Specter's Switch -- What does it mean for climate, energy?

by Emily Gertz

Published April 28, 2009 @ 10:18AM PT

Earlier this afternoon, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announced that he's switching to the Democratic Party. This gives the Senate majority a possible 60th vote -- that is, the power to break Republican filibusters of Obama administration initiatives.

Rumors have been circulating in DC that Senate opposition might put the kabosh on a House vote on climate protection and clean energy legislation -- but Specter's switch could brighten that picture.

On global warming, Sen. Specter in 2007 co-sponsored a climate change action bill with Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), "The Low Carbon Economy Act," which the youth activist blog It's Getting Hot In Here described as "the first to set science-based targets to cut global warming pollution."

On April 15, Sen. Specter kicked off a series of nationwide town hall meetings organized by Focus the Nation on curbing global warming, environmental justice and taking advantage of new business opportunities in clean energy and other climate-safer industries. According to The Triangle, a student newspaper at Drexel University, where the town hall was held,

Specter said his main platform in running for re-election is global warming, a generational issue that would affect those in the future if people do not act now. Through his visit to Drexel, Specter said he hopes to induce action from the students to solve the problem of global warming.

Specter discussed his interest in energy renewal and said the issue of global warming is overdue in congressional legislature and a matter that requires all our attention. He highlighted the Bingaman-Specter bill that he helped write and is currently in congress, which works toward a low carbon economy and is similar to the one of similar name, Bingaman-Specter "Low Carbon Economy Act," passed in 2007.

"We have to have a bill as aggressive as possible with the following two things: a realistic chance of passing and to establish goals that are within the current technology," Specter said.

Sen. Specter's environmental voting record is choosy, according to the League of Conservation Voters. In the current session LCV gives him a "46%" rating thus far; Specter voted on March 19 (along with 76 Senate colleagues) to pass the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which put protections in place for millions of acres of wildlands nationwide, as well as the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, aka the stimulus, which gives billions to clean energy, scientific and technological research, rail transit, and conservation projects.

Pocket analysis: Both parties will still need to pitch the woo at Sen. Specter, whose vote remains a crucial swinger no matter what letter comes after his name, "D" or "R." But the Republican Party has driven away one of its most respected moderates -- by embracing its most peripheral fringe supporters over the vast middle; mindlessly catering to the reactionary right-wing punditocracy; and engaging in the politics of obstruction.

UPDATE 4:13 PM ET:

Dave Roberts at Grist:

This is only the latest and most potent symbol that the Republican Party no longer has room for moderates, that it is shrinking into itself and becoming ideologically pure, ideologically extreme, and increasingly distant from the American mainstream...

...what are [Specter's] positions on climate change? Roughly those of a conservative Democrat. He voted against the McCain-Lieberman climate bill twice and declined to vote for cloture for the Lieberman-Warner climate bill last  year. He said that the latter bill contained “very difficult standards which I, candidly, do not think are attainable.” As an alternative he has pushed a bill co-sponsored with Sen. Jeff Bingaman, the “Low-Carbon Economy Act,” which has weak targets, free permits, automatic off-ramps, and all the rest of the kinds of provisions that neuter a climate bill. (See Wonk Room for more on Specter’s green record.)

Given that the Waxman/Markey climate bill is considerably more ambitious than Lieberman-Warner—and likely will remain so even after being hashed over by the House’s conservative Dems—there is every likelihood that Specter, along with many other conservative Dems like Bayh and Nelson, will vote the bill down, or at least weaken it until it’s worthless.

 

UPDATE, 2:33 PM ET: At The Wonk Room, Brad Johnson writes,

Specter will be joining a bloc of conservative Democratic senators who are publicly skeptical of President Obama’s clean energy agenda, and who have repeatedly votedagainst Obama’s proposal to place limits on global warming pollution...Ideologically, Specter is in line with Democrats like Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), who worries that Obama’s clean economy proposal may “suck money” from his state...Specter, whose top donors include the electric utilities Exelon Corporation and PPL Corporation, has told Pennsylvania students that “his main platform in running for re-election is global warming.” There’s still time for him — and the Democrats he’s joining — to build that platform, but more change will have to come.

 

At Climate Progress, Joe Romm writes:

Needless to say, as a Republican facing a tough primary challenge from the right, he was a lost vote on global warming legislation.  One assumes that if he is going to seriously run as a Democrat, he’ll support an energy and climate bill...Kudos to Specter for this move, combining political opportunism with political idealism.

Sen. Specter's statement, in part, on the move, via The Washington Post's The Fix blog:

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.