Three living Senators

Pennsylvania has three living former United States Senators: Richard Schweiker, 82, a Republican who was elected in 1968 and 1974; Harris Wofford, 82, who was appointed to the Senate in 1991, won a special election later that year and lost re-election in 1994; and Rick Santorum, who won in 1994 and 2000 and lost his bid for a third term in 2006. 

Schweiker entered politics in 1960 when he won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.  He won a Senate seat in 1968, defeating incumbent Joseph Clark, a Democrat who served as Mayor of Philadelphia from 1952 to 1956, and as a U.S. Senator from 1956 to 1968. 

When the battle for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan failed to produce a clear winner, Reagan picked Schweiker as his running mate in an effort to convince Ford delegates from Pennsylvania to flip.  Schweiker didn’t seek re-election in 1980 (Arlen Specter won his seat) and spent two years in Reagan’s cabinet as Secretary of Health and Human Services.