2010 United States Senate election in Pennsylvania
The 2010 United States Senate election in Pennsylvania took place on November 2, 2010, during the 2010 midterm elections. Incumbent Republican-turned-Democrat U.S. Senator Arlen Specter ran for reelection to a sixth term, but lost in the Democratic primary to Joe Sestak. Republican nominee Pat Toomey then won the seat.
Image: Pat Toomey, Official Portrait, 112th Congress
Image: Rear Admiral Joseph A. Sestak cropped
Long-time Republican Senator Arlen Specter switched to the Democratic Party, in part because he knew he was unlikely to win the Republican primary. He ultimately lost to Joe Sestak in the Democratic primary.
Pat Toomey speaking at a rally in April 2009, the same month he formally announced his candidacy for Senate.
Arlen Specter was an American lawyer, author and politician who served as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania from 1981 to 2011. Specter was a Democrat from 1951 to 1965, then a Republican from 1965 until 2009, when he switched back to the Democratic Party. First elected in 1980, he was the longest-serving senator from Pennsylvania, having represented the state for 30 years.
Specter c. 2007
Specter reproducing the assumed alignment of the single bullet theory. The subsequent revelation that Texas Governor John Connally's seat in the Presidential limousine had been elevated with respect to John Kennedy's corroborated this theory.
Specter with Martin Luther King Jr.
Specter greeting President Richard Nixon in 1971