I noted a while ago Senator Edward Kennedy’s request that the Massachusetts state legislature change the law on the filling of United States Senate seat vacancies. Well, Mr Kennedy probably knew that his time remaining was pretty short, because he died just a week later.
But note the timeline. The state legislature changed the law, taking away the governor’s power to appoint an interim senator, because they thought/ hoped that Senator John Kerry would be resigning his seat to become president, and they didn’t want the governor, who was a Republican, to appoint his replacement. Fortunately for our country, that “problem” never arose.
Now, as Sister Toldjah notes, why it’s just a horrible problem to have to have an election!
MA interim Senate appointment watch: Place your bets!
The Boston Globe reports today that the MA Gov. Deval Patrick (D) is pressing hard – “for Teddy!” – to get the state legislature to undo a law they put into place on Senate vacancies back in 2004 when the Governor was a Republican:
Governor Deval Patrick continued today to press for a change to state law to allow him to appoint an interim replacement for Senator Edward M. Kennedy as he announced that a special election for the seat will be held on Jan. 19.
At a press conference carried live nationally on CSPAN, Patrick told reporters that he has discussed the potential change in law with state legislative leaders “numerous times over the last several days” and they are “moving as fast as they can.” A legislative committee announced earlier today that it will hold a hearing next week on a bill that would allow Patrick to appoint a temporary replacement, a signal that Beacon Hill is moving to accommodate Kennedy’s request that Massachusetts maintain two voices in the Senate.
“I think they are trying to work their way through it and they are talking to their members and listening to their members. I don’t think by any means it is a certainty that it will happen, at least in my conversations with them,” Patrick said, referring to legislative leaders. “I think that they are trying to find a path from here to there to honor, as I say, the very reasonable request of Senator Kennedy.”
State statute calls for an election to be held on a Tuesday between 145 and 160 days after a vacancy occurs, which gave Patrick just two potential dates, Jan. 19 or Jan. 26. The governor said today that he did his best to select a date that would lessen the impact on the holidays between the primary and general election.
“It seemed to me that would be by having the earlier primary,” Patrick said.
[...]
The chairmen of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Election Laws announced earlier today they have moved the hearing date from early October to Sept. 9 for a bill that would allow Patrick to appoint an interim senator. The House and Senate, which are in summer recess, do not return in full formal session until next week. The bill could come to the floor of both the House and Senate within days after the hearing.
”One of the senator’s last public acts was a request that the Legislature explore ways to amend state law so the Commonwealth will not lose a voice in the United States Senate pending the filling of the seat with a special election,” said state Senator Thomas P. Kennedy, a Brockton Democrat, the Senate chairman of the election laws committee. (He is not related to Edward Kennedy.)
The move to change the date of the hearing comes as lawmakers continue to wrestle with the controversial issue of allowing Patrick to make the temporary appointment. Democrats, including US Senate majority leader Harry Reid, argue that Massachusetts should be fully represented with two votes in the Senate when such issues as health care reform and climate change come up this fall.
Ummm … I have a better idea. Why not just wait until after the “special election” to have a vote on these “important bills”? That way, instead of shoving cap and trade and ObamaCare down the throats of the American people, there would be real opportunity there for – gasp! – debate, or maybe even a scrapping of these bills in order to start fresh with a clean slate.
I have a fairly simple solution: if the governor and legislature of the Bay State think that it’s just way too long to wait to have a special election, instead of giving the governor the appointment power, why not simply shorten the time until the special election can be held? If the time frame was changed from a Tuesday 145 to 160 days removed from the vacancy, to a Tuesday sixty to ninety days removed from the vacancy, the special election could be held on the traditional election day, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Or the election could be held in early December, allowing the new senator to take his seat when the second session began in early January; the Senate is in recess for most of December anyway.
Changing the rules in the middle of the game. Who would have thought the dems would do such a thing.
I see no difference between this and the practice of gerrymandering that both parties do, to their political gain.
You don’t think the Repubs would do the same thing, Dana, given similar circumstances? Come on!
That said, I don’t condone it, nor do I gerrymandering, nor do I swift-boating, nor do I lying and distorting an opponents position.
Face it, both parties have a lot of housecleaning to do, in order to establish the contract they have to represent the people, not to represent their own self interest and/or special interest campaign contributers.
Let us start now with comprehensive campaign finance reform.
We did, under McCain. Lotta good it did him. All it did was encourage the Soroses of the world to buy elections …