By Alex Roarty
PoliticsPA Staff Writer
roarty@politicspa.com

LANCASTER — U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter received the official state Democratic Party over challenger Joe Sestak on Saturday, giving the senator’s re-election campaign a boost in what will likely be a heated and potentially divisive primary.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Specter  said as he took the podium to uproarious applause and a standing ovation from most of the Democrats gathered for the party’s winter endorsement meeting.

“I’m very proud to have been received to the party of my roots, very proud to be a Democrat, very proud to have a record of supporting the values of the Democratic Party as an independent voice in the senate for 30 years,” he said.

Specter received 229 votes to Sestak’s 72, easily crossing the two-thirds threshold necessary for an endorsement. Specter’s big advantage came from the cities: He won Philadelphia and Allegheny County 84 votes to Sestak’s five.

The senator said he didn’t take the primary battle against Sestak for granted, but he did spend about half of his speech discussing his likely GOP opponent should he win in May,  Pat Toomey.

Specter said he will likely have a difficult battle against “the tea party gang and Toomey.” But he said he’ll defeat Toomey, as he did in the 2004 Republican primary,  because he’s tough enough to stand up to him.

“I can take Toomey on,” the senator said. “I’ve beaten him before.”

But he still must defeat Sestak in a race many Democrats say privately still has danger for the former Republican.  The former admiral made clear in remarks to reporters afterward he isn’t going anywhere.

“It’s going to be a great fight,” he said.

He called the endorsement “just another deal” cut by politicians who haven’t learned the lesson of Brown’s victory in Massachusetts.

“Look, politics is politics,” he told reporters. “But that’s what we don’t like.”

Some Democrats were unsure in the days before the meeting that Specter had enough votes for the endorsement, and the massive snowstorm across the east coast caused concern Friday a quorum would not be present.  But by Saturday afternoon, roughly 300 party members or their proxies had arrived, out of a total of about 400.

“There was movement last night and this morning,” said southwest caucus chairman Jack Hanna, speaking of efforts to lock down member votes. “The Specter people performed their hard work very diligently.”