arlen specter

Here’s more evidence that the GOP is still struggling to find fitting metaphors to talk about itself. The party was likened to a miffed Eminem by Gov. Tim Pawlenty at the College Republicans’ national confab over the weekend, while at another of the convention’s sessions, RNC chair Michael Steele was coming up with imagery of [...]

Fellow party-switcher Sen. Arlen Specter essentially reneged his support for Norm Coleman in the ongoing battle for Minnesota’s second Senate seat, but that didn’t stop Coleman from invoking Specter’s name in a new fundraising appeal. Meanwhile, on his birthday, Al Franken’s campaign is doing fundraising of its own.

Perhaps sensing that it might be impolitic to cheer on a member of the party he just left, Republican-turned-Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter says his statement, revealed Tuesday, that Norm Coleman will prevail in the battle for Minnesota’s second senate seat, was a mistake. Outside the Senate chamber yesterday, he said, “In the swirl of moving [...]

Perhaps party-switching is the tie that binds. Sen. Arlen Specter — who started out his political life as a registered Democrat, then was elected as a GOP candidate in 1965 and, as of last week, now calls himself a Democrat again — has come out in support of Democrat-turned-Republican Norm Coleman, who’s still hoping to [...]

After years of eschewing labor-organizing drives at the world’s largest company, the United Food and Commercial Workers has vowed that capitulation to Wal-Mart is over. The union has started organizing campaigns in 17 states, including Minnesota, targeting more than 100 stores. The impetus for the organizing drive: the new administration in the White House and the possibility of passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

Al Franken’s one word for Sen. Arlen Specter in 1996, when Specter sought the Republican presidential nomination: “Hopeless.” But Franken’s frank assessment of the man he hopes to join in the Senate went beyond that one word. Franken devoted a chapter of his 1996 book “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations“ to the [...]

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.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter announced today that he is switching from the Republican to the Democratic Party. That means Minnesota’s empty U.S. Senate seat could become the Democrats’ sixtieth — the number needed to break a Republican filibuster. Specter’s move increases the pressure enormously on Minnesota officials in a position to control the outcome of the disputed Senate election between Norm Coleman and Al Franken.