Sestak flap amplifies questions about Obama political operation

Rep. Joe Sestak’s admission that the White House tried to lure him out of a primary challenge to Sen. Arlen Specter made Pennsylvania the fifth state this cycle in which the Obama administration has tried unsuccessfully to clear the field for Democratic senate candidates.

The White House or the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have tried unsuccessfully to eliminate or discourage contested primaries in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Ohio, North Carolina and New York.

Many Washington political hands shrugged at White House involvement in races across the country, citing precedent under the Bush and Clinton presidencies. But Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who was White House political director under President Ronald Reagan, said the Obama political operation is “pretty heavy-handed.”

“Ronald Reagan said we don’t take sides in primaries and his own daughter ran. He did not endorse her,” Barbour told The Daily Caller, referring to Maureen Reagan’s unsuccessful 1982 U.S. Senate bid.

The big takeaway for most from Sestak’s admission Thursday – he said the White House offered him a high-profile government appointment to move him out of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary – was that it amplified ongoing questions about the potency of the Obama political operation.

“They’ve been very active but the reality is that they’ve been ineffective,” said a Republican political operative, who pointed out that the White House was also unable to persuade Lisa Madigan and Roy Cooper, the attorneys general in Illinois and North Carolina, to enter their respective Senate races.

Doubts about the White House political operation often center on two men: White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and Patrick Gaspard, director of political affairs. There are whispers about both being on the outs, though Emanuel is all but certain to stay on until after the State of the Union address next January. Gaspard’s future is less clear.

Perhaps nowhere has the White House had more trouble than in New York, where Gaspard has been unable to utilize his connections in the state to get former Tennessee congressman Harold Ford Jr. to stand down from a possible challenge to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and where earlier in the year Gaspard by most accounts mishandled an attempt to persuade Gov. David Paterson to drop the idea of running for reelection.