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Conservative group says it’s contacted 6,000 Specter donors

The conservative Club for Growth said Tuesday that its political action committee had contacted 6,000 individual and committee contributors to Senator Arlen Specter, encouraging them to request that their donations be refunded.

When Specter switched parties earlier this year, he said he would refund campaign contributions upon request (more than $200,000 has been refunded). More recently, he asked that all such requests by made by Oct. 15, the day third quarter FEC campaign finance reports will be published. The Club for Growth, which was formally headed by Republican Senate candidate Pat Toomey, won an FEC ruling in August allowing it to contact Specter’s donors.

In a statement Tuesday, the group said letters had been sent to almost 5,657 individuals and 349 political action committees.

Meanwhile, Democratic primary opponent Joe Sestak’s campaign has taken to criticizing Specter for raising money from Democrats while giving refunds to Republicans, saying that Specter is essentially using “Democrats’ money to pay off of his outstanding obligations to his Republican friends.”

October 6, 2009 at 1:49 pm

--Dan Hirschhorn

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  1. David Diano

    Oct 6th, 2009

    What f*&^ing gall for Sestak to criticize Specter for being honorable enough to return money to anybody that felt the money wasn’t going to be used as intended.

    WHEN IS SESTAK GOING TO MAKE THE SAME OFFER TO THE SUPPORTERS WHO DONATED MONEY FOR A 7TH DISTRICT RACE THAT HE DUPED???

  2. Greg Kauffman

    Oct 7th, 2009

    I think this can only help Sen. Specter. He still has a comfortable war chest. Rep. Sestak is being a little petty here.

  3. Matt Silva

    Oct 7th, 2009

    What is Petty is when Specter criticized Joe for not voting in Primary elections as an independent. When you donate money to a Democrat, you would kind of like to think that the money doesn’t immediately go to a Republican. I don’t see how this helps Specter, if he switched parties without having the money on hand to return, it shows his switch to be what it is, a last ditch effort to stay in office. It is irresponsible, and I don’t see any really stellar reason why Joe wouldn’t make issue about it. Joe has a lot of ground to gain, so I don’t see much point in holding back anything.
    As far as Joe duping any one, did his announcing his bid for Senate a big surprise? Obviously he still had a bit of a war chest left after his hard fought (yawn) battle with Craig Williams, but it was not the surprise decision of the decade like Specter’s switch was. Dave, maybe you should contact the voters who donated to Sestak and see how many want their money back.
    One final note, what does anyone know about Bill Kortz?

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