Good for the Massachusetts Dems...
By Byron LaMasters
I'm happy to see that they're getting this out of the way before the convention when people will probably start paying attention:
If John Kerry is elected president, his seat in the U.S. Senate would be filled by the winner of a special election rather than a successor hand-picked by Republican Gov. Mitt Romney under a bill approved Wednesday by the Massachusetts Senate.
The Senate voted largely along party lines, 32-8, after a sometimes testy debate pitting the badly outnumbered Republicans, who opposed the change, against Democrats. One Democrat, Charles Shannon, D-Winchester, sided with Republicans.
Republicans will cry that this is a partisan Democratic game. So what. Republicans in Alaska did the same thing two years ago when they feared that then-Governor Tony Knowles (D-AK) would appoint himself Senator after then-Senator Frank Murkowski (R-AK) was elected Governor. Of course, we all know what happened next. Murkowski decided that out of all of the possible choices to fill his seat, his daughter was the best qualified.
Mitt Romney had this coming to him anyway. Massachusetts has a recent history of electing liberal to moderate Republicans such as William Weld and Paul Cellucci. Romney on the other hand, has strayed from the Weld / Cellucci tradition. He's sided with the conservatives on the gay marriage issue, and he's called on John Kerry to resign his Senate seat. Who does Mitt Romney think he is? He's governor of Massachusetts for chrissake.
Posted by Byron LaMasters at June 23, 2004 06:11 PM
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No, Republicans remember Sen. Paul Coverdale in Georgia. He died in office. The Democratic governor replaced him with Dem. Zell Miller. Know you guys want to change the rules in mid stream. Just like Florida. Who cares what the rules are. Go to court to get your way.
Aren't you sooo glad Zell is in office now. Great Dem governor, great service to his state. But now he doesn't carry our water the way we want. Exclude him from our party.
Zell was a good Democratic governor. But Zigzag Zell decided to vote with the GOP when he joined the US Senate. In 2001 he praised John Kerry's service to America. Now, he attacks John Kerry and endorsed Bush. He's not a Democrat anymore, so yes, we'll exclude him from our party.
Republicans are the last ones to be talking about changing the rules midstream. It is up to states to decide their rules on filling Senate vacancies. On the other hand, redistricting has historically been done the cycle after the census, unless courts require the maps to be redrawn. Something that Republicans totally disregarded in 2003 in Texas and Colorado.
