The president did not skirt my reputation for independence when he spoke to crowds. He told one audience in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, “Oh, he doesn’t do everything you ask him to do all the time” — at which point the audience chuckled — “but when you need him ... when you need him, he’s there." George W. Bush has a disarming but wry sense of humor that surfaced when I flew with him to a conference on education and the economy in Harrisburg on February 12, 2004, my seventy-fourth birthday. He acknowledged me to the gathered crowd as Pennsylvania’s “senior senator,” but added, “I try to downplay the senior part.” During a later trip to Scranton, we landed in Air Force One as it was drizzling outside. I was wearing my trench coat and did not expect the president to invite me out onto the airplane steps, but he did. He exited the plane first but spotted my coat as I stood on his right. “Arlen, Arlen,” he quipped, “we’re going to have to upgrade your wardrobe.” I told my son Shanin the story, and he bought me a more presentable raincoat.

Campaigns are full of surprises, and a real highlight on the campaign trail was seeing my old friend, former Senate majority leader Bob Dole, who came in February for an entire day of events in the Lehigh Valley and Scranton areas. During his over twenty-seven years in the Senate, Dole represented Kansas, where I spent my early life. When I moved from Wichita to Russell in 1942 at the age of twelve, Dole, then nineteen, was a big wheel on the University of Kansas basketball team. He was once a much older man, but in these intervening years, I have pretty much caught up with him. He has an extraordinary sense of humor, which, unfortunately, rarely surfaced during his presidential run in 1996. We frequently talked about his experience as Russell’s county attorney compared to my work as Philadelphia’s district attorney. When he returned home to Russell as a wounded war veteran, both parties wanted him to run on their ticket. Although his family was Democratic, he was not on record for one party or the other. As he tells the story, he checked the registration and found out there were twice as many Republicans in Russell County as Democrats and decided he was a Republican. (In contrast, I had swum upstream, changing my registration to Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic city.) Dole always liked to emphasize the small town values of integrity, a strong work ethic, and family that life in Russell instilled in its residents. On the trail for me in 2004, he remarked to a reporter regarding my political reputation, “You can’t be rigid in your views and get anything done for the people of your state.” There is a lot of truth to that, and I believe that is one reason so many elected officials, including the Senate leadership and all but two members of Pennsylvania’s delegation to the House (who remained neutral), endorsed my campaign. Much of the party rank and file saw the matter differently, which made it a contest.

The campaign required every bit of energy that had propelled my twenty-four years of constituent travel and Washington service, not to mention a frenetic schedule. My formal, two-day statewide campaign announcement tour began on January 8, 2004, with a squash match at 6:45 a.m., then a 9:00 announcement at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, a flight to Harrisburg for an 11:45 news conference at the state capitol, a flight to Pittsburgh for a 2:45 announcement, a flight to Erie for a 5:15 announcement, followed by a flight to State College, where I had dinner and spent the night.

Between campaign events and official events, day after day I often had a dozen or more stops — a phenomenon my campaign manager, Chris Nicholas, called “Specterpalooza.” My schedule was filled with meetings with innumerable segments of the population — manufacturing, medical, agricultural, law enforcement, veterans; the list goes on — and media appearances and phone drives in between. There was not a moment to waste, but also not a person to take for granted. I was once reminded I walked up fifteen rows in Veterans Stadium to shake a hand (I wasn’t keeping track). Because I want to know what is on everyone’s mind, I prefer to deliver short speeches — ten to twelve minutes for a typical group, five minutes for town meetings — before turning to questions from the audience for the bulk of the program. No audience is too small to merit the same attention that goes to the larger ones. The 2004 primary campaign did not break any personal records for small crowds. I recall a campaign event at a Philadelphia home in 1965, when I ran for district attorney, in which only one person showed up to meet Jim Cavanaugh, who ran for city controller, and me. I gave a short speech, and Cavanaugh followed with his own unabridged lengthy talk.

Thanks to technology that many take for granted today, I could conduct media interviews by car or cell phone while riding around the state. As during my non-campaign season, I remained a regular on the Michael Smerconish Morning Show, a news talk radio program based in Philadelphia, and Angelo Cataldi’s sports radio show, which has long allowed me the enjoyment of commenting on my local sports teams while making contact with many listeners beyond the news and political show audience. Talk shows like Cataldi’s provided a diversion (albeit a politically constructive one) to the political events that saturated my schedule.

The experience of campaigning was the most fun when family members joined me. My wife, Joan, typically accompanied me on my weekend campaign travels. A beautiful, stately woman of tremendous poise, she is a distinguished personage in her own right — a former four-term city councilwoman presently involved in development (fund-raising) for the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. She dresses as if she just stepped out of Vogue, and the crowds love to see her. When she is around, I have someone to speak with between campaign stops, and she always has constructive comments about my speeches.

I was also joined at key events by my son Shanin, his wife Tracey, and their two older daughters, Silvi and Perri. During my announcement tour, Perri, aged eight, amused Joan and me no end at a particular stop in Harrisburg. After observing my routine at the Constitution Center, our first stop, she realized in Harrisburg, our second stop, that I would make another speech after she viewed Joan and me shaking hands. She walked up to the podium, pulled up a chair (which was quite a chore for her), stood on top of it, took the microphone, and delivered a speech. “Vote for Arlen” was her refrain. (I am the only grandparent the girls refer to by first name, at my insistence.) Then she did the same at our next stop, Pittsburgh. After we moved on to Erie, she began a new routine, dancing on the stage as I spoke to the crowd. I preferred the spontaneity of the moment to sticking with the campaign’s set program. Everyone found the performance funny, and that was where much of the crowd’s attention was directed.

During an August trip to Erie, Silvi, aged ten, accompanied me on the bus with the president, Mrs. Bush, and their two daughters, Jenna and Barbara. Laura Bush, always in touch with children, swapped stories with third-grader Silvi about her experiences teaching the third grade. After the photos of the trip returned, the president inscribed a picture of him with Silvi that now hangs proudly in my outer office. Silvi returned for a photo with the president at the 2006 Christmas ball, then a young lady of almost thirteen. To the extent I could, I have taken my granddaughters to the White House summer picnics and tours, as well as to other political activities, to give them a feel for politics and government.

Our two sons, Shanin and Steve, were involved in my political activities from an early age. A particular moment always comes to mind from when I ran for district attorney in 1965. My press secretary called at 11:00 p.m. the night before the primary, saying that Joan and I should come to the polls promptly at 7:00 a.m. in order to make the early edition of The Philadelphia Bulletin. Joan and I looked at each other wondering what to do with Shanin, seven, and Steve, four, since it was obviously too late to get a 6:30 a.m. babysitter the next day, so we brought the children with us that morning. Since Joan and I were registered Democrats and I was running in the Republican primary, I urged her not to vote for any candidate, because we did not want to be accused of trying to influence the Democratic election. So she voted only on the questions on the ballot. When she was unable to extricate herself from the polling booth, we found that the curtain would not open if the voter did not vote for at least one of the candidates. Steve, who was waiting for her outside the booth, panicked when his mother was trapped inside. When she finally came out, a wonderful, warm family reunion materialized. That brought a big smile to my face, which was hard to do at that stage of my political career. A photo depicting the scene appeared above the fold of the afternoon Bulletin.

My cell phone enabled me to keep in touch with family members who were farther away. My older sisters Hilda and Shirley, along with Hilda’s husband Arthur, resided in New Jersey, and my Aunt Rose has lived in Wichita, Kansas, the city of my birth, since before I was born. In fact, Aunt Rose was with her sister, my mother, when she gave birth to me and is responsible for my name. After my parents announced I would be named Abraham after my paternal grandfather, Avram, Aunt Rose said, “you’re not going to do that to this poor little baby.” She suggested instead the surname of her favorite actor, Richard Arlen. That has not stopped her from continuing to call me by my boyhood nickname, “Boozy Boy.” A close family friend had given his son, Danny Greenberg, born sixteen months before me, the nickname “Sonny Boy” after the Al Jolson song of that title, and my father adopted the variation “Boozy Boy” for me. Aunt Rose, in her nineties by 2004, was as spirited as ever and oversaw me with the devotion of a mother. Over the years, I have made it a practice to call my family frequently, as they have always been my biggest cheerleaders. Among their significant contributions, they have traveled tirelessly throughout Pennsylvania campaigning for me.

I am fortunate that my campaigns have inspired my entire political household. Between my campaign staff, official staff as volunteers on their own time, and fund-raising staff, I was fortunate to have a devoted and talented group working with me. Sylvia Nolde was an astute and dedicated staffer and adviser since my first year in the Senate, when I inherited her as my scheduler from outgoing Senator Jacob Javits of New York. One day, after being in the Senate for about eight weeks, I called her at 5:52 p.m. saying I would miss the 6:00 p.m. Metroliner. She told me to hurry to the station because she could hold the train for five minutes, a trick she learned from her time with Javits. Meanwhile, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, elected in 1972, was racing past me to the gate when a conductor, not knowing who he was, shouted: “Slow down, Bud, there’s a senator coming.” Biden tracked me down on the train, almost irate, to ask me how I found out in eight weeks how to hold the train when he had not made that discovery in eight years. That was the first of many long train rides together. During the 2004 campaign, Sylvia would be a key operative in my campaign organization, Citizens for Arlen Specter.

Todd Averette and Alison Cooper, who had worked on my Senate staff, were in charge of fund-raising. They could accurately be called young veterans, thirty-somethings who personified attentiveness to one’s work, and who knew how to maintain a harmonious staff. Alison had started on my staff as a receptionist in 1994 and would finish in 2006 as my chief of staff. Another former staffer in the campaign household was the genial David Urban, who held a number of positions in my office over the years, including chief of staff, and excelled at each of them. Carey Lackman, who served as my chief of staff through the primary — one of the first women to serve in that capacity in the Senate — had been with me for all but two years since 1991.

When the Senate was in session, I spent most weekdays in Washington to conduct Senate business. Mondays and Fridays typically allowed me to spend at least some time in Pennsylvania. Besides constituent casework and my Judiciary Committee membership, my responsibilities entailed chairing the Veterans Affairs Committee and the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. The latter assignment entails management of federal spending in a variety of areas, including public health. I had long tried to champion the government’s role in exploring the frontiers of medicine in order to save lives, and this mission became closer to my heart as I witnessed Carey Lackman struggle with breast cancer throughout the primary season. Few on the staff had any idea how ill she was, and her work ethic and personal strength did much to conceal it.

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