Gubernatorial Appointments to the Senate

When I wrote this post two weeks ago, I was not thinking about anything like the misconduct of which Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been accused. I was merely reacting to criticism of Gov. Ruth Ann Minner of Delaware, for appointing an interim senator whom the critic deemed unqualified for the job.

After I posted that, I realized that I had not been totally accurate. Not all states give their governor total leeway in filling a Senate vacancy until the next election.

One of the big issues has always involved a scenario in which the governor is of a different party than the senator who is being replaced. Such a governor tends to appoint a member of his or her own party. Three examples come to mind:

In 1968, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Republican of New York, appointed Republican Congressman Charles Goodell to serve the last two years of the term of Robert Kennedy, following Kennedy's assassination. In 1970, Goodell failed to win a full term, losing in a three-way race to James Buckley, who ran on the Conservative line.

When Senator John Heinz, Republican of Pennsylvania, died in a plane crash in 1991, Democratic Governor Bob Casey appointed Democrat Harris Wofford to replace Heinz. Later than year, in a special election victory that was considered a major upset, Wofford defeated former Governor and federal Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. However, Wofford failed to win a full term in 1994, losing to Rick Santorum.

Party loyalty in such matters can even extend to a third party. After Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, was killed in a plane crash during his 2002 reelection campaign, Governor Jesse Ventura appointed Dean Barkley, a member of Ventura's third-party movement, the Independence Party, to a very brief interim stint in the Senate.

At least two states have moved to limit a governor's ability to switch a Senate seat over to his or her party.

Under Wyoming law, a governor is restricted to choosing a replacement senator from a list of three candidates submitted by the state committee of the previous senator's party. That came into play when Republican Senator Craig Thomas died in 2007. Democratic Governor David Freudenthal chose Republican John Barrasso from the list of candidates that the Republican committee had drawn up. In the absence of that law, Freudenthal would undoubtedly have appointed a Democrat, and thereby given a bit of a cushion to the razor-thin majority that the Democrats have in the Senate until January 2009.

The Massachusetts legislature took a different tack. In 2004, when their junior U.S. Senator John Kerry was the Democratic presidential nominee, state law was changed to provide for an immediate special election to fill a Senate vacancy. Therefore, had Kerry won the presidency, then-Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, would have been unable to appoint a Republican to the Senate. Now that the Democrats have regained the governor's office, there has been some talk of switching the law back. The report to which I've linked involved the possibility of Kerry being appointed to the Obama Cabinet, which apparently will not happen. But the other Senate seat could become vacant if Edward Kennedy is unable to complete his term due to his cancer.

Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and others, have proposed that the Illinois legislature pass a law for an immediate special election to replace Obama in the Senate. But in that case, it's not an issue of party. The Democrats are firmly in control, but special election advocates want to take the appointment power away from Blagojevich.