Alex Henderson

The Political Zone

The Death of Arlen Specter: A Moderate Figure in Pennsylvania Politics Passes Away at 82 

Specter Never Left the Republican Party; They Left Him



By Alex Henderson
RealmNoir, October 15, 2012

On October 14, 2012, former Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter died of complications from cancer at the age of 82. Specter, for many years, was a voice of sanity and reason in the Republican Party—and looking backing on his long career, one is reminded of the ways in which GOP politics have changed over the years.

Specter wasn’t always a Republican; he started out as a Democrat, switched to the GOP in 1965 and returned to the Democratic Party in 2009. And he wasn’t always a Philadelphian; Specter grew up in Kansas. But he spent most of his adult life in southeastern Pennsylvania, and for decades, the moderate/centrist

Specter epitomized the northeastern “Rockefeller wing” of the Republican Party. Specter had a variety of liberal and conservative positions; he supported the death penalty (sometimes with reservations about its application), favored affirmative action, opposed many gun control measures, had a generally pro-gay voting record, was pro-choice on the abortion issue and supported stem-cell research. Unfortunately for Specter, the GOP’s move to the far right meant that there was no longer room for moderates in that party.

Specter was elected district attorney of Philadelphia in 1965, serving two terms before being voted out of office in 1973. It was in 1980 that Specter was first elected to the U.S. Senate, and during his five terms, he was well-liked by many Pennsylvania Democrats, independents and GOP moderates. Specter had an interesting place in Pennsylvania politics; many Philadelphia rowhouse Democrats voted for him repeatedly, which is saying a lot because Philly is so dominated by the Democratic Party that it hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Bernard Samuel left office in January 1954. Specter was to the right of most Philly Democrats, yet many of them were on friendly terms with him because, as they saw it, Specter “brought home the bacon for Philadelphia.” Indeed, Specter was on very friendly terms with major Democrats like former Pennsylvania governor/former Philadelphia mayor Ed Rendell and Pennsylvania Rep. Bob Brady.

But the more the GOP moved to the extreme right and the more influential the Christian Right became in the GOP, the more difficult it became for Specter to hold on to his seat in the Senate. In 2004, Specter barely survived a Republican primary challenge from the far-right social conservative Pat Toomey. And when Toomey decided to mount another Republican primary challenge against Specter in 2009, Specter returned to the Democratic Party; he lost to Joe Sestak in the Democratic primary in 2010, and Sestak narrowly lost to Toomey in the general election.

Specter could have remained in the GOP, but he probably would have lost to Toomey in the 2010 primary—and the fact that Specter felt he had no choice but to leave the GOP after 44 years speaks volumes. There was a time when the Republican Party had room for moderates, but those days are long gone. In 2012, the GOP has no more room for moderate “Rockefeller Republicans” than it does for Goldwater libertarians (the disrespect that Rep. Ron Paul endured during his most recent presidential run shows that today’s GOP is far from a “big tent”). Independent thought—be it of the northeastern “Rockefeller Republican” variety that Specter epitomized or the libertarian Ron Paul/Gary Johnson variety—is no longer welcome in the Republican Party.

Arlen Specter didn’t leave the Republican Party. They left him.

Alex Henderson is a veteran journalist whose work has appeared in The L.A. Weekly, AlterNet, Billboard, Spin, XBIZ, Creem, Skin Two, The Pasadena Weekly, JazzTimes, Cash Box and a long list of other well-known publications. He can be followed on Twitter @alexvhenderson. 



Above: a young Arlen Specter with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s.