Historic times

Timothy McNulty | April 29, 2009

For the Pennsylvania politics trivia file, from CQ:

When [Specter's] switch becomes official, he will join Democrat Bob Casey in giving Pennsylvania two Democratic senators for the first time since 1946. That was the last full year that Democrats Joseph F. Guffey and Francis J. Myers served together.

In 40 of the 62 years since, Pennsylvania had two Republican senators.

Pennsylvania Democrats thrived in the past few election cycles. Barack Obama carried Pennsylvania last year by a comfortable 10 percentage-point margin over Republican John McCain, giving the Democrats their fifth consecutive presidential election win in the state. Term-limited Democrat Edward G. Rendell is rounding out an eight-year tenure as Pennsylvania's governor.

The Democratic Party also controls 12 of 19 U.S. House seats in the state, after a five-seat gain over the past two election cycles -- even though the congressional map was redrawn by Republican legislators prior to the 2002 elections and was contested by Democrats in court as unfair.

"These are dark times for the Republican Party, which has had a rich tradition in Pennsylvania," said Christopher Borick, a political scientist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. "Every party has ups and downs, but this, to use a market analogy, appears to be a bottom for them."