WASHINGTON -- As the Senate's Republican leaders draw closer to calling a vote on the controversial rule change that would essentially strip minority Democrats of their ability to block controversial judicial nominees, a liberal group today will begin targeting Pennsylvania's Republican Sen. Arlen Specter through TV ads running in the Keystone State.

Sen. Arlen Specter

The new effort is part of a $5 million campaign by the People for the American Way Foundation aimed at getting moderate GOP senators to vote against the rule change that their leaders -- including Specter's Pennsylvania colleague, Rick Santorum, the Senate's third-ranking Republican -- are promoting. A vote is expected as soon as next week.

Specter, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, which ushers judicial nominees through the confirmation process, is still undecided about whether he'll vote for the rule change. He has said he is concerned that it would harm the Senate's longstanding tradition of protecting minority-party rights as well as poison relations between the parties, bringing Senate business to a halt.

The Judiciary Committee is expected to vote tomorrow on two of the most controversial previously blocked judicial nominees: Priscilla R. Owen, a Texas Supreme Court justice, and Janice Rodgers Brown, an associate justice on the California Supreme Court. One or the other is expected to be the nominee who will spark debate on the rule change.

Under current rules, the minority party can block judicial nominees with a procedural move known as a filibuster, in which senators refuse to cut off their debate. Sixty votes are required for cloture that ends debate and allows an up-or-down vote on a nominee to occur.

Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has said that if Democrats refuse to stop blocking nominees -- so far, they have blocked 10 of President Bush's most conservative nominees and confirmed 215 of them -- he will ask the Senate as soon as next week to lower to a simple majority the threshold to end debate on judicial nominees. Changing the rule would require a simple majority as well, 51 votes.

Specter is one of some eight Republican senators who still haven't made up their mind about such a change. Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and John McCain of Arizona have said they will break ranks and oppose the change.

With the Senate split among 55 Republicans, 44 Democrats and one Independent, Democrats would need three more Republicans to join them to defeat the proposed rule change.

In the ad airing today in Pennsylvania and other states, a man identified as firefighter Ted Nonini tells viewers that he is a "common sense Republican" who says he is troubled because the government "is getting into the most private things a family can experience" and criticizing federal judges -- a reference to Congress' recent unsuccessful bid to halt the medical measures that ultimately ended the life of a brain-damaged Florida woman, Terri Schiavo.

As images of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and Frist appear on screen, Nonini says he disapproves of public officials bringing religion into politics. Then he criticizes the proposed filibuster rules change, urging voters to "preserve checks and balances" by supporting the right to filibuster judicial nominees. Nonini appeared yesterday at the Capitol with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Groups on the opposing side of the debate have been pressuring the same senators to agree to the change, arguing that it is Democrats who are defying more than 200 years of Senate tradition by denying the president up-or-down votes on his judicial nominees. Frist has said he is continuing to seek a compromise with Senate Democrats and, in a statement yesterday, he underscored that the potential rule change would end filibusters only for judicial nominees -- not other legislative issues.

"If I must act to bring fairness back to the judicial nomination process, I will not act in any way to impact the rights of colleagues when it comes to legislation," Frist's statement said. "Senate rules and practices now provide many tools for members, and leaders, to see legislative ideas brought to an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor, and there is no need for change in relation to legislative matters."