Pennsylvania's Republican Sen. Arlen Specter will seek a fifth term in the 2004 races. The moderate Republican fended off a primary challenge from conservative Rep. Pat Toomey, winning 51 percent to 49 percent, in the primary. Toomey had branded Specter as too liberal in the race, which was by far the most serious challenge yet to any Senate incumbent in the 2004 election season.

Specter will be facing Democrat Rep. Joseph Hoeffel in the general election. With an eye toward November, the three-term suburban Philadelphia lawmaker is predicting that Specter moved too far to the right in the Republican race to be successful in the general election.

Specter is in line for the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee next year _ a prospect that scares conservatives still smarting over his 1987 vote thwarting the Supreme Court nomination of Robert H. Bork.

Specter spent more than $10 million on his campaign, about three times as much as Toomey. But he also had to fend off a $2 million assault from the conservative anti-tax group Club for Growth, which put other GOP moderates on notice when it targeted Specter as its No. 1 priority this year.

Hoeffel's candidacy leaves the 13th district up for grabs. Democratic state Sen. Allyson Y. Schwartz and Republican ophthalmologist Melissa Brown each defeated primary opponents for a chance to win the seat.

A key congressional race this year will be in the state's 17th district. Democratic Rep. Tim Holden won a close election in a newly drawn Harrisburg-area district in 2002. Republicans chose the son of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, Scott Paterno, to compete against Holden in the general election.

Republican Sen. Rick Santorum drew criticism from gay-rights groups and Democratic presidential candidates after he said in an April 2003 interview with The Associated Press that he believed states have a right to ban gay sex or other private behaviors "antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family."

Gay-rights groups had called for Santorum, the Senate's third-ranking Republican, to resign as Republican chairman of the GOP conference in the Senate. Santorum did not step down and polls since the remarks have shown his popularity made it through the controversy unscathed.

In the 2002 elections, Democrat Ed Rendell defeated state Attorney General Mike Fisher to become the first Philadelphian elected governor since 1914. The time lapse underscores historical tension between Pennsylvania's biggest city and rest of the mostly rural state.