NEWS ANALYSIS: Fighting For Re-election In Blue State Pa., Specter Goes Bright Red

By suddenly opposing a top legislative priority for oranized labor, Arlen Specter is taking an odd path to threading the needle toward what is likely to be his toughest re-election next year in three decades as a Republican senator from the increasingly bright-blue Pennsylvania.

At issue is Specter's speech on the Senate floor in which the five-term lawmaker reversed himself by stating his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Specter had offered the lone GOP Senate vote in favor of EFCA, also known as "card check," just in 2007 when it failed to get the needed votes to move to passage.

EFCA would make it easier for unions to organize, and is a measure bitterly opposed by business.

With an expanded majority of perhaps 59 senators this year, Democrats were looking at Specter to cast the deciding 60th vote to end a GOP filibuster and move the bill to President Obama to sign into law.

Specter, a former Democrat who has earned a reputation as a moderate, recently broke with his party to support Obama's massive economic stimulus bill. Specter was just one of three Capitol Hill Republicans to do so, and the head of the Republican Party threatened to support primary challenges against those three legislators.

Indeed, Specter faces a likely GOP primary rematch next year against former Rep. Pat Toomey, who fiercely opposes EFCA and nearly unseated Specter in 2004.

However, while flip-flopping to oppose EFCA may take pressure off in a battle against Toomey, the move may come back to hurt Specter in the general election as Pennsylvania becomes more solidly Democratic. Democrats today hold a 1.2 million voter registration advantage over Republicans -- reportedly double what it was just two years ago.

In fact, had he continued to support card check, Specter would have robbed Democrats of their biggest issue to defeat him.

EFCA has been perhaps the highest policy priority this year for organized labor. Labor leaders have reportedly said that if Specter delivered a critical vote for EFCA, labor would throw its support to Specter over a Democrat. "Labor isn't automatically Democrat," says Bill George, head of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.

Pennsylvania unions count some 850,000 members in the state -- a powerful bloc that would have lined up for Specter but now look to stand against him.

It's not even clear how much his newfound dislike of card check will do for Specter among Republicans in the primary, considering a published poll that 66 say it is time for someone new -- just 26 say Specter deserves to be re-elected.

Just last week, Specter closed the possibly of switching parties to once more become a Democrat. No less than Vice President Joe Biden had tried to convert Specter to the other side.

It seems an odd political calculus for Specter to reverse himself to please those who probably won't support him, and turn his back on a labor constituency that would bend over backwards to deliver for him in the fall.

Perhaps Specter will survive a primary. It will be interesting to see where he zigs and zags after that.

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