By John E. Mulligan
Journal Washington bureau

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The biggest political story since Barack Obama's election has a Rhode Island angle.

When he announced his defection to the Democratic Party Tuesday, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter generated shock waves in the Capitol -- and instant speculation that he left the GOP because his political life was at stake.

Specter, one of the last of the vanishing breed of comparatively liberal Republicans from the Northeast, has long planned to run next year for a sixth term in the Senate.

But the resilient Specter faced a tough challenge from the right in the 2010 Republican primary from the man who nearly ended his career in 2004, a native Rhode Islander named Pat Toomey.

Toomey, who was raised in East Providence and schooled at La Salle Academy, won a scholarship to Harvard and went on to make a fortune in business. He became a congressman from Pennsylvania and came close to knocking off Specter in the 2004 GOP primary. Toomey later became chief of the Club for Growth, a Washington-based organization that has specialized in financing federal candidates who support lower federal taxes, among other conservative positions on domestic issues.

Toomey made news in Rhode Island in 2006, when the Club for Growth helped to bankroll Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey's Republican primary challenge to then-Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee. Chafee defeated Laffey in the primary but fell to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in the general election.

Now Chafee, who has since left the Republican Party, is preparing for a possible run for governor as an independent.