Arlen Specter
Arlen Specter was an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania from 1981 to 2011. Specter was a Democrat from 1951 to 1965, then a Republican from 1965 until 2009, when he switched back to the Democratic Party. First elected in 1980, he was the longest-serving senator from Pennsylvania, having represented the state for 30 years.
Specter was born in Wichita, Kansas, to Jewish parents who were Russian or Ukrainian immigrants. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and served with the United States Air Force during the Korean War. Specter later graduated from Yale Law School and opened a law firm with Marvin Katz, who would later become a federal judge. Specter served as assistant counsel for the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy and helped formulate the "single-bullet theory". In 1965, Specter was elected District Attorney of Philadelphia, a position that he held until 1973.
During his 30-year Senate career, Specter staked out a spot in the political center. He served as Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2005 to 2007. In 2006, Specter was selected by Time as one of America's Ten Best Senators. Specter lost his 2010 re-election bid in the Democratic primary to former U.S. Navy vice admiral Joe Sestak, who then lost to Republican Pat Toomey in the general election. Toomey succeeded Specter on January 3, 2011.
In 1993, Specter underwent a surgery to remove a brain tumor. In early 2005 he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, but continued his work in the Senate while undergoing chemotherapy. He died from complications of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma on October 14, 2012.
Early life and education
Specter was born in Wichita, Kansas, the youngest child of Lillie and Harry Specter, who grew up in the Bachkuryne village of Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine. Specter was Jewish, and wrote in his memoir, Passion for Truth, that his father's family was the only Jewish family in the village. The family lived at 940 South Emporia Street in Wichita before moving to Russell, Kansas, where he graduated from Russell High School in 1947. Russell is also the hometown of fellow politician Bob Dole. Specter said that his father weighed items from his junkyard on a scale owned by Dole's father Doran Dole. He said his brother Morton and Dole's brother Kenny were contemporaries and friends.Specter's father served in the U.S. infantry during World War I, and was badly wounded. During the Great Depression, Specter's father was a fruit peddler, a tailor, and a junkyard owner. After graduating from Russell High School, Arlen Specter studied first at the University of Oklahoma. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, majored in international relations, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1951. While at Penn, Specter was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. Specter said the family moved to Philadelphia when his sister Shirley was of a marriageable age because there were no other Jews in Russell.
Military career
During the Korean War, Specter served stateside in the United States Air Force from 1951 to 1953 and obtained the rank of first lieutenant as an officer in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.Early legal career and personal life
In 1953, he married Joan Levy. In 1979, she was elected to one of the two allotted minority party at-large seats on the Philadelphia City Council. She held the seat for four terms, until she was defeated for re-election in 1995 by Frank Rizzo Jr. The couple had two sons. Specter graduated from Yale Law School in 1956, while serving as editor of the Yale Law Journal. Afterward, Specter opened a law practice, Specter & Katz, with Marvin Katz, who served as a Federal District Court Judge in Philadelphia, until his death in October 2010. Specter represented Ira Einhorn, known as "The Unicorn Killer," aiding him to get a very low bail for a murder charge. Specter became an assistant district attorney under District Attorney James C. Crumlish Jr., and was a member of the Democratic Party.Early political career
Involvement with the Warren Commission
Specter worked for the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy, at the recommendation of Representative Gerald Ford, who was then one of the Commissioners. As an assistant for the commission, he co-wrote the proposal of the "single bullet theory", which suggested the non-fatal wounds to Kennedy and wounds to Texas Governor John Connally were caused by the same bullet. This was a crucial assertion for the Warren Commission, since if the two had been wounded by separate bullets within such a short time frame, that would have demonstrated the presence of a second assassin and therefore a conspiracy. Regarding this particular subject, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that JFK's assassination was probably a product of a conspiracy, but this conclusion was based partially on acoustic evidence that was later called into question.Initial electoral campaigns
In 1965, Specter ran for Philadelphia district attorney against his former boss, incumbent James C. Crumlish Jr. However, the city's Democratic leaders, such as Peter Camiel, did not want Specter as their candidate, so he switched parties and ran as a Republican, prompting Crumlish to call him "Benedict Arlen". Specter defeated Crumlish by 36,000 votes. Although he was a supporter of capital punishment, as a prosecutor he questioned the fairness of the Pennsylvania death penalty statute in 1972.In 1967 he was the Republican Party standard bearer, together with City Controller candidate, Tom Gola, in the Philadelphia mayoral campaign against the Democratic incumbent James Tate. Two of their slogans were, "We need THESE guys to watch THOSE guys" and "They're younger, they're tougher, and nobody owns them!" He served two four-year terms as district attorney for the city of Philadelphia, but was handily defeated in his bid for a third term in 1973 by noted criminal defense attorney F. Emmett Fitzpatrick.
In 1976, Specter ran in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate and was defeated by John Heinz. In 1978, he was defeated in the primary for Governor of Pennsylvania by Dick Thornburgh. After several years in private practice with the Philadelphia law firm Dechert, Price & Rhoads, Specter ran again for the U.S. Senate in 1980. This time, he won, and assumed office in January 1981.
Senate career
In 1988, he co-sponsored an amendment to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited discrimination in the rental, sale, marketing, and financing of the nation's housing. The amendment strengthened the ability of the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity to enforce the Fair Housing Act and expanded the protected classes to include disabled persons and families with children. In 1998 and 1999, Specter criticized the Republican Party for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Believing that Clinton had not received a fair trial, Specter cited Scots law to render a verdict of "not proven" on Clinton's impeachment. However, his verdict was recorded as "not guilty" in the Senate records.In October 1999, Specter was one of four Senate Republicans to vote in favor of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The treaty was designed to ban underground nuclear testing and was the first major international security pact to be defeated in the Senate since the Treaty of Versailles.
On October 11, 2002, Specter voted in favor of H.J.Res.114 authorizing the Iraq War.
In a 2002 PoliticsPA Feature story designating politicians with yearbook superlatives, he was named the "Toughest to Work For". In 2003, the Pennsylvania Report, a subscription-based political newsletter, described Specter as one of the "vanishing breed of Republican moderates", and described his political stance as "'Pennsylvania first' middle of-the-road politics", even though he was known as an "avid Republican partisan".
Soon after the 2004 election, Specter stepped into the public spotlight as a result of controversial statements about his views of the future of the Supreme Court. At a press conference, he stated:
Activist groups interpreted his comments as warnings to President George W. Bush about the implications of nominating Supreme Court justices who were opposed to the Roe v. Wade decision. Specter maintained that his comments were a prediction, not a warning. He met with many conservative Republican senators, and based on assurances he gave them, he was recommended for the Judiciary Committee's chairmanship in late 2004. He officially assumed that position when the 109th Congress convened on January 4, 2005.
On March 9, 2006, a revision of the USA PATRIOT Act was signed into law. It amended the process for interim appointments of U.S. Attorneys, a clause Specter wrote during his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The change allowed the Bush Administration to appoint interim U.S. attorneys without term limits, and without confirmation by the Senate. The Bush administration used the law to place at least eight interim attorneys into office in 2006. Specter claimed that the changes were added by staff member Brett Tolman. For more information, see dismissal of U.S. Attorneys controversy.
File:Arlen Specter.jpg|thumb|left|Specter, while he was being interviewed by Margot Adler for an episode of Justice Talking on "Presidential signing statements".
Specter was very critical of Bush's wiretapping of U.S. citizens without warrants. When the story first broke, he called the effort "inappropriate" and "clearly and categorically wrong". He said that he intended to hold hearings into the matter early in 2006, and had Alberto Gonzales appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer for the program. On January 15, 2006, Specter mentioned impeachment and criminal prosecution as potential remedies if Bush proved to have broken the law, though he downplayed the likelihood of such an outcome.
On April 9, 2006, speaking on Fox News about the Bush administration's leaking of classified intelligence, Specter stated: "The President of the United States owes a specific explanation to the American people." However, he did vote for the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which placed federal electronic searches almost entirely within the executive branch.
During the 2007–2008 National Football League season, Specter wrote to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell concerning the destruction of New England Patriots "Spygate" tapes. Specter, a devout and longtime Philadelphia Eagles fan, wondered if there was a link between the tapes and their Super Bowl victory over the Eagles in 2005. On February 1, 2008, Goodell stated that the tapes were destroyed because "they confirmed what I already knew about the issue". Specter released a follow-up statement:
Starting in 2007, Specter sponsored legislation to fix a long-standing inequity in American law that shut out a majority of U.S. Armed Forces service members convicted in courts-martial from appealing their convictions to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 2007, Specter co-sponsored the Equal Justice for United States Military Personnel Act of 2007 with Senators Dianne Feinstein, Hillary Clinton and Russ Feingold. But the bill failed in the 110th Congress, and Specter again co-sponsored the measure in the 2009 111th Congress. In December 2008, Specter was involved in a controversy as a result of telling "Polish jokes" at New York's Rainbow Room while speaking at the annual meeting of the Commonwealth Club.
Specter voted in favor of the Senate's version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 on February 10, 2009; he was one of only three Republicans to break ranks with the party and support the bill, which was favored by President Barack Obama and was unanimously supported by the Democratic senators. As a result of his support, many in the Republican mainstream began calling for his removal from office.
Specter was instrumental in ensuring that the act allocated an additional $10 billion to the National Institutes of Health over the next two years. In August 2009, more than ten years before the global COVID-19 pandemic, he joined Pennsylvania congressman Jason Altmire in leading a congressional hearing investigating whether the federal government should fund a national vaccine production center.
In late April 2009, facing the prospect of a tough Republican primary in 2010, Specter decided to switch to the Democratic Party, putting the Democrats on the "precipice" of a 60-seat majority that would allow them to pass legislation without Republican votes. Nevertheless, his new Democratic colleagues refused to let him retain his nearly 30 years of seniority on Senate committees. This effectively reduced him to the status of a freshman and greatly curtailed his influence in the chamber.
In October 2009, Specter called for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, which he had supported in 1996. In November 2009, Specter introduced a bill to require televising U.S. Supreme Court proceedings, and explained that "he Supreme Court makes pronouncements on constitutional and federal law that have direct impacts on the rights of Americans. Those rights would be substantially enhanced by televising the oral arguments of the Court so that the public can see and hear the issues presented."
Specter's career in the United States Senate ended on January 3, 2011, after his primary defeat to Joe Sestak. He was succeeded by Republican U.S. Representative Pat Toomey, who won the general election against Sestak.