Senate Democrats Deny Specter Committee Seniority

By Paul Kane

The Senate dealt a blow tonight to Sen. Arlen Specter's hold on seniority in several key committees, a week after the Pennsylvanian's party switch placed Democrats on the precipice of a 60-seat majority.



In a unanimous voice vote, the Senate approved a resolution that added Specter to the Democratic side of the dais on the five committees on which he serves, an expected move that gives Democrats larger margins on key panels such as Judiciary and Appropriations.



But Democrats placed Specter in one of the two most junior slots on each of the five committees for the remainder of this Congress, which goes through December 2010. Democrats have suggested that they will consider revisiting Specter's seniority claim at the committee level only after the midterm elections next year.



"This is all going to be negotiated next Congress," Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), said tonight.

Specter's office declined to comment.



Without any assurance of seniority, Specter loses a major weapon in his campaign to win reelection in 2010: the ability to claim that his nearly 30 years of Senate service places him in key positions to benefit his constituents.

Tonight's committee resolution, quickly read on the Senate floor by Reid himself, contradicts Specter's assertion last Tuesday when he publicly announced his move from the Republican side of the aisle. He told reporters that he retained his seniority both in the overall chamber and in the committees on which he serves. Specter said that becoming chairman of the Appropriations Committee was a personal goal of his, one that would be within reach if he were granted his seniority on the panel and placed as the third-most senior Democrat there.



Specter, if granted seniority, would also be next in line to chair the Judiciary Committee behind the current chairman, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.).



Without that seniority, though, Specter, 79, would not even hold an appropriations subcommittee chairmanship in 2011, a critical foothold Specter has used in the past to disperse billions of dollars to Pennsylvania.

When Supreme Court nomination hearings are held later this summer, Specter will be the last senator to ask questions of the eventual nominee -- a dramatically lower profile than in 2005 and 2006, when he chaired the committee and ran the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Democrats could decide after the 2010 midterms to reward Specter for his move by granting him seniority on committees, but recent precedent has not been kind to such situations. In 2002, for instance, Frank Lautenberg came out of retirement to bail out New Jersey Democrats, agreeing to run in place of the ethically disgraced incumbent, Robert G. Torricelli (D). Lautenberg won a seat that was once thought to be out of reach. But despite his 18 years of prior Senate service, Democrats relegated him to the most junior positions on committees.



Specter, after 43 years as an active Republican, will have to prove his Democratic loyalty over the next 20 months to his colleagues in order to win their support for his seniority. That effort has gotten off to a rocky start following an interview he gave with the New York Times Magazine, to be published this Sunday.



Specter joked about how Norm Coleman could possibly win his legal contest and reclaim his Minnesota Senate seat, assuring there would still be at least one Jewish Republican in the chamber. Specter backtracked from those comments in an interview with Congressional Quarterly today,



"In the swirl of moving from one caucus to another, I have to get used to my new teammates," he told CQ. "I'm ordinarily pretty correct in what I say. I've made a career of being precise. I conclusively misspoke."