Arlen Specter, 82

Arlen J. Specter, who was Pennsylvania’s longest serving United States Senator, first as a Republican, and ending as a Democrat, died at his home in Philadelphia on October 14th from complications of non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. He was 82.

Spector was born in Wichita, Kansas, the son of Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants who later moved to Russell, Kansas, where Spector graduated from high school. The family moved to Philadelphia when the children reached marriageable age, since there where no other Jews in Russell. After graduating from University of Pennsylvania in 1951 and from Yale Law School in 1956, he opened a law practice, Specter & Katz, with Marvin Katz. Spector married Joan Levy in 1953; they have two sons.

Arlen Specter served as assistant counsel on the Warren Commission investigating the circumstances of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, joining with others in formulating the “single bullet theory.”

A Democrat from 1951 to 1965, he switched to the Republican Party and was the 19th District Attorney of Philadelphia, in office from 1966 to 1974. He ran unsuccessfully for other political positions and won a U.S. Senate seat in 1980. He was elected to five terms, serving 30 years. He was considered by many accounts to be a moderate Republican and opposed the appointment of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987 and “aggressively” questioned Anita Hill leading to Clarence Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court in 1991.

Specter switched to the Democratic Party in 2009 and lost his Senate seat in the Democratic primary in 2010.

“I knew him for many years when I was a volunteer in his first race as District Attorney in Philadelphia,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “We kept in touch over the years and worked closely on many issues. He felt deeply as a Jew, was a devoted American and a respected Senator.”

Hoenlein pointed out that “one of his unique contributions was the immigration issue.” He sponsored what became known as the “Specter Amendment” and when he left the Senate, it became known as the Lautenberg Amendment. It enables “Jewish refugees and others particularly from Iran but also elsewhere to expedite their immigration to come to the U.S.” explained Hoenlein.