Rep. Patrick Toomey stopped by the offices of The New York Sun a little more than a year ago to denounce Senator Specter of Pennsylvania as a “career liberal.” Mr. Toomey was making a bold move by challenging an incumbent senator in a Republican primary, and he acknowledged back then that he’d have an uphill fight. “He’ll have more money than me. He’ll spend more money than me,” he said.

The Republican primary in which Pennsylvania Republicans chose between Mr. Toomey and Mr. Specter was yesterday. At press time, it looked as if Mr. Specter had staved off the Toomey challenge. We tend to put a lot of stock in the wisdom of the voters, and if Mr. Specter prevails, he deserves congratulations for his victory.

Still, time is on Mr. Toomey’s side. In this race, Mr. Toomey was outspent more than two to one. President Bush campaigned for Mr. Specter. Yet Mr. Toomey still managed a decidedly respectable showing — a lot healthier than one might have expected a year ago, when plenty of Pennsylvania voters didn’t even know who Mr. Toomey was.

Mr. Toomey was by far the more pro-growth candidate in this campaign, favoring smaller government and supply-side tax cuts. He criticized Mr. Specter for cozying up to Syrian dictators. Mr. Toomey is, at age 42, also the younger candidate. Mr. Specter is 74. Yesterday’s results notwithstanding, the future of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania and in America belongs to Mr. Toomey, in more ways than one.

If he ends up having lost to Mr. Specter this time around, we hope he’ll find some other way to serve the public in the future. If a conservative candidate did this well against a better-funded incumbent who had White House support, it’s an easy bet that in future races in which the playing field is more level, it will be the Toomey-type candidates who prevail. It sends a message to the national Republican leadership that the party will need to be faithful to its core principles not only as it goes into the presidential race in the fall but as it seeks to build for the future.