Last week, it was Independent New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsing Joe Sestak over Pat Toomey in the Pennsylvania Senate race. Today, Sestak has been endorsed by Republican, and former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel.
Former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican who has broken ranks in the past with the GOP, gave Democrat Joe Sestak his second major endorsement from moderates in a week in his bid for a hotly contested Senate seat in Pennsylvania.
Hagel told The Associated Press on Monday that Sestak has demonstrated during his two terms in Congress that he puts the interests of the nation and his constituents ahead of his party.
These two endorsements will go a long way toward providing a favorable media narrative for Congressman Sestak. Even if they do not capture the attention of many voters, all reporters covering the campaign will not forget them. As such, it becomes a whole lot easier for Sestak to portray himself as the moderate / pragmatic candidate. A study by Andrew Gelman suggests that being perceived as the moderate candidate can net a candidate 2% of the vote, a margin which could prove decisive in a tight campaign.
There is also a broader context for this endorsement: the continuing domination of the Republican Party by the conservative movement. There are a number of competitive Senate campaigns where Chuck Hagel could have made waves by endorsing the Democratic candidate. It is conspicuous for Hagel to enter the campaign where, effectively, both nominees had defeated Senator Arlen Specter in primaries. By endorsing Sestak, Hagel repudiates the “both parties are equally polarized” narrative, which would be the easy, lazy narrative for Village pundits to hurl at this contest. Hagel’s endorsement places blame for increasing polarization squarely on the GOP, and organizations like the Club for Growth which Toomey used to lead.
It does not matter whether or not Hagel, or Bloomberg, actually intended to create such an implication by endorsing Sestak. Both Sestak and Toomey were able to defeat an icon of bipartisanship in their primaries. For other icons of bipartisanship to be lining up behind Sestak in this campaign, rather than just calling for a pox on both houses, is another example where the claim of equal polarization by both parties rings hollow.
(Additional discussion of the endorsement is going on in deniac83's recommended diary.)