Is Arlen Specter out of the woods?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

The Republican U.S. senator, facing what two polls released today show could be the fight of his political career, pacified business groups on Tuesday by saying he will oppose legislation making it easier for workers to form unions.

Specter's much-anticipated decision on the card check bill was perhaps his most difficult in nearly two decades. But whether it will erase conservative outrage over his support of the $787 billion economic stimulus bill is another question.

"I think the card check vote will be the most defining moment for Specter since his interrogation of Anita Hill," said G. Terry Madonna, the director of Franklin & Marshall College's Center for Politics and Public Affairs.

In 1991, a year ahead of narrowly winning a third term in 1992, Specter challenged Hill's sexual-harassment accusations against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

"There's no other issue he's faced that's been more divisive and defining."

F&M, in a poll released this morning, found Specter leading a potential three-way race between himself, Pat Toomey and Peg Luksik. But it also showed that  a larger segment of Republican voters — more than four in 10 — don't know who they'd vote for, and nearly half say it's time for a change.

"The big story here is all of the Republicans who tell us they don't know," said Madonna. "This indicates a potentially — and I say potentially — tough primary for Specter. For him, what he wants is a crowded field."

In another poll out today, Quinnipiac University found Toomey, a former congressman who has become a sort of folk hero among conservatives in the  Republican Party, beating Specter by 14 points.

"Pennsylvania Republicans are so unhappy with Senator Specter's vote for President Barack Obama's stimulus package and so-called pork barrel spending that they are voting for a former congressman they hardly know," poll director Clay F. Richards said in announcing the survey.

The Connecticut-based university's poll, however, also found three out of four Republicans don't know enough about Toomey to form an opinion about him.

The polls clearly indicate trouble for Specter. But they were taken before he announced his decision to oppose the card-check legislation. Madonna said the incumbent lawmaker will certainly benefit from the move among primary voters.

"He will do better because he will have an opportunity to go after the business Republicans," Madonna said. Business groups spent more than $20 million lobbying against the bill, and  applauded Specter's decision.

Specter has never been popular with social or ideological conservatives, the folks who elevated Toomey to within 2 points of beating Specter in the 2004 GOP primary. So had Specter alienated so-called "business Republicans," many observers predicted he would lose the intraparty contest in 2010.

Still, the F&M poll found Specter with higher job-performance ratings this month, and that he is getting 33 percent to Toomey's 18 percent among GOP voters. Peg Luksik gets only 2 percent, and other candidates get 5 percent. Forty-two percent said they don't know who they'll vote for.

The margin of error in that poll was 4 percentage points.

Of all voters in the F&M poll, 40 percent said Specter deserves to be re-elected, and 46 percent said it was time for a change.

Among Republicans, 41 percent said he deserves to be re-elected and 51 percent said it's time for a change. Among Democrats, 41 percent said Specter should stay, and 44 percent said it's time for a change.

The Quinnipiac poll shows Toomey  getting 41 percent to Specter's 27 percent. Two percent would vote for somebody else, and another 2 percent said they wouldn't vote.  Twenty-eight percent said they don't know who they'd vote for.

In both polls, however, Toomey is apparently unknown among voters. In the Quinnipiac survey, 78 percent said they hadn't heard enough about him to form an opinion. That poll was of 423 Republicans and has a margin of error 4.8 percentage points.

In other words, the polls say more about Specter, who has been put on the spot during the stimulus and card check debates, than they do about Toomey.

"All these questions about card check, the stimulus, the big, roiling debate about whether Specter is sufficiently Republican enough — all of has caused this internal upheaval, or volatility, within the ranks of Republicans," said Madonna.


Staff writer Tom Murse can be reached at tmurse@LNPnews.com or 481-6021.