Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania

Since first elected in 1980, Arlen Specter has brought rugged individualism and fierce independence learned from his youth on the Kansas plains to become a leading Senate moderate. His work as Philadelphia's tough District Attorney gave him insights to write the Terrorist Prosecution Act, the Armed Career Criminal Act and co-author of the Second Chance Act.

As a consummate legislator, he has promoted compromise and reconciliation in a Congress which has established new records for partisan discord. In foreign affairs, he has advocated dialogue and accommodation as an antidote to belligerency and saber rattling.

Arlen Specter's five terms have made him the longest-serving U.S. Senator in Pennsylvania's history.

Senator Specter attributes his zeal for public service to his experience as a child when he saw the government mistreat his father, Harry Specter, who migrated to the U.S. from Russia in 1911. Private Specter, serving in World War I in the infantry, was seriously wounded in action in France's Argonne Forest. When the government broke its promise to pay World War I veterans a $500 bonus, the veterans marched on Washington. President Hoover called out the Army which fired on and killed veterans on the Mall in one of the blackest days in American history. As a metaphor, Senator Specter says he has been on his way to Washington ever since to get his father's bonus and since he hasn't gotten it yet, he's running for re-election. The incident over his father's bonus has made Arlen Specter a fierce advocate for veterans' benefits and the "little guy" in his battles with the federal government.

From his immigrant parents, Arlen Specter learned work ethics the hard way. His father, Harry Specter, who was a peddler, took five-year-old Arlen to small Kansas towns selling cantaloupes door-to-door with a small basket in hand. In his dad's junkyard in Russell, Kansas, sixteen-year-old Arlen Specter cut down oil derricks with an acetylene torch and loaded scrap iron into rail freight cars headed for the smelter.

His credentials include votes for the line-item veto and a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget. As a two-term Philadelphia District Attorney, he fought for tough sentences for criminals and later, in the Senate, wrote ground breaking legislation providing for life sentences for three-time recidivists on violent crimes.

Since 1981, he has played a significant role in Supreme Court nomination hearings, for Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justices O'Conner, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsberg, Breyer and Judge Bork. In the confirmation hearings of Judge Robert Bork he crossed party lines in opposing Judge Bork and disagreeing with conventional wisdom in supporting Justice Thomas after dissecting the contradictory and highly charged testimony.

Notwithstanding debilitating chemotherapy treatments in 2005, he stayed on the job as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee to preside over the historic Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. His work on the Judiciary Committee has included writing significant legislation on dealing with Constitutional law, civil rights and privacy.