Arlen Specter Loses Pa. Senate Race: No Escape for a Political Houdini

Arlen Specter's Senate career began in the flush of the Reagan Revolution and will come to a close in the Tea Party era. Over those 30 years, he has been a Republican and a Democrat, a relentless interrogator of prospective judges and justices, a force for medical research, a champion earmarker for his state, and an accidental feminist indirectly responsible for an influx of women into the upper chamber.

Specter, who lost Tuesday to Rep. Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania's Democratic Senate primary, is 80 years old, twice a survivor of cancer, and twice a survivor of such close political calls that analyst Terry Madonna calls him the Houdini of Pennsylvania politics. Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College, also called Specter "the Frank Sinatra of national politics. He was going to do it his way."

The Specter way meant that, as an aide to the Warren Commission in the 1960s, he came up with the single-bullet theory -- that a lone gunman killed John F. Kennedy. It meant roaming afield to Scottish law to deliver a unique "not proven" verdict in the Bill Clinton impeachment trial. It has meant a zig-zag path that has exasperated presidents, colleagues and voters of both parties. As Philadelphia Daily News columnist John Baer put it recently, as Specter listened beside him, "When it comes to Senator Specter, you can predict nothing and expect anything."

That was less true in 2009, when Specter reinforced his new Democratic credentials by voting 96 percent of the time with President Barack Obama, by Congressional Quarterly's calculations. Specter was next most loyal to George W. Bush, voting with him 85 percent to 89 percent of the time from 2001 to 2005. For much of his tenure under presidents of both parties, however, Specter was in moderate territory -- shifting his alignments depending on the issue and his analysis of it. He was not, as he put it, bound by ideology. Nor was he bound by party; he started as a Democrat, ran for Philadelphia district attorney as a Republican in 1964, and came full circle back to the Democratic Party in 2009.

In Pennsylvania, Specter was most renowned for the length of his service, the level of his energy, and the volume of bacon he brought home. More than one analyst uses the word "indefatigable" to describe him. "Not only has he served longer than any U.S. senator in Pennsylvania history, but he has probably delivered more money to more organizations in 30 years than any human being from this state," said Jon Delano, who is political editor of KDKA-TV and teaches public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Beyond Pennsylvania, Specter was a pivotal figure in a number of national dramas. His prosecutorial grilling of Robert Bork, whom Ronald Reagan nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987, was key to Bork's defeat. Specter considers his "no" vote on Bork one of the most important votes he cast. It would be a different world and a different court had Bork won confirmation, he said, because Bork "believed in original intent. He did not believe equal protection applied to women."

Primary Election Coverage:

- Sestak Beats Specter, Paul Wins
- Rand Paul Credits Tea Party for Win
- Who is Joe Sestak?
- Mark Critz Wins Murtha Seat
- John Boozman Wins Senate Primary
- Lincoln, Halter Head to Senate Runoff

Four years later, Specter defended Clarence Thomas -- nominated by another Republican president, George H.W. Bush -- as fiercely as he had fought Bork. This time he used his interrogation skills against Anita Hill, who had accused Thomas of sexual harassment, and ignited a feminist backlash against him and the all-male Judiciary Committee. They made 1992 the Year of the Woman, electing four Democratic women -- Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray and Carol Mosley-Braun -- to join Democrat Barbara Mikulski and Republican Nancy Kassebaum in the Senate. Specter himself came within 3 percentage points of losing to Democrat Lynn Yeakel.

The Senate and the political landscape Specter will leave behind bears almost no resemblance to his 1981 arrival as his state's junior senator. The senior senator at the time was John Heinz, a handsome, moderate food company heir who was interested in the environment, trade policy and issues affecting the elderly. Specter and Heinz were among many moderate and liberal Republicans in Congress back then. Now there are two -- Maine's Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe -- and maybe three depending on what path Massachusetts' Scott Brown decides to follow.

For many years, Republicans welcomed Specter's support on fiscal and foreign policy, and tolerated his support for gay rights and legal abortion. But as he prepared for a 2004 primary against conservative Pat Toomey, Specter voted to ban late-term "partial birth" abortions except to save a woman's life; to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage, and to block an extension of an assault weapons ban. He nearly lost to Toomey anyway, and polls showed he definitely would have lost a rematch this year.

In the years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Specter examined Bush's warrantless wiretapping program in hearings and championed limits on executive power. In a final and perhaps fitting irony, two votes he counts as his most significant came in the past 18 months in support of a Democratic president. One was late last year when, as a new Democrat, Specter helped break a filibuster against a comprehensive health reform bill, then voted for it. On CNN last weekend, he called the health bill "the most important legislation" passed in his 30-year career.

Specter also cites as momentous his vote early last year for Obama's economic stimulus package -- possibly the most important vote of his career, even more important than Bork, he recently told the Pennsylvania Press Club. Still a Republican then, Specter defied enormous GOP pressure to oppose the package. Instead he negotiated for such provisions as more money for medical research, then voted yes in order to prevent the country from falling into a 1929-style depression. "I put my job on the line in order to save jobs for Pennsylvanians," he said last month in Bethlehem.

It was a principled vote, in Specter's telling, that ensured he would lose a Republican primary rematch against Toomey. Two months later, explaining with his trademark bluntness that his prospects within the GOP were "bleak," Specter became a Democrat.

"My party does not define me," Specter said then. But in the end he was defined by his party -- not his new one but the one that elected him to the Senate and sent him back four more times. And that was one strike too many in a year when his age, his long tenure and his institutional backing all reminded voters of what they don't like about Washington.