Sens. Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter (WDCpix)

Sens. Arlen Specter and Patrick Leahy (WDCpix)

After announcing that he’d be switching parties, longtime Republican Sen. Arlen Specter met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to discuss committee powers, according to the Washington Independent.

Democratic leadership, Specter told reporters Tuesday, will allow him to be seated on committees as if he’d entered the upper chamber in 1980 as a Democrat rather than a Republican. That means Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy would remain at the helm of the Senate Judiciary Committee (where Specter was the senior Republican until today) and would also outrank Specter on the powerful Appropriations Committee. No deal has been struck over whether he’ll assume the chair of the Appropriations Committee’s subpanel on labor, health and education, which Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa now holds.

But David Waldman at DailyKos suggests another message to Specter’s former party:

Seat Al Franken and give him his committee assignments now, or we’ll block a new organizing resolution that would let you reassign Specter’s previously Republican committee seats to one of your own.