Sen. Arlen Specter (R) Elected 1980, 4th term up 2004
Born:	Feb. 12, 1930, Wichita, KS
Home:	Philadelphia
Education:	U. of PA, B.A. 1951, Yale U., LL.B. 1956
Religion:	Jewish
Marital Status:	married (Joan)
Elected  Office:	Philadelphia Dist. Atty., 1965-73.
Military Career:	Air Force, 1951-53.
Professional Career:	Practicing atty., 1955-56, 1974-80; Asst. Cnsl., Warren Comm., 1964; PA Asst. Atty. Gen., 1964-65.
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Arlen Specter, one of the nation's most durable career politicians, has held public office and has been an important national figure off and on for nearly four decades. Specter grew up in Russell, Kansas, also the hometown of Bob Dole; his father was an immigrant who worked as a tailor, owned a junkyard and sent four children through college. Specter came to Philadelphia at 17 to attend the University of Pennsylvania. After college he served in the Air Force, went to Yale Law School and practiced law in Philadelphia. In 1964 he was a top staffer for the Warren Commission investigating the Kennedy assassination, where he helped develop the single-bullet theory; at one point, he held Oswald's weapon and aimed it out the Texas Schoolbook Depository window toward Dealey Plaza. After the Warren Commission, he returned to his law practice, switched to the Republican Party, and was elected district attorney in Democratic Philadelphia in 1965 and again in 1969. He lost the race for D.A. in 1973, and was beaten in Republican primaries for senator in 1976 and governor in 1978. In 1980 he ran for the Senate again. He narrowly (36%-33%) edged a former state Republican chairman in the primary and beat a low-spending Democrat 50%-48% in the general. In 1986, he won re-election by a 56%-43% margin; in 1992 he was re-elected 49%-46% after he became a target of feminists for his questioning of Anita Hill during the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas. He ran for president in 1995, but withdrew before the first caucus or primary.

Throughout this career of narrow victories and numerous defeats, Specter's assets have been brains and hard work. He is respected by colleagues and constituents, though not always well-liked. He sides with conservatives on some divisive issues, with liberals on others, building up no permanent credit with either. He is aggressive and prosecutorial, well-prepared and persuasive once he takes a stand. These traits are both his strengths and weaknesses; they explain why he was vulnerable in 1992, and why he won; why he ran for president, and why his campaign went nowhere. His voting record is almost precisely at the midpoint of the Senate, and he has played key roles on a variety of issues. Though he switched and voted to override Bill Clinton's partial-birth abortion veto, he is generally pro-choice on abortion--an issue he featured in his presidential campaign, infuriating many Republican activists. He pushes tough penalties for crime and supports capital punishment. On a closely divided and rancorous Judiciary Committee, he played a key role on several Supreme Court nominations. More than anyone else, he defeated Robert Bork in 1987 and, more than anyone but John Danforth, he secured the confirmation of Clarence Thomas in 1991.

On impeachment, Specter took his own course. ''I propose abandoning impeachment and, after the president leaves office, holding him accountable in the same way any other person would be: through indictment and prosecution for any federal crimes established by the evidence," he said in November 1998. In February 1999, in a decision he called "a lot ambiguous, maybe even a little amorphous," Specter said he would vote for the Scotch verdict of "not proven." "I think it is important to make a distinction that I do not believe that the president is not guilty," he said. "It's a trial on which you can't really come to a verdict because of the absence of witnesses and the absence of relevant evidence." In February 2001 he held hearings on Clinton's last-minute pardons of Marc Rich and others, and on one television news show said tantalizingly, "I'm not suggesting it should be done, but President Clinton technically could still be impeached." But he declined to call on Clinton to testify.

On many issues, Specter has been one of the few Republicans voting with Senate Democrats--on the Republican tax cut in August 1999, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in October 1999, the minimum wage in November 1999, on the federal tobacco lawsuit in July 2000, HMO regulation in July 2000. He quickly supported the nomination of John Ashcroft, but in May 2001 he said the administration should let the American Bar Association play a role in vetting nominees before they were announced. With Lincoln Chafee and Jim Jeffords, he played a critical role in May 2001 in reducing the Bush tax cut from $1.6 trillion to $1.3 trillion. He voted for the farm bill in May 2002 because of its dairy provisions. He was one of four Republicans to vote for the Graham-Smith prescription drug bill in July 2002. He opposed George W. Bush's $250,000 limit on pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice cases, arguing that there should be no limit for egregious cases of severe bodily impairment, disfigurement or death; his son Shanin Specter is a Philadelphia malpractice lawyer who won a $49 million settlement in 2000.

To foreign policy he often brings a legalistic approach. In March 1998 he said that Saddam Hussein should be tried as a war criminal. His May 1999 amendment to the defense authorization bill, invoking the War Powers Act to prevent the deployment of ground troops in the former Yugoslavia, failed 52-48. He has taken the lead in making contacts with supposed moderates in the Iranian government, sending a letter to Tehran seeking talks in spring 2000, meeting with a delegation of Iranian legislators in August 2000 and hosting a dinner for the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations in October 2001. In November 2001 he questioned the administration's proposal for military tribunals. In July 2002 he called for a congressional vote on military action in Iraq. "We have a responsibility institutionally under the Constitution to declare war, and we have a responsibility to acquaint the American people as to what is involved." In debate on the resolution in October, he expressed doubts about whether Congress can delegate authority to president, but he voted for the resolution. In January 2003 he said it was not necessary for the United States to go back to the UN Security Council before taking action, but "realistically we should."

Specter has played a major role in encouraging medical research. He has supported changes in federal organ transplant policy in 1998 (Pittsburgh has a big organ transplant hospital) and called in 1999 for research on stem cells from human embryos. He and Tom Harkin, working from the Appropriations subcommittee they chaired, successfully completed their project of doubling the research budget of the National Institutes of Health in five years. In 2002 he sponsored one of the two major competing bills on stem cell research. Specter's bill would allow embryonic stem cell research but ban cloning for reproductive purposes; his chief co-sponsors were Harkin and Orrin Hatch. For most of the year he skirmished with Sam Brownback, sponsor of a bill that would ban embryonic stem cell research. In September 2002 Specter claimed he had 60 votes for his bill, but it was not brought to the floor. Specter is quick to act in response to breaking news. In 1999, when Pennsylvania was financing new stadiums in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, he called for a 50% limit on public contributions to stadiums and for teams to set aside 10% of television revenues to pay for them; when a baseball strike loomed in 2002, he called for hearings on baseball's 80-year-old exemption from the antitrust laws. When the Clinton administration issued a report on medical errors, he held two quick hearings in two months, one on a day when the government was closed by a blizzard, and was the first senator with legislation on the subject.

Specter is not shy about using his place on the committee to funnel money into Pennsylvania, from the Philadelphia Navy Yard to Lake Erie. He has promised to work to keep the Tobyhanna Army Depot off the base-closing list in 2005.

After Jim Jeffords left the Republican party in May 2001, Specter was given a position in the leadership as a representative of Republican moderates. After the Jeffords switch, he proposed that members could serve only six years combined as chairman or ranking member. In August 2002 the Republican Conference voted for a somewhat different approach: the five months members served as chairmen from January to June 2001 would not be counted as a term as chairman, and members could serve up to six years as ranking minority member after serving six years as chairman, but once they had been chairman for six years they could no longer serve as ranking minority member. Specter was one moderate who stood by Trent Lott after his comments at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party December 5, 2002. On December 11 he said, "I know Trent Lott very well from working with him in the Senate for the last 14 years and can vouch for the fact that he is no supporter of Senator Thurmond's 1948 platform. His comment was an inadvertent slip and his apology should end the discussion." Specter is known as one of Capitol Hill's sternest taskmasters; a PoliticsPA.com poll of opinion leaders rated him the hardest politician to work for and a Washingtonian poll of Capitol Hill staffers rated him the third "meanest" senator. The Washington Post reported Specter is notorious for his demands on overseas trips, which include daily squash matches at 5:00 p.m., English-speaking drivers, "customs expeditors", and planned excursions for his wife.

Specter comes up for reelection in 2004. In February 2003, Congressman Pat Toomey announced he will challenge Specter in the Republican primary. Toomey, who when first elected in 1998 promised to serve only three terms, is an advocate of tax cuts and an opponent of abortion; both religious conservatives and the Club for Growth had urged him to run. White House political strategist Karl Rove made it clear to Toomey that George W. Bush would support Specter; White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card in February 2003 attended a fundraiser for Specter in Toomey's district. But the Republican primary electorate is more conservative than Pennsylvania as a whole. Specter has had primary opposition every time he has run for reelection. In 1986 he was renominated 76%-24% over a social studies teacher who said he had entered the race at God's urging; in 1992 he won 65%-35% over a state representative who opposed abortion; in 1998 he won with 67% against two candidates who won 18% and 15%. All that suggests that Toomey could probably count on one-third of the primary vote. But he is not well-known and would have to raise considerable sums to get his case to the voters. Should he surprise Washington insiders and upset Specter, he might be vulnerable to the charge that he is an extreme conservative. But it's not clear whether the Democrats will have a strong nominee, and Specter's colleague, Rick Santorum, who has a record on issues similar to Toomey's, has won two Senate elections in Pennsylvania in the last 10 years.

Specter will not lose for lack of money or hard work. By May 2003 he had $7 million in his campaign treasury, and he can easily raise much more. At that point, no prominent Democrats appeared to be interested in making the race. Auditor General Bob Casey Jr., who lost the 2002 gubernatorial nomination to Ed Rendell, is term-limited, but was expected to run for another state post instead. Talk show host Chris Matthews, a Philadelphia native and former top aide to Speaker Tip O'Neill, was mentioned, but not after he signed a seven-year contract with NBC in 2002. Governor Ed Rendell appeared in a TV ad for Specter in 1998, and may not be eager to oust Pennsylvania's high-ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. So it is possible that Specter, even if he encounters trouble in the primary, will face a general election campaign like that in 1998, when his opponent spent only $187,000 and Specter was endorsed by the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers and won 61%-35%, winning 58% in both big metro areas. If he is reelected, Specter will be the first Pennsylvania senator to be popularly elected to five terms, and 10 months into the term he will break the record tenure for a Pennsylvania senator, held by Boies Penrose (1897-1921).

Update: September 23, 2003
On July 8, 2003, Democratic Representative Joe Hoeffel announced he will run against Specter in 2004.

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DC Office
711 HSOB 20510, 202-224-4254; Fax: 202-228-1229; Web site: specter.senate.gov

State Offices
Allentown, 610-434-1444; Erie,814-453-3010; Harrisburg,717-782-3951; Philadelphia,215-597-7200; Pittsburgh,412-644-3400; Scranton,570-346-2006; Wilkes-Barre,570-826-6265.

Committees

• Appropriations: Agriculture & Rural Development; Defense; Foreign Operations; Homeland Security; Labor, HHS & Education (Chmn.); Transportation, Treasury & General Government.
• Governmental Affairs: Financial Management, Budget & International Security; Investigations (Permanent).
• Judiciary: Administrative Oversight & the Courts; Antitrust, Competition Policy & Consumer Rights; Terrorism, Technology & Homeland Security.
• Veterans' Affairs (Chmn.).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	35	60	38	53	8	75	42	85	50	56	--
2001	40	--	42	50	--	--	59	79	56	--	40

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	52%	--	48%		49%	--	49%
Social	57%	--	43%		43%	--	56%
Foreign	58%	--	41%		51%	--	47%
For National Journal's complete 2002 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 107th Congress (More Info)
1. Approve Bush Tax Cuts Y 2. Expand Patients' Rights Y 3. Campaign Finance Reform Y 4. Permit ANWR Development Y 5. Confirm Ashcroft as AG Y 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts N		7. $ for Hate Crime Prosecution N  8. Overseas Military Abortions Y  9. Bar Coop. with Intl. Court N 10. Trade Promotion Authority Y 11. Authorize Force in Iraq Y 12. Homeland Sec. Dept. Union Y

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
1998 general	Arlen Specter (R)	1,814,180	61%	$4,535,887
	Bill Lloyd (D)	1,028,839	35%	$187,157
	Other	114,753	4%
1998 primary	Arlen Specter (R)	376,322	67%
	Larry Murphy (R)	101,120	18%
	Tom Lingenfelter (R)	82,168	15%
1992 general	Arlen Specter (R)	2,358,125	49%	$10,454,793
	Lynn Yeakel (D)	2,224,966	46%	$5,028,669
	John F. Perry (Lib)	219,319	5%	$53,690
Prior winning percentages: 1986 (56%); 1980 (50%)