By Alex Roarty
PoliticsPA Staff Writer
roarty@politicspa.com
Citing FEC financial disclosure forms, Arlen Specter’s campaign on Thursday accused Joe Sestak of paying nearly half of his campaign staffers below minimum wage, a fact it says shows the congressman is hypocritical about his professed belief that average families and workers make a living wage.
It also highlighted the fact that Sestak paid three of his relatives, his brother and two sisters, more than the the rest of the staffers on the campaign.
The Specter campaign calculated minimum wage to come it at $1,256 a month. It said it paid its staffers $3,800 a month on average in the 4th fiscal quarter last year.
“This is yet another example of Cong. Sestak thinking there’s one set of rules for him, and another for everyone else,” said Christopher Nicholas, Specter’s campaign manager, in a statement. “Sestak needs to explain why he thinks this is acceptable behavior, paying his staff so little that many of them qualify for food stamps.”
The senator’s campaign recently has tried to highlight alleged problems with Sestak’s operation, including recent staff turnover.
Sestak has roughly $5 million on hand, money that is essential for the campaign to be aggressive with TV advertisements in the race’s final stretch. In a statement, a spokesman sought to portray the people working for the campaign as hard-workers committed to electing a principled congressman to the U.S. Senate.
“We are thankful for those staff who have been with the campaign for the last four years, and for the sacrifices they have made,” said spokesman Jonathan Dworkin. “We have a great team and are thankful for everyone who has joined our effort this past year to ensure that we have a Senator who will not run from a fight, hide from the public, make decisions based on pure political calculation to save his job and refuse to discuss the policies needed for Pennsylvania’s working families.
“Everyone on this campaign could be making a lot more somewhere else,” he said. “But they choose to work hard and make some sacrifices because they know how important it is to elect someone to the United States Senate who shares their principles.”
Congressman Sestak’s prospects are bleak. He trails Specter in virtually every public opinion poll. He has a mere $5 million – as compared with Specter’s $9 million. Pivotal staff members are abandoning his campaign. And he has alienated many prominent Democrats – including the President of the United States. So why does Sestak remain in this campaign?
Obviously, there must be some explanation. Its time the press began posing this question. What, exactly, is driving this effort? Is Sestak under federal investigation as some have speculated – and he’s afriad he will be taken into custody if he drops out?