Former President Bill Clinton is making a trip to Johnstown as part of a final push for special election nominee Mark Critz.

Most public polls show the Democrat in a statistical tie with businessman Tim Burns (R), even though Critz’s former boss, the late Rep. John Murtha (D), always won re-election by overwhelming margins.

Clinton will headline a rally at the Pasquerilla Conference Center on Sunday, two days before voters go to the polls.

In related news, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Burns has loaned his campaign another $155,000. He has already given it $221,000.

Both the National Republican Congressional Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have spent heavily in the race, as have some independent expenditure groups.

Obama Vouches for Specter in Campaign Ad

As a daily tracking poll showed Rep. Joe Sestak and Sen. Arlen Specter still in a virtual tie for the Democratic Senate nomination, Specter went up with a spot Tuesday full of praise from President Barack Obama.

“Arlen Specter cast the deciding vote for the Recovery Act that pulled us back from the brink,” Obama says in the ad. “You know he’s going to fight for you regardless of what the politics are.”

The footage is from an event Obama did for Specter earlier this year. It ends with Obama telling the crowd, “I love you and I love Arlen Specter.”

Sestak’s campaign is airing an ad with former President George W. Bush praising Specter when the 30-year Senator was a Republican.

In the tracking poll, conducted May 7-10, 47 percent of likely primary voters favored Sestak and 43 percent preferred Specter.

The poll’s margin of error was 5 points. That poll, conducted by Muhlenberg College for the Allentown Morning Call, and other surveys have consistently found the two candidates very close. But for much of the race, the edge had gone to Specter.