Tuesday afternoon, Pat Toomey received the kind of news political candidates only dream of.

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, his longtime nemesis and main foe in a 2010 Republican Senate primary, had just become a Democrat, catapulting Toomey into de facto front-runner in a race with national implications.

Suddenly, Toomey was everywhere: TV, radio, the cover of national newspapers, the blogosphere. Most candidates cast as giant-killer would have bragged and thumped their chests.

Not Toomey, who at 47 is embarking on a fifth career.

''I have a remarkable level of support across Pennsylvania and a huge influx of financial support,'' he said matter-of-factly by phone while driving to Philadelphia for television interviews. ''I am confident I will win the Republican nomination.''

From Eleanor Clift:

...Funny, yes, and seriously Machiavellian, claims one GOP source, who attributes Specter's surprise defection to a Biden-Rendell bank shot. Vice President Joe Biden is from Scranton, Pa., and Ed Rendell is governor of Pennsylvania, ties that put them solidly in Specter's orbit. Biden spent the last three decades in the Senate and knows Specter well. They served together on the Judiciary committee back in the day when they along with many others made fools of themselves grilling Anita Hill. The self-interest of the Obama-Biden administration in getting that 60th vote in the Senate is self-evident. It changes the calculus for everything going forward (health care reform, judicial nominations) if Democrats have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Then there's Rendell, whose personal ties to Specter are extensive, but who also has a political stake in seeing him hold his seat in Pennsylvania. Rendell once worked for Specter and regards him as something of a mentor; they're friends. For Rendell, a gregarious, ambitious politician, a Senate seat would cap his career as a former mayor and popular two-term governor. Those who know Rendell say he really wants the seat that Specter holds but would not run against his friend.

Wow, a real surprise given Specter's statements that he intended to run in and win the GOP PA state senate primary. I guess Sen Specter finally realized he needed to jump off the bus before it headed over the cliff.

Specter to switch parties.

Sen Specter's statement

Squash is Sen. Arlen Specter's usual game, but he demonstrated yesterday that he's intent on turning his re-election fight into a Texas cage match.

A day after Pat Toomey officially announced his second bid to capture the Republican nomination for Mr. Specter's seat, the incumbent sharply attacked his challenger, continuing the assault he began weeks before the former congressman entered the race.

During a meeting with Post-Gazette editors, the five-term veteran characterized his challenger as a guaranteed general election loser who was responsible for ills ranging from the loss of Republican control of the Senate to the current economic crisis.

"I've been listening to him for five years," Mr. Specter said of the candidate who fell just short of ousting him in the 2004 primary. "He's sore as hell. ... I'm firing back."

Mr. Specter acknowledged that his bid for a record sixth term would be a severe test, and he said his chief tactical priority would be to define Mr. Toomey to Pennsylvania's voters. To that end, he said that Mr. Toomey was virtually unelectable, noting that his voting record, according to the scorecard of the American Conservative Union, was to the right of former Sen. Rick Santorum, who lost in a landslide in 2006.

From KDKA via Jon Delano:

Four years ago, when Democratic candidates like Bob O'Connor, Michael Lamb, and Bill Peduto ran for office -- there were at least five televised debates and 12 joint appearances.
 
This year, voters may be lucky to see Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, Carmen Robinson, and Patrick Dowd together at all -- early on, Dowd called for nine debates.

"The mayor said he wanted three, and we acquiesced, and now he's saying he wants two, that he doesn't have time in the next 30 days to reschedule a debate that was obviously rightly postponed I think," Dowd said today.

Two debates were originally scheduled while minds were still focused on the fallen police officers.

The announcement nobody's been holding their breath for:

Conservative former congressman Pat Toomey made it official yesterday, signing on for a rematch with moderate Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter in the 2010 Republican Senate primary.

Starting with a talk-radio interview in Allentown and a video on his new campaign Web site, Toomey said he was running to stop the "bailouts and the spending stampede" and because Specter had consistently supported "increased government spending and a liberal agenda on social, labor, immigration and national security policies."

Also, see the transcript of Josh Drobnyk's interview with Toomey.

From the Washington Post:

Sen. Arlen Specter's support for President Obama's stimulus package has recharged a political rivalry, setting up what could be a divisive rematch between one of the GOP's leading moderates and a powerful conservative activist.

Pat Toomey, head of the anti-tax Club for Growth, stepped down from the post Monday, the first move in what his aides say is an almost-certain run against Specter in next year's Republican Senate primary. In the 2004 primary, Specter defeated Toomey by 17,000 votes out of more than 1 million cast.

Even though the race is a year away, Specter has taken the rare step of running attack ads against Toomey, attempting to link his work as a trader on Wall Street in the 1980s and 1990s with the current economic crisis.

Both men say the stimulus will be a chief issue. Specter, one of three Republicans who voted for the stimulus, is campaigning throughout the state to hold his job and appeared Monday at a police station in Darby just outside Philadelphia. Officers there praised him for backing the $787 billion stimulus bill, which will provide the department $220,000 in funding to buy equipment.

Former Philadelphia Inquirer editorial writer Doug Pike announced his candidacy for Congress Wednesday, pursuing a seat that Republican Rep. Jim Gerlach has held since the district was drawn in 2002.

Pike, a 14-year veteran of the newspaper's editorial board, is the first Democrat out of the gate in the 6th District, which has been competitive in each of the four races Gerlach has won.

The son of Otis Pike, a former nine-term congressman from New York, Doug Pike came out swinging.

''I'm not a career politician. I won't play political games,'' he said in a statement. ''I'm running for Congress to bring a renewed focus on the needs of everyday citizens and to replace a partisan career politician who has failed the people time and again.''

After almost a generation of serial snorefests, this year's Bucks County judicial election

"A backroom deal cut by the party bosses," declared First Assistant District Attorney David Zellis, a snubbed Republican candidate.

Bipartisan endorsements, though informative, are not akin to merit selection, said Shira Goodman, associate director of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, which advocates an appointed judiciary. "It doesn't remove problems such as having to raise money from lawyers who come before the judges," she said.

More than a year before the first primary ballot will be cast, Sen. Arlen Specter is running television ads depicting a likely Republican opponent, Pat Toomey, as a Wall Street insider bent on consigning Social Security to the whims of the stock market.

Christopher Nicholas, Mr. Specter's campaign manager, said the sharply negative ad is airing on cable television across the state, with a total buy of roughly $100,000.

Mr. Toomey, a former congressman, protested that the ad is factually inaccurate, adding, "This is a desperate and silly attempt by Sen. Specter to change the subject away from his support for Wall Street bailouts and massive new spending and debt in Washington."

The early assault on Mr. Toomey comes after a tumultuous legislative span for the veteran Republican. Mr. Specter stirred long-festering conservative resentment when he was one of only three Republicans who voted for the Obama administration's stimulus package earlier this year. Then, in March, he announced his opposition to a high-profile proposal designed to make it easier for labor unions to organize new workplaces.