Maybe it’s the Litigation Daily‘s political naivete, but we were surprised to see that Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter, a Republican, was the leading sponsor of a bill that seeks to lessen the tax burden on trial lawyers. Yep — trial lawyers, those bastions of Democratic fund-raising and whipping boys of the Republican base. Nevertheless, as Securities Docket noted Monday, Specter introduced legislation in February to allow plaintiffs lawyers tax deductions for their up-front expenses in contingency fee cases.

Our curiosity led us to check Specter’s campaign contribution records at opensecrets.org, the Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics. Guess what we found out. Senator Specter — the former chairman and current ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee — is that rare Republican with a big fan base among trial lawyers. In fact, as The Legal Intelligencer noted a while back, his following among Democratic lawyers is so loyal that they got all torn up in 2004 when a Democratic challenger with a solid chance of beating the incumbent came along. Lawyers and law firms gave more than twice as much to Specter in his last five elections than donors from any other industry. Half of the top 20 largest contributors to his campaigns over his career have been law firms, and two of the largest were major plaintiffs firms in Pennsylvania.

And Specter’s ties to the plaintiffs bar are more than just political. His son, Shanin Specter, is one of the city’s top personal injury lawyers. His firm, Kline & Specter, was the fifth-largest contributor to Specter’s Senate campaign in 2008.

When the Senator introduced his bill, he said it would reverse an unfair burden on plainitffs lawyers, who may currently only deduct their contingency case expenses at the end of a case, provided expenses haven’t already been awarded by the court. “My legislation does not give attorneys anything above and beyond that which is currently enjoyed by virtually every other small business in our country,” Specter said in his statement on the bill. Unfortunately, we were unable to reach either Specter for comment.

This article first appeared in The Am Law Litigation Daily, on AmericanLawyer.com.