Long Time Senator Arlen Specter Passed Away
By: Mike Holden
Updated: October 14, 2012
10/14/12 - Specter confirmed in August that he had been battling cancer, the latest of multiple bouts with the disease. He underwent chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease in 2005 and again in 2008.
Arlen Specter represented a different breed of Republicanism...He switched to the Democratic party near the end of his career.
Specter died of complications from Non-Hodgkin lymphoma at his home in Philadelphia today. He had been plagued with a series of health issues over the past twenty years.
He started his career as a member of the warren commission which investigated president John Kennedy's assassination.
Specter was elected to the senate in 1980 and represented Pennsylvania for 30 years, longer than anyone in the state's history.
He was often referred to as "one of the true wild cards..." because he had changed political parties so late in the game.


