Party-Switching Senator Who Helped Shape Supreme Court Loses Primary Election
Thirteen months after he switched to the Democratic Party, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has lost the primary election to Joe Sestak.
Specter had chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2005 to 2007 and had been its ranking Republican before the switch. The Philadelphia Inquirer says Specter “made his biggest mark” as a member of the committee, where he “helped shape the Supreme Court and the entire federal judiciary.”
Specter helped kill the nomination of conservative Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court but supported Justice Clarence Thomas, concluding that Anita Hill was guilty of “flat-out perjury,” the story says. His conclusion, he had said, was based on contradictions between Hill’s confirmation testimony about Thomas’ alleged sexual harassment and her statements to the FBI.
He also supported the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Later, however, Specter said he had been wrong to believe Roberts when he said he would be a neutral arbiter of the law, according to the story.
Last year, while a member of his former party, Specter voted against Elena Kagan’s confirmation to be solicitor general, Bloomberg reports.
Specter had said he voted against Kagan “because she wouldn’t answer basic questions about her standards for handling that job,” Bloomberg says. While campaigning in the primary, he said he would keep an open mind on her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. His term concludes in early January, well after the expected vote on Kagan.
