Returning to his duties as D.A., Specter gained added notoriety by adopting "an unorthodox method of defusing explosive tensions among rival teenage street gangs by hiring two warring gang leaders to work in a "consulting capacity in his office." He also helped restore death-penalty statutes in Pennsylvania and prosecuted innumerable cases involving consumer fraud. He was easily reelected for a second four"'year term in 1969. Specter was fast becoming the darling of the Republican Party.
In the early 1970s, smarting from the tangled web of Watergate, Republicans began losing elections in droves. Despite his personal popularity with the people of Philadelphia, Specter became a victim of this anti"'Republican trend, and was defeated for reelection in 1973. Following his defeat, he returned to private practice, quickly becoming one of Philadelphia's highest-paid attorneys. Over the next several years, he would run unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate (1976), losing to Representative H(enry) John Heinz III, and two years later, for Pennsylvania Governor, losing the nomination to then U.S. Attorney (and future United States Attorney General) Richard Thornburgh.
In 1980, when Senator Richard S. Schweiker (1926- ) announced his retirement, Specter quickly jumped into the race. This time he emerged victorious, easily defeating former Pittsburgh Mayor Peter F. Flaherty (1924-2005). Specter ran on a traditional Republican platform of lower taxes and reduced federal regulation. Some found it remarkable that a man would leave a $250,000-a-year law practice to take a seat in the United States Senate, which in 1980 paid $60,662.50. Specter's explanation was characteristically straightforward: "You can do a lot more in the U.S. Senate than you can in a Philadelphia skyscraper charging $300 an hour."
Once in the Senate, Specter devoted a tremendous amount of time seeing to the needs of his constituents. As a Jewish Republican elected from a largely non"'Jewish, industrial state, he had but little choice. Ever the unorthodox, battling district attorney, Specter soon gained a reputation for being one of the Senate's most combative members. As chair of the Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on Juvenile Justice, Specter held hearings on his "big four" subjects: kids, sex, drugs, and violence. During the hearings, Specter paraded before the cameras such unusual witnesses as "former porno star Linda Lovelace, the children's television host Captain Kangaroo and some of the jurors who had sat in judgment on John Hinckley, the man convicted of attempting to assassinate President Ronald Reagan." One Specter biographer noted, "The media loved it, but some of Specter's colleagues in the Senate clearly did not. Many observers wondered just what Linda Lovelace, Captain Kangaroo and a bunch of former jurors had to do with juvenile justice.
When Specter sought to hold hearings on the whereabouts of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi "Angel of Death," Judiciary Committee chair Strom Thurmond refused to offer official committee sanction. Specter persisted, hounding Thurmond until the aged North Carolinian finally relented. Specter held two hearings before Thurmond pulled the plug. When the Pennsylvania Senator could not get Thurmond's permission for a third set of hearings, he defied Senate custom and held them anyway. Through actions such as these, Specter became one of the least"'liked members of the Senate. Undaunted, he continued to hew to an independent line.
During the Reagan years (1980-88), Specter achieved the dubious distinction of voting against the administration more often -- upwards of 40 percent -- than any other Senate Republican. As a fiscal conservative, he called for cuts in the defense budget and a radical overhaul of such politically sensitive subsidies as farm price supports for tobacco, sugar, and peanuts. As a social and foreign policy liberal, Specter voted against prayer in the public schools, aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, and cuts in funding for abortion. Although his voting record did not sit well with either the White House or his senate colleagues, the people of Pennsylvania found much to like; Specter was reelected for a second term in 1986, easily defeating 7th District Representative Robert William (Bob) Edgar.
During his second six"'year term, Specter remained in the public spotlight through positions on both the Judiciary Committee and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. An intrepid interrogator, Specter's pointed questions during the Iran"'Contra hearings led him to conclude that the American intelligence establishment needed a major overhaul. The single piece of legislation to result from these hearings was a Specter proposal creating an independent CIA inspector general. The bill also provided for "presidential disclosure of covert activities, jail sentences for officials who lie to congressional committees, and a division of the powers of the director of the CIA into two positions: one heading the CIA, the other acting as a presidential adviser."
It was from his position on the Judiciary Committee that Specter first came to the attention of a national audience. In 1987, he was one of the key players in the committee's hearings on President Reagan's nomination of conservative judge Robert H. Bork for a seat on the United States Supreme Court. Following several rounds of pointed, incisive questions, Specter, resisting tremendous pressure from both the White House and his Republican colleagues came out against the Bork nomination. In a statement to the press, Senator Specter explained, "I reluctantly decided to vote against him because I had substantial doubts about what he would do with fundamental minority rights, about equal protection of the law, and freedom of speech." (In 2012, Bork serves as a legal advisor for presidential candidate Mitt Romney.)
If the Bork hearings brought the Senator's name before the public, the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas made it a household word. During the hearings, Specter challenged Anita Hill, a University of Oklahoma Law School professor (and former student of, ironically, Robert Bork), about her alleged affair with the Supreme Court nominee. His hard"'bitten questioning of the demure Professor caused a cloudburst of invective from some of the most prominent women in America. Notwithstanding his liberal positions on women's issues, Specter became a pariah to American feminists. As a partial result, Specter's margin of victory in his 1992 reelection was an anemic 49%-46% against an unknown, first-time candidate, millionaire Lynn Yaekel, the Director of Women's Studies at Drexel University's College of Medicine.
With the extreme rightward turn of the Republican Party in the post"'Reagan/Bush years, Specter once again went on the offensive. In 1994, he created the Big Tent Political Action Committee, based on his view that "the "Far Right' represents a danger to the [Republican] party and to America." Outlining the Big Tent's philosophy, Specter wrote"
"We believe that the conscience of the individual, not the power of the state, should be paramount on questions such as a woman's right to choose, pray in schools, the teaching of creationism, and other issues recently imposed into the governmental arena. We reject litmus tests, intolerance, bigotry, anti-Semitism and extremism and reaffirm our Party's deep commitment to tolerance, civil rights and the equal protection of the law. . . . We are also working to eliminate the anti"'choice plank from the 1996 Republican platform because this issue of conscience has done more to divide our party than to unite it."
In essence, this became a major plank in Specter's platform in his abortive 1995 run for the White House. Unable to find a sympathetic audience within the ranks of Republican regulars and frustrated by an inability to raise significant funds, Specter dropped out of the race before the first caucus or primary. Asked whether his being Jewish had anything to do with the negligible, even hostile, reception his candidacy has received, Specter said simply, "No, not at all."
Specter's 1998 race for reelection was as easy and lopsided as 1992 had been difficult and nerve-racking. Specter defeated longtime state Representative William R. Lloyd by nearly 800,000 votes. Within days of reelection, Specter published an op-ed piece in the New York Times exhorting his Republican colleagues to reconsider their campaign to impeach President Clinton. Rather than pursuing impeachment, Specter reasoned, the Senate should work out a deal with the President: encourage him to resign from office in exchange for keeping his pension, his freedom and his license to practice law. Specter further argued that if the President refused to resign, he would thereby be liable to criminal prosecution once he left office. Although Specter's article was widely discussed in the media, the White House chose not to issue a response.
In 2004, Specter barely survived a primary challenge from then-Representative Pat Toomey. Specter's margin of victory was a scant 17, 146 votes out of more than 1.4 million cast. Toomey (1961- ), a representative from the Lehigh Valley received a significant portion of his funding from the conservative "Club For Growth," which advocated "limited government, lower taxes, less government spending, free trade, and economic freedom." The group also invented and popularized the term RINO -- a pejorative acronym for "Republican in Name Only" -- of which Arlen Specter, they claimed, was a prime example. RINO or no, Specter had more than $15 million plus the backing -- and campaign appearances -- of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and conservative Senator Rick Santorum. After narrowly defeating Toomey, Specter then went on to defeat Montgomery county-based Representative Joe Hoeffel (1950- ) by nearly 600,000 votes in the general election. In cruising to his 53%-42% victory, Specter outspent Hoeffel $20.3 million to $4.5 million. On April 15, 2009, Toomey announced that he would once again challenge Arlen Specter in the Republican primary. Less than two weeks later, Specter announced his change of party affiliation.
In 2005, despite protests from many of his Republican colleagues who tried in vain to deny him the post, Arlen Specter became chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. At first, Specter "warned" the White House "not to nominate judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade," the decision that legalized abortion. At this point abortion foes protested his appointment, and then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist "pointedly refrained from endorsing him." Then, the Bush White House weighed in on Specter's behalf, along with all Judiciary Committee Republicans. In the end, Specter issued a statement which said, "I have not and would not use a litmus test to deny confirmation to pro-life nominees." Specter would then go on to successfully marshal through two of George W. Bush's Supreme Court nominees: conservatives John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
He has also brought a legalistic approach to foreign policy issues. When Congress was debating military action in post-9/11 Iraq, Specter expressed doubts about "whether Congress can delegate such authority to the president," but nonetheless voted for the resolution. In 2007, he called for President Bush to "share" the decision-making power in Iraq, and "respectfully suggested to the president that he is not the sole decider." He also supported engagement with Syria, and defended Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after she went to Damascus in April 2007. Later that year Specter himself went to Damascus along with Rhode Island Representative Patrick Kennedy and "offered to assist in negotiations between Syria and Israel."
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