The American Spectator

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All Is Not Well in Specter-Land

By W. James Antle, III on 5.1.09 @ 2:30PM

It seems some Democrats are not happy with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's deal with Arlen Specter:

"I won't be happy if I don't get to chair something because of Arlen Specter," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who sits on the Appropriations Committee with Specter and is fifth in seniority among Democrats behind Chairman Daniel Inouye (Hawaii), Sens. Robert Byrd (W.Va.), Patrick Leahy (Vt.) and Tom Harkin (Iowa). "I'm happy with the Democratic order but I don't want to be displaced because of Arlen Specter," she said.

One senior Democratic lawmaker told The Hill that the Democratic Conference will vote against giving the longtime Pennsylvania Republican seniority over lawmakers like Harkin, Mikulski and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) when they hold their organizational meeting after the 2010 election.

The last Democrat quoted above says Specter should just be grateful if he's still in the Senate by the time of that meeting: "He was a cooked goose," the senior Democrat told the Hill. "He was going to lose to [former Rep. Pat] Toomey [R-Pa.] and we were going to beat Toomey. We did him a favor by allowing him to remain in the Senate." Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Penn.) isn't ready to even do Specter that big a favor.