After two polls that I wrote about yesterday and today, both of which show former Pa. Governor Tom Ridge outperforming Pat Toomey in a matchup against Arlen Specter, it’s not surprising that Ridge is apparently seriously considering getting into the race:
Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge (R) is seriously considering a 2010 bid for the Senate seat held by Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter and will make his decision in the next two weeks, according to several sources familiar with his thinking.
Ridge is perhaps the state’s most decorated Republican, having held a House seat for more than a decade, spent eight years as governor and served as the first secretary of homeland security under President George W. Bush. He was also mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick for Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) in 2008.
If he ran, he would almost certainly face primary opposition from former congressman Pat Toomey, a conservative who came within two points of knocking off Specter in the 2004 Republican primary. Toomey has made it clear that he is in the race regardless of whether Ridge, who is considered to be a moderate, runs.
Polling suggests that Ridge would be more competitive than Toomey against Specter, who left the GOP last week, in a general election. In a new survey by Quinnipiac University, Specter leads Ridge by a narrow margin of 46 percent to 43 percent, while he holds a 20-point margin over Toomey.
“This is a statement of the obvious fact that Pat Toomey is not yet well known by statewide general-election voters,” Toomey communications director Nachama Soloveichik said about the Quinnipiac numbers. “Where he is well known, by general-election voters in the swing 15th District and by statewide Republicans, he is overwhelmingly popular.”
That last comment is cute, but largely meaningless.
First, it’s not surprising that Toomey is polling well in the 15th District since he represented that District for six years up until 2005. Second, the 15th District isn’t exactly representative of Pennsylvania as a whole since it includes the heavily Republican areas of Eastern Pennsylvania and doesn’t include any of the voter-rich, and heavily Democratic, areas around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. So how he does in the 15th District doesn’t really say anything about how he’ll do statewide.
No doubt both Ridge and Toomey are conducting internal polls on a potential race and, before long, I’m sure we’ll see public ones as well. Something tells me Toomey won’t do as well against Ridge as he did against Specter.
H/T: Poliblog
