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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, the outspoken Pennsylvania centrist whose switch from Republican to Democrat ended a 30-year career in which he played a pivotal role in several Supreme Court nominations, died Sunday. He was 82. Specter, who announced in late US VIDEO August that he was ba ling cancer, died at his home in Philadelphia from complications of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, said his son Shanin. Over the years, Arlen Specter had fought two previous bouts with Hodgkin lymphoma, overcome a brain tumor and survived cardiac arrest following bypass surgery.

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REPRINTS Specter rose to prominence in the 1960s as an aggressive Philadelphia prosecutor and as an assistant counsel to the Warren Commission, developing the single-bullet theory that posited just one bullet struck both President Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally - an assumption critical to the argument that presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. The theory remains controversial and was the focus of Oliver Stones 1991 movie JFK.
In 1987, Specter helped thwart the Supreme Court nomination of former federal appeals Judge Robert H. Bork - earning him conservative enemies who still bi erly refer to such rejections as being borked. But four years later, Specter was criticized by liberals for his tough questioning of Anita Hill at Clarence Thomas Supreme Court

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nomination hearings and for accusing her of commi ing at-out perjury. The nationally televised interrogation incensed womens groups and nearly cost him his seat in 1992. Specter, who had ba led cancer, was Pennsylvanias longest-serving senator when Democrats picked then-U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak over him in the 2010 primary, despite Specters endorsements by President Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders. Sestak lost Specters seat to conservative Republican Rep. Pat Toomey by 2 percentage points. A political moderate, Specter was swept into the Senate in the Reagan landslide of 1980. He took credit for helping to defeat President Clintons national health care plan - the complexities of which he highlighted in a gigantic chart that hung on his oce wall for years afterward - and helped lead the investigation into Gulf War syndrome, the name given to a collection of symptoms experienced by veterans of the war that include fatigue, memory loss, pain and diculty sleeping. Following the Iran-Contra scandal, he pushed legislation that created the inspectors general of the CIA. As a senior member of the powerful Appropriations Commi ee, Specter pushed for increased funding for stem-cell research, breast cancer and Alzheimers disease, and supported several labor-backed initiatives in a GOP-led Congress. He also doggedly sought federal funds for local projects in his home state. Specter was not shy about bucking fellow Republicans. In 1995, he launched a presidential bid, denouncing religious conservatives as the fringe that plays too large a role in se ing the partys agenda. Specter, who was Jewish, bowed out before the rst primary because of lackluster fundraising. Despite his tireless campaigning, Specters irascible independence caught up with him in 2004. Specter barely survived a GOP primary challenge by Toomey by 17,000 votes of more than 1.4 million cast. He went on to easily win the general election with the help of organized labor, a traditionally Democratic constituency. Specter startled fellow senators in April 2009 when he announced he was switching to the Democratic side, saying he found himself increasingly at odds with the Republican philosophy. Earlier in the year, he had been one of only three Republicans in Congress - and the only one facing re-election in 2010 - who voted for President Barack Obamas economic stimulus bill. He also said he had concluded that his chance of defeating a GOP challenger in the 2010 party primary was bleak. But he said the Democrats couldnt count on him to be an automatic 60th vote to give the party a libuster-proof majority. Specter outspent Sestak, a retired Navy vice admiral, but Sestak a acked him as a political opportunist who switched parties to save his job. A memorable campaign ad used Specters own words against him: My change in party will enable me to be re-elected. Specter was diagnosed in 2005 with stage IV Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system. Announcing the diagnosis with his trademark doggedness, Specter said: I have beaten a brain tumor, bypass heart surgery and many tough political opponents and Im going to beat this, too. He wrote of his struggle in a 2008 book, Never Give In: Ba ling Cancer in the Senate, saying he wanted to let others facing similar crises ought to know they are not alone. Cancer handed him a stark look at mortality and an added sense of humility, Specter told The Associated Press. Intellectual and stubborn, Specter played squash nearly every day

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into his mid-70s and liked to unwind with a martini or two at night. He took the lead on a wide spectrum of issues and was no stranger to controversy. Born in Wichita, Kan., on Feb. 12, 1930, Specter spent summers toiling in his fathers junkyard in Russell, Kan., where he knew another future senator - Bob Dole. The junkyard thrived during World War II, allowing Specters father to send his four children to college. Specter left Kansas for college in 1947 because the University of Kansas, where his best friends were headed, did not have Jewish fraternities. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951 and Yale law school in 1956. He served in the Air Force from 1951 to 1953. Friends say his childhood circumstances made him determined, tough and independent-minded. Specter considered his fathers triumphs the embodiment of the American dream, a fulllment that friends say drove him to a career in public life. He entered politics as a Democrat in Philadelphia in the early 1960s, when he was an assistant district a orney who sent six Teamsters ocials to jail for union corruption. After working on the Warren Commission, he returned to Philadelphia and challenged his boss, James Crumlish, for district a orney in 1965. Specter ran as a Republican and was derided by Crumlish as Benedict Arlen. But Crumlish lost to his protege by 36,000 votes. It was to be the last time until 1980 that Specter would win an election to higher oce, despite three a empts - a 1967 bid for Philadelphia mayor, a 1976 loss to John Heinz for Senate and a 1978 defeat by Dick Thornburgh for governor. Specter lost re-election as district a orney in 1973 and went into private practice. Among his most notorious clients as a private a orney was Ira Einhorn, a Philadelphia counterculture celebrity who killed his girlfriend in 1977. Finally, in 1980, Specter won the Senate seat vacated by retiring Republican Richard Schweiker, defeating former Pi sburgh Mayor Pete Flaherty. After leaving the Senate in January 2011, the University of Pennsylvania Law School announced Specter would teach a course about Congress relationship with the Supreme Court, and Maryland Public Television launched a political-aairs show hosted by the former senator. A funeral was scheduled for Tuesday in Penn Valley, Pa., and will be open to the public, followed by burial in Huntingdon Valley, Pa. He is survived by his wife, Joan, and two sons, Shanin and Steve, and four granddaughters. --Associated Press writers Ron Todt in Philadelphia and Lara Jakes contributed to this report. 2012 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED. Learn more about our PRIVACY POLICY and TERMS OF USE.

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