Rep. Joe Sestak’s payroll has emerged as a potential wedge issue in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, with Sen. Arlen Specter demanding that Sestak explain why a majority of his campaign employees appear to earn less than the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
“How can you make laws if you don’t follow them yourself?” Specter said in a news release yesterday. “Joe needs to answer a basic question: Has he obeyed the state and federal minimum-wage laws?”
According to Specter’s campaign, Federal Election Commission reports show that 10 of the 16 Sestak campaign workers employed during the last three months of 2009 received less than $7.25 an hour, based on the assumption of a 40-hour workweek. In one case, an employee earned the equivalent of $2.23 an hour, the Specter campaign said.
Several experts in labor law contacted yesterday said that minimum-wage requirements probably applied to political campaigns.
After a campaign stop in Philadelphia yesterday, Sestak said Specter was pushing the issue to camouflage a record, as a longtime Republican senator, of supporting policies hostile to working families.
“It’s dishonest, it’s negative, and it’s just the type of politics Pennsylvanians don’t want to have anymore,” Sestak said.
Asked whether he believed his campaign was in compliance, Sestak said: “We’re doing everything right,” without addressing specific questions raised by his opponent’s analysis of the campaign expenditure reports.
“People come to us, we give them health care [coverage] and other things, we offer them a stipend,” Sestak said. Asked directly whether he was paying the workers a stipend rather than a salary, he said: “Whatever term you want to use.”
He was visiting the Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission in Philadelphia to receive the endorsement of Vets Vision, an organization that battles homelessness among military veterans.
At the event, Rep. Eric Massa (D., N.Y.) also endorsed Sestak, with whom he served in the Navy; Sestak is a retired admiral.
Specter, first elected to the Senate in 1980 as a Republican, is seeking a sixth term – as a Democrat. He switched parties last year and faces a primary challenge from Sestak.
Their battle has turned sharply personal in recent days as Specter’s campaign has pushed the wage issue, seeking to undercut Sestak’s claims to be the champion of workers. And Sestak’s campaign has contended that Specter is guilty of “flat-out perjury” in stating that he had a nearly perfect pro-labor record.
Sestak’s campaign yesterday noted Specter votes against raising the minimum wage in 1999 and 2005 – though he has cast other votes in favor of such increases – and noted that Specter supported the tax-cut policies of President George W. Bush, which benefited the wealthiest Americans.
Read the full Inquirer article here
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