Specter's Loss to shake up the political landscape that had incumbents sweating in a tumultuous political election year. In the night's biggest contest, CNN projects Republican Joe Sestak is the winner of Tuesday's Senate Democratic primary election in Pennsylvania, defeating five-term incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter.
Also, CNN projects that Democrat Mark Critz defeated Republican Tim Burns in Tuesday's special election to fill the House seat vacated by the death of Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. John Murtha. In the first race called Tuesday night, conservative insurgent Rand Paul defeated Secretary of State Trey Grayson in a Republican primary fight for the seat held by retiring GOP Sen. Jim Bunning. Paul had the backing of some Tea Party groups and was endorsed by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. He will face Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, projected winner of the Democratic primary, in the November 2010 election. "We've come to take our government back," Paul said in his victory speech. "This Tea Party movement is a message to Washington that we're unhappy and that we want things done differently."
Grayson was the establishment candidate in the race, using the backing of Kentucky's senior senator, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to be the early favorite. "Now Kentucky Republicans will unite in standing against the overreaching policies of the Obama Administration," McConnell said in a statement. "We are spiraling further into unsustainable debt and Kentucky needs Rand Paul in the U.S. Senate because he will work every day to stop this crippling agenda." In the Pennsylvania race, less than 500 votes separated five-term incumbent and former Republican Sen. Arlen Specter and Rep. Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania's Democratic primary.
Sestak at one point trailed Specter by a 2-1 margin in the polls, but Sestak held a tight lead with almost a third of the votes counted Tuesday night. Specter was a Republican until he crossed party lines to cast a deciding vote on President Obama's stimulus plan. Soon after, he changed parties in the face of plummeting GOP support in his primary battle against Pat Toomey. Specter has the backing of the Democrats including Obama but it's unclear if that support will pull him through in the tight race. Also in Pennsylvania, Democrat Mark Critz held an early lead over GOP businessman Tim Burns in a special election to fill the House seat formerly held by Democratic Rep. John Murtha, who died in February.
"If we wake up on Wednesday morning and we have Sestak beating Specter and we have Burns beating Critz -- that would be a renunciation of the national party and the administration, along with the leaders of Congress," said Joe DiSarro, chairman of the political science department at Washington & Jefferson College. The race brought big names with former President Bill Clinton campaigning for Critz and Sen. Scott Brown appearing on the campaign trail for Burns. "Is this a referendum on national politics? I think so," DiSarro said. "Is it something that we can say is a prelude to the fall? Oh, yes."