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 top Republican senator who once dismissed former Rep. Pat Toomey's chances of winning the Pennsylvania Senate race will host a fundraiser for him in late November.

After Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., announced last April that he was switching parties to run for re-election as a Democrat, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, publicly rebuffed Toomey's chances of winning the Senate seat.

"I don't think there is anybody in the world who believes he can get elected senator there," Hatch was quoted as saying on April 29.

Now Hatch is scheduled to headline a high-dollar fundraising lunch on Nov. 17 "in support of" Toomey, according to a copy of the event invitation.

"Our campaign has worked hard and succeeded in persuading a great many people of Pat Toomey's prospects in this race, and now every public poll proves it," said Toomey campaign spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik. "Pat is very pleased to have Sen. Hatch's support and looks forward to working with him throughout the campaign and serving with him in the Senate."

Specter said he was changing parties because he could not defeat Toomey in the GOP primary.

CQ Politics currently rates the race Leans Democratic.

Former Pennsylvania Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel is joining what has become a very crowded 2010 Democratic primary for governor.

Hoeffel, who is an elected commissioner in Montgomery County near Philadelphia, on Sunday told the Pennsylvania political blog pa2010.com, "I do intend to run. I'm going to move forward aggressively. I'm in the race and ready to ride."

Hoeffel represented Pennsylvania's 13th District in the House from 1999 through 2004, when he was the losing Democratic nominee for Senate against then-Republican incumbent Arlen Specter.

One of the hard things to explain to casual consumers of political news is the sometimes thin connection between philosophy and party. Not all Democrats consider themselves liberal, not all Republicans consider themselves conservative and vice versa.

The latest example of how not all conservatives march in step with the Republican Party comes from the blog RedState, which is leading a fundraising drive for four conservative Senate candidates, two of whom are running in GOP primaries against opponents backed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

"I won't call this the 'screw the NRSC' fundraiser, but I'm sorely tempted," wrote editor-in-chief Erick Erickson.

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.

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.

Back from another trip to the Senate's public records office, which is busy processing the dozens of campaign finance reports that senators and candidates had to mail by a July 15 deadline.

Most of the reports, which cover receipts and expenditures for the second quarter of 2009 and often run into the hundreds of pages, aren't yet available for viewing. (Unfortunately, the Senate doesn't mandate electronic filing of campaign finance reports). But here are some useful nuggets of information from campaign reports I did view earlier today.

Alabama: Talk about low overhead. Republican Sen. Richard C. Shelby, a shoo-in to win a fifth term in 2010, raised $1.4 million and spent just $96,000 doing so. That's less than 7 percent of his second-quarter receipts. Even at this early stage, most campaigns spend a larger percentage of their receipts on fundraising and staff expenses. (For example, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid raised $3.3 million and spent $976,000, or about 30 percent.) Shelby has a whopping $14.8 million cash-on-hand as July began.

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.

If Delaware Republican Rep. Michael N. Castle runs for anything in 2010, it will be as a Republican.

Seems like a few people wondered if Castle, who is a dominant force in Delaware elections even as his state has trended Democratic, might be open to switching parties after he said in a speech Monday that "they've asked me to run for the Senate as a Republican. I don't know if I'm going to do that."

Asked about his comments on Wednesday, following a Capitol Hill news conference at which he promoted a bill to enact bipartisan commissions to redraw congressional district lines, Castle said he has no plans to switch parties and that he might have been a bit "inarticulate" in his Monday speech.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge said Thursday that he will not seek the 2010 Republican nomination for the Senate seat held by Arlen Specter, the five-term incumbent who switched last week from the GOP to the Democrats.

Ridge -- the state's chief executive from 1995 to 2001 and the founding secretary of the federal Department of Homeland Security -- said in a statement that he decided against a Senate bid "after careful consideration and many conversations with friends and family and the leadership of my party."

"I am enormously grateful for the confidence my party expressed in me, the encouragement and kindness of my fellow citizens in Pennsylvania and the valuable counsel I received from so many of my party colleagues," Ridge said. "The 2010 race has significant implications for my party, and that required thoughtful reflection. All of the above made my decision a difficult and deeply personal conclusion to reach."

Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey -- a conservative activist, former House member and political nemesis of longtime Sen. Arlen Specter -- has been showing some serious political muscle since he launched a 2010 Senate bid less than three weeks ago. His campaign said Tuesday that he has raised more than half a million dollars over the 20 days since he announced his candidacy.

The money news came exactly a week after five-term Republican moderate Specter made his bombshell announcement that he was switching to the Democratic Party. Specter made the move to avoid a rematch of the 2004 Senate primary in which the Specter barely staved off an upset by Toomey, and was prompted by polls showing Toomey holding a big lead over the incumbent among the strongly conservative-leaning GOP primary voting base.

But the tout about the surge of early campaign funds also came amid simmering speculation that Toomey might soon draw yet another big-name primary opponent from the state Republican establishment: Tom Ridge, a former two-term governor.