be able to compete for the 17th District seat. They point out that the district twice gave heavy support to George W. Bush in his bids as the Republican presidential nominee -- 55 percent in 2000 and 58 percent in 2004 - and favored 2008 Republican nominee John McCain with 51 percent even as Democrat Barack Obama carried the state as a whole.

"My goal for the 17th is for Republicans to vote for a Republican," said John J. McNally, Republican Party chairman for Dauphin County, which includes the state capital of Harrisburg. "My hope is that we are able to encourage Republicans to vote their principles."