By Alex Roarty
PoliticsPA Staff Writer
roarty@politicspa.com

The Senate campaigns for Democrats Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak engaged in a squabble Sunday over who first staked out a position on troop levels in Afghanistan.

The incumbent Specter held a conference call late last week announcing he would support a troop increase in the Asian country only if it’s deemed necessary to eliminate Al-Qaida. Committing more troops is unpopular with many Democrats, who want to withdraw.

The announcement led Sestak’s campaign Sunday to send a press release stating Specter was “following the leadership of Joe Sestak on a critical issue.”

“Joe has said for months that the mission in Afghanistan-Pakistan must be the eradication of the safe haven of Al-Qaeda in Pakistan — which is a requirement for our national security — and that is a condition for a measured increase in troops,” a Sestak campaign spokesman said.

Less than an hour later Specter’s campaign responded, accusing its challenger of trying to “muddy the waters on Afghanistan.”

“To recap, Sestak has said multiple times that he supports a ‘measured increase’ in troops in Afghanistan” Specter campaign manager Chris Nicholas said in a statement. “In fact he said that on Oct. 19th on ‘Hardball.’”

Specter’s campaign likely sees Afghanistan as a rare chance to stake out a more liberal position than Sestak, who has sought to portray himself as the choice for grassroots progressives. As it did Sunday, Sestak’s campaign is trying to convince voters Specter has taken his new-found liberal stance only because he faces an opponent in the Democratic primary.

It’s also indicative of the contest’s intensity that the two sides exchanged missives on a Sunday, still roughly half-a-year before the primary.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 at 9:08 pm and is filed under PA Reports, PoliticsPA Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.