Kennedy requests change in MA senate succession law

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Sorry, Ted.  I may have voted for you last go around, but I'm calling bullsh**t on this:


Kennedy, looking ahead, urges that Senate seat be filled quickly

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, in a poignant acknowledgment of his mortality at a critical time in the national health care debate, has privately asked the governor and legislative leaders to change the succession law to guarantee that Massachusetts will not lack a Senate vote when his seat becomes vacant.

In a personal, sometimes wistful letter sent Tuesday to Governor Deval L. Patrick, Senate President Therese Murray, and House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, Kennedy asks that Patrick be given authority to appoint someone to the seat temporarily before voters choose a new senator in a special election.


In case anyone doesn't remember, Democrats scrambled to create this "no appointee/quick special election" law in 2004 to keep then-Governor Mitt Romney from being able to name a Republican (presumably then-LG Kerry Healey) to Kerry's seat.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Besides, all this law would do is provide for interim representation before a special election when the seat would otherwise be empty. His wife explicitly ruled herself out for appointment. The caretaker would have to be a caretaker and not run for the seat.

I'm changing my mind. What is the virtue in having the seat be completely empty for several months?

For the record, I did not support the leave-the-seat-empty-just-to-screw-Republicans law in 2004, and I think it should be repealed. There was no merit then to screwing the state over for partisan reasons.

I'm just calling them out on a blatantly partisan move to—again—change election law just to favor the ruling party.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Convenient, yet shockingly immature and partisan.

Really? Asking them to change the law to appoint a caretaker instead of having a vacancy is such a godawful thing for him to ask?

It's partisan, sure, but I don't think it's particularly bad for partisanship, nor is it "immature." It's not like Kennedy drew up the first law change.

To be fair, it was the 2004 law—which Kennedy supported, by the way—that was the partisan and immature one. It's just that Democrats finally see how stupid and short sided it is now that they're on the other end of the sword.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

The new way is how it should be and they shouldn't have changed it in the first place.

I really don't want to get in a debate about Ted Kennedy's worth, but I want to go back to something I said earlier. I said that I thought having a temporary appointee followed by a special election is the best solution, much better than pure governmental appointment, and somewhat better than the current law. Do you agree? If not, is it because you want to have a five-month vacancy for your own partisan reasons, or what?

What I want is consistency.  Why didn't the Democrats propose this when Romney was governor?  Because any nominee to fill a vacant seat, no matter how temporary the appointment, would have a leg up in the special election. 

Not if the law forbids the caretaker from running in the special

]

That law would presumably be all sorts of unconstitutional.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Stupid Mass Gen Assembly. I understand why they changed the law back in '04 (to keep Romney from appointing a replacement for Kerry if he won the presidency), but why didn't they just allow the gov to appoint an interim senator from a list compiled by the replaced senator's party until the special election, like in Wyoming? (The way it should be in all states, IMHO).

Because the priority was to screw over Mitt Romney, and not to provide good government.  It was a short-sided quick hit—I don't think they ever went through the trouble of fleshing it out.