Robert P. Casey Jr.

He showed no deference yesterday morning, during his first news conference since becoming senator-elect.

With the debris of Tuesday night's victory celebration not yet cleared away, Mr. Casey called for Senate colleagues to change legislative priorities, to hold President Bush more accountable for the war in Iraq, to debate the federal budget more openly, to reduce the federal deficit and to stop bickering.

"The environment [in Washington] is so poisonous and we've got to work very hard ... to take some of the hostility out of Washington," he said.

Lawmakers "are not machines that spit out policy. They're human beings and there's been a breakdown, not just over policies, but a breakdown in how people treat each other, how they interact as human beings."

Unless lawmakers get past that, there will be no resolution to controversial social and political issues such as wartime policy, access to emergency contraception and abortion, he said. Those are important issues to Mr. Casey, a rare anti-abortion Democrat, but they don't top his political agenda. His first priorities in Washington will be working to increase the federal minimum wage, to provide health care to uninsured children, to reduce the deficit by identifying wasteful spending and to bring American soldiers home from Iraq.

Democratic candidates like Mr. Casey have been playing on the growing anti-GOP sentiment all season by criticizing the Republican administration's position on Iraq.

"We need to focus on a strategy that isn't just, 'Stay the course,' and 'We'll figure it out,' and 'Trust us,' " Mr. Casey said. "There has got to be a very clear plan with very specific benchmarks. The president is the commander in chief and he should set the benchmarks."

Legislators' role, meanwhile, is to hold the president accountable, he said.

"This Congress failed the American public when it didn't ask questions and didn't demand answers to those questions. I'm going to make sure that as a U.S. senator from this state that already lost 136 lives [in Iraq], that we work very, very hard to begin getting answers to those questions, " Mr. Casey said.

Mr. Casey said that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should be replaced -- something that happened just a few hours later when Mr. Rumsfeld resigned and Mr. Bush nominated former CIA Director Robert Gates to take his place.

"It's not the whole answer, but it sends a message to the American people that you get it, that you can't have a new strategy on Iraq unless you change leadership," Mr. Casey told 25 reporters yesterday morning during a news conference at the Scranton Cultural Center, where debris from the previous evening's victory party still covered the floor.

Mr. Casey and his wife, Terese, stepped around a pile of bunting and over trampled campaign signs, crushed plastic cups, deflated balloons, rose petals and cocktail napkins to reach the podium.

He expected to spend the rest of the day calling supporters while Mrs. Casey said she was eager to delve into the day's newspapers to read accounts of her husband's victory over Republican incumbent Rick Santorum.

Mr. Santorum, who owns a home in Penn Hills, held the seat for 12 years. As the Senate's third-ranking Republican, he had enough influence to bring dollars back home to Western Pennsylvania, including grants for the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. As a member of the Senate Finance Committee, he worked on a bill that ultimately allowed West Penn Hospital employees to preserve pension benefits that had been in jeopardy.

A legislator doesn't have to come from Western Pennsylvania to have an interest in helping the region, Mr. Casey, of Scranton, assured yesterday.

Western Pennsylvania's concerns over the economy and workforce issues are concerns shared by people across the state and across the country, he said.

"The people of Western Pennsylvania don't need to be concerned at all about where their [senator] lives," he said.

For the record, the Casey family intends to stay in Scranton while Mr. Casey legislates from Washington, D.C.

"We're staying here," Mrs. Casey told reporters. "We have two kids in high school; I can't imagine not being here."..... Residency became an issue for Mr. Santorum. He faced fallout over the use of Pennsylvania tax dollars to pay for his children's cyberschool education while the family lived in Virginia.