Party affiliation wasn’t a big deal to Specter

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

As Arlen Specter leaves the Senate after 30 years of roll calls, debates, deal-making and votes, the one-time corruption- busting Philadelphia prosecutor and architect of the “single-bullet theory” of the John F. Kennedy assassination says he wouldn’t change a thing about his political path.

Specter began and ended — for now — his political party life as a Democrat, spent the intervening four decades as a Republican, but sees himself as an independent who often bucked party leadership — a choice he sees as ultimately bringing his career in elected office to an end.

“I have always agreed with [John F.] Kennedy that sometimes party asks too much,” Specter, 80, said in his last news-media interview in his Washington, D.C., office Dec. 23. “My tenure in the Senate was really as an independent and whichever, regardless of party label.”

In February 2009, he provided a key vote for President Barack Obama’s economic-stimulus package, the only congressional Republican facing re-election in 2010 to do so. That vote so enraged Pennsylvania Republicans — and solidified GOP support for conservative former U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey — that he returned to the Democratic Party, only to be beaten in its May primary.

It was Specter’s first race as a Democrat, and Democrats who had voted against him for years denied him a sixth term by nominating Joe Sestak instead. Toomey narrowly defeated Sestak in the November election and will succeed Specter when he’s sworn in to office Wednesday.

His independent streak aside, Specter is a survivor, with the physical resilience to stand up to a brain tumor and two run-ins with Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system.

He is Pennsylvania’s longest-serving U.S. senator, savvy enough to court conservatives before primary elections and the rest of the state’s moderate and Democratic voters during general elections while advancing his own influence and interests. He weathered criticism that he staked out positions on both sides of the same, controversial issue.

Specter is unlikely to go down in history as one of the great U.S. senators. But he was widely regarded as a smart, tireless and effective legislator who used his seniority to work the levers of power to serve constituents and bring home tax dollars.

Intellectually, he was head and shoulders above most of his fellow senators and showed a serious national engagement, beyond just taking care of constituents, said Stephen Hess, a former presidential adviser and a senior fellow emeritus in governance studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

“We used to tend to measure our senators on whether they were a show horse or a workhorse,” Hess said. “It’s fair to say that he was both.”

Specter used his willingness to cross party lines on issues to bolster his own clout. In 2001, he won more money for education and debt reduction by voting with Democrats to slice $450 billion from President George W. Bush’s package of tax cuts.

He negotiated $10 billion for medical research when he agreed to vote for the stimulus.

He considers the stimulus vote the most important of some 10,000 he cast in the Senate, and his persistence in winning more money for the National Institutes of Health his most important accomplishment.

“When I’m asked about legacy, I say it’s too early to talk about legacy,” Specter said.

Specter’s friends say party affiliation was usually the last thing on his mind. After he lost his bid for a third term as Philadelphia’s district attorney, Specter asked one of his assistant prosecutors what the young man would do next.

The young man — Ed Rendell — said he thought he’d like to run for district attorney one day.

“Good, I’ll call Billy Meehan,” Specter said, referring to the city’s then-Republican Party leader.

“Gee, Arlen, thanks, but I’m a Democrat,” responded Rendell — who became Philadelphia’s district attorney and mayor and is wrapping up his second term as Pennsylvania’s governor. “That was the first time he knew I was a Democrat.”