Specter says Obama ditched him after he provided 60th vote to pass health reform

Former Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) writes in a new book that President Obama ditched him in the 2010 election after he helped Obama win the biggest legislative victory of his term by passing healthcare reform.

Specter also claims that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not uphold his promise to grant him seniority accrued over 28 years of service in the Senate as a Republican.

Specter, who rocked Washington’s political establishment and made headlines around the country when he left the Republican Party to join Democrats in April of 2009, has kept quiet about these slights until now.

He makes surprising revelations about Republican leaders, as well — he writes that former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) told him that he would have made the same decision to defect from the GOP if he had been in Specter’s position.

Specter says that one of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s (Ky.) first concerns after learning of the impending party switch was that he might be blamed for driving Specter out of the GOP.

Specter declined to discuss the behind-the-scenes machinations of his party switch when he granted an interview with several news outlets on his final day in the Senate, when he reminisced about his career in his hideaway on the first floor of the Capitol.

He promised instead to put the juicy details in his memoir, “Life Among the Cannibals,” which will go on sale later this month. The Hill obtained an advanced copy.

It was written with his former communications director, Charles Robbins.