It’s time we change the way we fill vacant U.S. Senate seats.
The sturm and drang surrounding the vacancies in Illinois and New York, the initial attempt to replace Sen. (now Vice President) Joe Biden with his son, and the surprising choice of an unknown in Colorado to replace Ken Salazar, should not be viewed as isolated instances, but as examples of a systemic problem that needs to be addressed.
Basically, we should fill vacant seats in the Senate the same way we do in the House — via special election.
John Nichols, a columnist for The Nation, makes that point as part of a larger blog entry on Caroline Kennedy taking her name out of contention for the New York seat.
The speculation game will go into overdrive now that Kennedy has quit, and every prospect will be analyzed not with regard to his or her potential contributions to the Congress but with regard to his or her potential benefits for Paterson.
That’s what is wrong with allowing senators to be appointed by governors. If political and personal considerations by governors may not always be Rod Blagojevich ugly, but they are always ugly.
Governors appoint senators with an eye toward helping themselves and their friends. And the appointed senators become frontrunners for vacant seats. From a small “d” democracy standpoint, the process is doubly compromised.
None of this is new and none of this should be surprising. It was just three years ago that newly elected Gov. Jon Corzine appointed Bob Menendez to the Senate seat Corzine was vacating — a move designed to shore up his standing with the Latino community, but also because he viewed Menendez as the stronger fundraiser and the best chance to keep the seat in the capital “D” column.
Menendez has done an admirable job in the Senate, but there is no denying that his appointment was about politics. Winning the appointment cleared the field for him in the primary and kept the party together, which generally means a Democratic win these days in state races. (Memo to Chris Christie: Regardless of the polling, you face the steepest of uphill battles trying to unseat an incumbent Democrat in New Jersey).
What are the alternatives? We could let the state legislatures make the appointment, but that is no better than having a governor handle it — and it contradicts the 17th amendment, which ended the original practice of having the legislatures pick senators in favor of direct election.
The best solution, of course, is to hold a special election. But don’t expect the people in the state capitals to back that one — they like their power and they will offer an array of excuses for opposing it.
Hank Kalet 