Torsella Seeks Specter's Senate Seat

PHILADELPHIA - Philadelphia civic leader Joe Torsella on Monday became the first person to announce plans to challenge Sen. Arlen Specter in next year's election.

Torsella, 45, a Democrat who lives in Flourtown, is a former president of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and is the current chairman of the State Board of Education.

Torsella said he filed paperwork Monday to form a campaign committee so he can raise and spend money for the Democratic primary. He said he has been hiring staff and traveling around the state in advance of the formal announcement of his candidacy in the spring.

Several other prospective Democratic candidates are known to be considering bids for the nomination to take on Specter, a Republican who has said repeatedly he plans to seek a sixth six-year term.

They include U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz, state Rep. Josh Shapiro and state Auditor General Jack Wagner. MSNBC political commentator Chris Matthews, a Philadelphia native, flirted with the idea but said last month he would remain in television.

Torsella has never held elected office. He served as a deputy to now-Gov. Ed Rendell when he was Philadelphia mayor in the 1990s and led the Constitution Center, a nonprofit museum near Independence Hall dedicated to educating visitors about the U.S. Constitution, from a concept in 1996 to its opening in 2003.

"The largeness of the challenge doesn't faze me," he said when asked in a telephone interview about the prospect of taking on an entrenched incumbent in his first statewide campaign.

Specter's campaign is expected to have a substantial amount of money. At the end of 2008, nearly two years before the election, his committee had $5.8 million on hand, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Torsella said he would provide details about his fundraising when he formally announces his candidacy.

Torsella quit the museum to run for a suburban Philadelphia congressional seat in 2004, but lost the Democratic primary to Schwartz. He returned to the center in 2006 for what was described as a transitional tenure that recently ended.

A political moderate, Specter is the longest-serving senator in Pennsylvania's history. He narrowly fended off a 2004 primary challenge from then-U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey, who now heads the conservative Club for Growth in Washington.

The senator, who turns 79 on Thursday, has survived bouts with cancer during his tenure, including treatment last year for a recurrence of Hodgkin's disease, but he maintains a busy schedule that includes daily games of squash.

No challenger has emerged from within the GOP so far.

Toomey has said he is considering a possible run for governor in 2010.