Sen. Arlen Specter reflects on cancer battle

In 1980, I was the first statewide candidate to make a point of visiting all sixty-seven counties and publicizing it. I continued the practice by visiting each county once a year, in addition to multiple visits to the metropolitan areas. I found this method indispensable in becoming acquainted with the complex issues of 12 million constituents with diverse interests in agriculture, steel, coal, and timber, not to mention the problems of the cities, veterans, and senior citizens. Once I started, I found campaigning fun despite the hard work involved. That was a good thing, because Representative Toomey would not let me win with anything short of my best efforts.

My position on the Appropriations Committee enabled me to secure significant federal projects throughout Pennsylvania. I had mounted strong campaigns for reelection in 1986, 1992, and 1998, based on my seniority on the committee. From 1998 through 2002, I had visited the Lehigh Valley twenty-eight times and become aware of the need for federal assistance for universities, hospitals, highways, businesses, law enforcement, and other local needs. In 2004, I emphasized I was second in line to become chairman, a position no Pennsylvanian ever had held. Combining this theme with my established independence, my campaign slogan was “Courage. Clout. Conviction.” Thirty-five years had not changed my approach much from 1969, when I ran for reelection as district attorney alongside Tom Gola, the city controller candidate, with the slogan, “They’re Tougher, They’re Younger, and Nobody Owns Them.” The only thing that really had changed was the unchangeable: No one can stay young.

Representative Toomey found my record and campaign tailor-made for his contrary approach. His ultraconservative economic philosophy had led him to oppose increases in federal assistance even where it involved projects in his own district that were federally funded elsewhere. This may have contributed to his sluggish record on constituent service, while I prided myself on an approach that once led Senator Heinz quizzically to ask a staffer: “How is it Arlen Specter gets there the day before the flood?” The Wall Street–oriented Club for Growth favored deep tax cuts and deeper cuts in federal spending, a popular platform for a Republican primary. This group, the fifth-largest 527 political organization at the time, made Toomey their poster boy with a highly successful national fund-raising campaign. The Club for Growth was so closely coordinated with Toomey’s personal campaign organization that I called it the “club for Toomey,” a virtual wholly owned subsidiary of his campaign. Indeed, Toomey would later take over as the group’s president and CEO.

My second major campaign theme brought out the greatest impact I would have during another term in the Senate: Because Senator Orrin Hatch had to step down due to term limits, I was in line to become chairman of the Judiciary Committee after serving as a member of that committee for all of my twenty-four years in the Senate. As Pennsylvania’s first popularly elected four-term senator, I would become the first senator from my state since 1833 to chair that important committee. This prospect played right into the hands of my primary opposition as it motivated the right to target me.

A fight with the ultra–right wing of the party had been in the making for some time. It was no secret that there were some stark differences between us, but that is not to overlook the natural desire of political leaders, on or off the campaign cycle, to reach out and seek common ground with others. Early on, I met with the founder of the Club for Growth and participated in one of the group’s sessions, though it obviously never became an ally. In the spring of 2003, I had lunch in the Senate dining room with Reverend Jerry Falwell, causing The Washington Post to surmise I was posturing in reaction to my primary challenger. The meal was actually a straightforward discussion of our mutual support for Israel and for sexual abstinence programs and our differences on the issue of stem cell research, all of which had been our views for years. Falwell, to my knowledge, remained uninvolved in the primary.

Later that year, however, I did have another lunch — this time with Steve Freind, an outspoken opponent of abortion who ran a primary against me in 1992 — for the principal purpose of expanding support. An endorsement was not forthcoming, but I appreciated Freind’s honesty: “If Pat Toomey was pro-abort, I would be with you,” he remarked. “You know how important the issue is. I can’t be with you.”

Indeed, a phalanx of pro-life activists converged upon Pennsylvania to campaign against me, led by Dr. James Dobson, head of the organization Focus on the Family and a worldwide radio program of the same name. Dobson left Colorado Springs, home of his media empire, to travel to conservative Lancaster County to denounce me. These opponents saw a second term by President George W. Bush as the opportunity to confirm new Supreme Court justices to reverse Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that established a woman’s right to choose to terminate her pregnancy. Notwithstanding my support for President Bush’s reelection and my votes in favor of all his judicial nominees to date, they were concerned that I, as a pro-choice senator, would oppose pro-life nominees to the Supreme Court, which in turn would undercut their three-decade campaign to reverse Roe.

The Toomey camp even recruited Judge Bork. What made my opponent’s campaign so unusually potent was its widespread support among Republican primary voters who desperately wanted to reverse Roe and cut taxes along with federal spending. Toomey campaigned as the pro-life alternative to me, though he had initially run for the House as a pro-choice candidate in 1998, when he found himself running against multiple pro-life primary opponents. Toomey also had served as a cochairman of my campaign finance committee in 2001 before he announced against me.

Personally, Toomey was a bright, articulate, well-groomed, youthful candidate (age forty-two on primary day) who was earnest in his delivery if a tad humorless. An Eagle Scout before age fifteen and cum laude graduate of Harvard, he was astutely described by The Philadelphia Inquirer as a “conservative with a moderate demeanor." On a certain level, I could respect his deep devotion to fiscal conservatism in his own backyard, even though I felt it was not in the best interests of Pennsylvania. However, I knew that the issues that made him attractive to Republican primary voters likely would bring him defeat in the general election.

President Bush and Senator Rick Santorum knew this too and backed my candidacy solidly and early. In February 2003, the White House sent a warning shot to Toomey by sending Chief of Staff Andy Card to host a fund-raiser for me in the congressman’s home district. The president, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and even First Lady Laura Bush campaigned for me in Pennsylvania, where they would tout such themes as my support for administration initiatives in the war on terror, tax cuts, and judicial nominations. Always gracious about his support, the president would say of me, “He doesn’t owe me anything except good government.” I had developed a cordial relationship with him during the 2000 campaign and his first three years in office, and got to know him very well in 2004 when I traveled with him on Air Force One.

That year, the president had his own reelection to worry about, and Pennsylvania was an important state in his contest with Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee. During his first term and reelection campaign, President Bush visited Pennsylvania more than forty times, and I accompanied him on most of those trips. We discussed at some length the Judiciary Committee chairman’s role, and I told the president he was preeminently fair in asking for a commitment from the chairman to conduct prompt hearings on those he nominated for judgeships, and then report the nominations to the floor for up-or-down votes by the full Senate.

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