Both parties want answers about Sestak

WASHINGTON — Republicans and Democrats pressured the White House on Tuesday to disclose whether it had offered a federal job to Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak if he would have dropped his Senate primary challenge against Democratic incumbent Arlen Specter.

Sestak has said repeatedly he received an offer to join the Obama administration if he abandoned the race against Specter, who had switched from Republican to Democrat last year and was the White House's preferred candidate. Sestak said he rejected the job offer. Last Tuesday, he defeated the five-term Specter, capturing the party nomination.

Whether the conversations might have been illegal is unclear without knowing what precisely was said. The law says an administration official cannot use his authority to interfere with the election of any candidate for office. The law also says no one can promise employment in exchange for political activity.

Even White House senior adviser David Axelrod, speaking Monday night on CNN, said such an offer would constitute a breach of the law. But he said the White House has looked into it and Sestak's claim is unfounded.

"We have Joe Sestak telling us that the White House offered him a deal, offered him a job, offered him something if he didn't run for the United States Senate. The White House won't answer the question," said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.

National Democrats have urged the White House to quickly dispatch with the nagging question and focus on the midterm elections, when voters will pick 36 senators, 37 governors and the entire 435-member House.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., said on MSNBC that someone needs to say, "Here are the facts," so people aren't still "talking about this next week."

Idaho primary

splits tea party

BOISE, Idaho — Idaho state Rep. Raul Labrador has won the Republican nomination in the state's 1st Congressional District, pulling an upset over rival Vaughn Ward.

Labrador won Tuesday even though he had a significant fundraising disadvantage and despite launching his bid just six months ago.

He'll face another difficult challenge against first-term Democrat Walt Minnick, who has more than $1 million cash on hand heading into the general election campaign season.

With 409 of 462 precincts reporting, Labrador had 45.6 percent of the vote compared to 40 percent for Ward.

Ward had been designated as one of the National Republican Congressional Committee's top recruits in its "Young Guns" candidate development program.

The election was an unusually tangled battle that divided local and national tea-party activists and raised questions of plagiarism on the campaign trail.

Minnick is notable as the only Democrat nationwide to win backing from the national Tea Party Express, an endorsement that irritated local tea-party activists, who also split over Ward and Labrador.

Tea Party Boise, the state's biggest group, endorsed Labrador while Ward claimed his own tea-party following after winning the backing of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

The race was marked by stumbles by Ward. He was accused of using position statements on his website identical to those posted by Republican candidates in other states.

He came under fire last weekend for allegedly using statements in his campaign kickoff announcement similar to passages in the keynote address Barack Obama gave at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

Author can see

Palin from house

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Sarah Palin has taken to her Facebook page to complain about her new neighbor — a writer penning a book about her.

Joe McGinniss, author of "Going to Extremes," has taken up residence in a house next to Palin's lakeside home in Wasilla.

McGinniss previously wrote a critical exposé on Palin and her natural-gas pipeline plan for the Conde Nast publication Portfolio last year and is planning a book about the former Alaska governor and GOP vice- presidential candidate. It's tentatively titled, "Sarah Palin's Year of Living Dangerously" and could be on the shelves in the fall of 2011.

"Yes, that Joe McGinniss. Here he is about 15 feet away on the neighbor's rented deck overlooking my children's play area and my kitchen window," Palin posted on Facebook late Monday, "And you know what they say about 'fences make for good neighbors'? Well, we'll get started on that tall fence tomorrow," she wrote.

"We're sure to have a doozey to look forward to with this treasure he's penning. Wonder what kind of material he'll gather while overlooking Piper's bedroom, my little garden, and the family's swimming hole?" she wrote.

Neither McGinniss nor his agent were available for comment Tuesday.

His publishing house, Broadway Books, said "his work-in-progress returns him to the 49th state to examine Sarah Palin's significance as both a political and cultural phenomenon and as an embodiment of the contradictory forces that shaped Alaska as it moved into its second half-century of statehood."

Also

Democracy for America, a grass-roots organization founded by former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, is throwing its weight behind a primary challenger to Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the latest attempt by liberal activists to replace an incumbent Democrat they deem too centrist.

The group is backing Marcy Winograd, a high-school teacher and longtime progressive activist who is running for a second time against Harman in California's June 8 primary.

Harman, who has represented the 36th Congressional District along the Pacific Coast in Los Angeles since 1993, has drawn criticism from liberals for her vote to support the Iraq war and for backing former President George W. Bush's administration on several intelligence and homeland-security issues.

Seattle Times news services