WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Senator Arlen Specter, a major political figure in Pennsylvania and Washington for more than four decades, died on Sunday of complications from non-Hodgkins lymphoma at age 82, according to U.S. media reports.

Specter had announced in August that he was once again fighting cancer.

A political moderate, Specter was a five-term senator from Pennsylvania, serving as a Republican until he switched parties and became a Democrat in 2009. He said at the time the Republican Party had moved too far to the right.

(Reporting by Vicki Allen, editing by Will Dunham)