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Title: Specter says he's switching from GOP to Democrats - Obama: "Thrilled to have you."
Source:
BreitBart
URL Source: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D97RJ5B01&show_article=1
Published: Apr 28, 2009
Author: By DAVID ESPO
Post Date: 2009-04-28 13:03:44 by HAPPY2BME-4UM
Keywords: None
Views: 3834
Comments: 124
"I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans," Specter said in a statement posted on a Web site devoted to Pennsylvania politics and confirmed by his office. Several Senate officials said a formal announcement could come later in the day or Wednesday. Specter, 79 and in his fifth term, is one of a handful of Republican moderates remaining in Congress in a party now dominated by conservatives. Several officials said the White House as well as leaders in both parties had been involved in discussions leading to his move. With Specter, Democrats would have 59 Senate seats. Al Franken is ahead in a marathon recount in Minnesota, and if he ultimately wins his race against Republican Norm Coleman, he would become the party's 60th vote. That is the number needed to overcome a filibuster. Specter faced an extraordinarily difficult re-election challenge in his home state in 2010, having first to confront a challenge from his right in the Republican primary before pivoting to a general election campaign against a Democrat. "I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate," he said in the statement. "I don't have to say anything to them. They said it to me," Specter said, when asked in a Capitol corridor about abandoning the GOP. A senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because no announcement has yet been made, said at 10:25 a.m. EDT Tuesday President Barack Obama was handed a note while in the Oval Office during his daily economic briefing. The note said: "Specter is announcing he is changing parties." At 10:32, Obama reached Specter by phone and told him "you have my full support" and that the Democratic Party is "thrilled to have you." Specter had publicly acknowledged that to win in 2010, he would need thousands of Pennsylvania voters who switched from Republican to Democrat last year to vote for Obama to flip back to the GOP to cast ballots for him. Specter says he's switching from GOP to Democrats 
Apr 28 12:45 PM US/Eastern
By DAVID ESPO
AP Special Correspondent
(3 images) WASHINGTON (AP) - Veteran Republican Sen. Arlen Specter disclosed plans Tuesday to switch parties, a move intended to boost his chances of winning re-election next year that will also push Democrats closer to a 60-vote filibuster-resistant majority.
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Obama was informed of Specter's decison to switch parties at 10:25 this morning while receiving his daily economic briefing in the Oval Office, according to a White House official. Obama was handed a note by an aide that read: "Specter is announcing he is changing parties." The president reached Specter, one of only three Republicans to support his stimulus package, on the phone at 10:32 and told him "you have my full support." He added that we are "thrilled to have you." Officials close to the White House say that Vice President Joe Biden, who served in the Senate with Specter for 28 years from next door Delaware and became close to him through their work on the Judiciary Committee, played a pivotal if quiet role in persuading the five-term senator to switch parties.
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Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) announces switch to Dem Party...
Statement...
Obama calls Specter, Dems are 'thrilled to have you'...
Decision gives filibuster proof majority...
Denies Switch on March 17: 'It is very important to have a check and balance'...
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