Toomey, Sestak locked in close race

Democrat Joe Sestak and Republican Pat Toomey were locked in a nip-and-tuck battle for Pennsylvania's open U.S. Senate seat Tuesday as early returns came in following an expensive and bitter campaign that presented voters with a stark ideological choice between left and right.

Sestak, 58, a former Navy admiral and second-term member of the U.S. House from Delaware County, has been a loyal ally of President Obama, backing the financial-system bailouts begun under President George W. Bush, the federal stimulus package, and the overhaul of the health-care insurance system.

Toomey, 49, began his career as a Wall Street investment banker and later helped start a family chain of sports bars. He is a staunch conservative who represented a Lehigh Valley district in the House from 1999 to 2005. After that, Toomey was head of the Club for Growth, a Wall Street-backed free-market advocacy group that campaigns for lower taxes and less regulation on business.

Two hours before polls closed, Toomey's campaign manager, Mark Harris, said his side was encouraged by what appeared to be a bigger-than-usual Republican turnout.

"We're seeing a phenomenal outpouring for Pat Toomey all across the state," he said. "All indications are our voters are energized and coming out to vote."

At 8:45 p.m., a cheer went up in the crowd at Sestak's headquarters at a Radnor hotel when MSNBC showed Sestak ahead by a slim margin with the first precincts reporting in their results.

"I think he is a good man," said Angelo Perryman, 51, a construction company owner. He said he has supported Sestak since the primary and likes how hard Sestak works and that he makes decisions based on information and not politics.

Still, he felt it would be one of those elections "decided by a thousand votes," adding, "I think it will be a late night."

At the Holiday Inn in suburban Allentown where the Toomey camp was assembled, early arrivals, taking one of the "Toomey for Senate" signs offered by campaign workers, anxiously willed the polls to close.

"They're not going to know anything for a while," a man told a friend. "I'm going to the bar."

As befits a state with a strong pragmatic streak, Sestak and Toomey fought over the middle ground, each claiming to be the voice of moderation while painting his opponent as a flaming extremist.

Sestak portrayed Toomey as a corporate tool who cared more about Wall Street than the middle class. He attacked Toomey's support for financial deregulation, for a proposal to allow younger workers to invest some of their Social Security taxes in the stock market, and for free-trade deals that many blame for shipping American jobs overseas, particularly to China.

Toomey countered that Sestak was an extreme liberal who said that the economic stimulus was too small and that there should have been a Medicare-like "public option" in the health-care overhaul.

An estimated $39 million has been spent on the race, according to Federal Election Commission reports tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group.

At least $25 million of that came from the two parties' national Senate campaign committees, which invested heavily in Pennsylvania, along with a slew of third-party interest groups that were freed by a recent Supreme Court decision to use corporate and union money to directly influence elections.

Overall, Toomey had about a $6 million spending edge on his Democratic rival.

Most of the cash went into negative ads on television aimed at voters who had been trending Democratic blue in national races for more than a decade but lurched toward Republicans this year, in response to the angst over the economy that has also swept much of the country.

The campaign was quirky from its inception.

First, five-term Republican Sen. Arlen Specter jumped parties to avoid a GOP primary challenge from the more conservative Toomey. When he made the move in April 2009, Specter said bluntly that polls showed he could not win as a Republican. The party's base had howled for his blood after his vote secured passage of Obama's stimulus.

In 2004, Toomey had come within 17,000 votes out of more than one million cast of beating Specter in the GOP primary.

It turned out Specter couldn't win as a Democrat either.

Obama, Vice President Biden and the entire Democratic establishment backed the veteran lawmaker. Few believed that Sestak could win and officials tried to get him to drop his challenge. Even after he crushed Specter, most Democrats figured that Toomey would win.

Then a few weeks ago the polls started tightening.

Democrats stepped up efforts to tie Toomey to the conservative tea party, a case aided when movement-backed Christine O'Donnell won the GOP Senate nomination in Delaware, defeating longtime Rep. Mike Castle, on Sept. 14. (She was defeated Tuesday.)

Tea Party candidates, who captured a half-dozen GOP Senate nominations, are constitutional strict constructionists who believe in limited government. Some have questioned the constitutionality of Social Security and unemployment benefits, and even the wisdom of direct election of senators.

Sestak mostly went his own way, never clicking with his party's institutional leadership. For instance, he eschewed the practice of paying "street money" to generate turnout in Philadelpha and built his own network of 2,500 poll watchers in the city.

Republicans have held at least one Senate seat in Pennsylvania since the Civil War, except briefly in the 1940s. When Specter switched, the state was represented by two Democratic Senators for the first time since January 1947.