Arlen Loses His Seniority

From The Washington Post:

The Senate dealt a blow tonight to Sen. Arlen Specter's hold on seniority in several key committees, a week after the Pennsylvanian's party switch placed Democrats on the precipice of a 60-seat majority.

In a unanimous voice vote, the Senate approved a resolution that added Specter to the Democratic side of the dais on the five committees on which he serves, an expected move that gives Democrats larger margins on key panels such as Judiciary and Appropriations.

But Democrats placed Specter in one of the two most junior slots on each of the five committees for the remainder of this Congress, which goes through December 2010. Democrats have suggested that they will consider revisiting Specter's seniority claim at the committee level only after the midterm elections next year.

And looks like he's got some work to do:

Specter, after 43 years as an active Republican, will have to prove his Democratic loyalty over the next 20 months to his colleagues in order to win their support for his seniority. That effort has gotten off to a rocky start following an interview he gave with the New York Times Magazine, to be published this Sunday.

Specter joked about how Norm Coleman could possibly win his legal contest and reclaim his Minnesota Senate seat, assuring there would still be at least one Jewish Republican in the chamber. Specter backtracked from those comments in an interview with Congressional Quarterly today, "In the swirl of moving from one caucus to another, I have to get used to my new teammates," he told CQ. "I'm ordinarily pretty correct in what I say. I've made a career of being precise. I conclusively misspoke."

Here's the Congressional Quarterly interview.