BYRON HARVEY

I lived for over 13 years in NW PA, arriving there just a few months removed from a highly-contested U.S. Senate election in which Arlen Specter narrowly beat a Democrat lady who was still incensed about his rough treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings (one of his few shining moments in Congress, IMHO).  I lived there, then, during his two most recent Senate runs, prior to this year, and though I was a registered Republican for a good bit of that time, and though I have never voted for a Democrat in my life and have the full expectation that I never will, Arlen Specter was elected both of those times without receiving my vote.

Then last year, of course, the man I call “Arlen the Wonder Senator” switched parties, declaring in a moment of candor—and of unbridled selfish political ambition—“My change in party will allow me to be re- elected”.  This proved as well to be a moment of political chutzpah, one that was played over and over again in Keystone State commercials by his relatively-unknown leftist opponent, Representative Joe Sestak.  And so it was that this hubris, in part, proved to be his undoing, as Arlen the Wonder Senator, who in my estimation is the poster child for everything that is wrong with Washington, D.C., saw his rather inglorious political career end on a cold, rainy May evening in Pennsylvania.

And I, for one, simply couldn’t be happier.