First ad is out in the PA Senate Primary

See the ad on YouTube.

From this morning's Morning Call:

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter ended an advertising standstill with his Democratic primary opponent, U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, with a television ad featuring four former Bethlehem Steel workers.

Specter premiered the first TV ad of the 2010 Senate race on his campaign's Web site late Tuesday night. It's expected to be telecast in select media markets today.

The ad shows four men sitting around a table reminiscing about their steelworking days. When the plant shut down, they no longer qualified for their pension plans. Specter, they say, won back the pensions for 100 steelworkers.

''If Arlen Specter could do this for us, imagine what he can do for the rest of the downtrodden and mistreated workers in Pennsylvania,'' Joe Long, a fourth-generation steelworker, says in the spot.

This first commercial of the campaign is an effort by Specter to remind voters what he has done for the state in his 30 years in office. Sestak, of Delaware County, will need to show what Specter hasn't done.

When asked, Sestak said he was having final meetings about his ads this week. The launch of Specter's ad will probably force Sestak to react quickly.

At the start of the year, Sestak had $5 million on hand that could buy him significant radio and TV airtime as he aims to raise his visibility.

Sestak has trailed Specter by about 20 points in most public opinion polls but is still largely unknown to many Pennsylvanians. A poll released Tuesday by Rasmussen Reports put Sestak just two points behind Specter, a possible indicator of how close this race could get as the May 18 primary nears.