Posted on 08/22/2009 6:40:13 PM PDT by Libloather
Legislators start to push for Kennedy succession plan
By State House News Service
Sat Aug 22, 2009, 03:02 PM EDT
Boston, Mass. - Amidst a new round of partisan sniping on Beacon Hill, poll results released Friday showed majority support among Massachusetts voters for a plan outlined by ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy to allow Gov. Deval Patrick to appoint a temporary U.S. senator in the event of a vacancy in the office.
Fifty-two percent of likely Bay State voters say they agree with Kennedy’s request to change state law and allow the governor to name an interim senator until a special election is held to elect a permanent successor, according to a Rasmussen poll. Forty percent oppose the change, according to the telephone survey of 500 likely voters.
Along party lines, 72 percent of Democrats favor the plan; 64 percent of Republicans and 51 percent of unaffiliated voters oppose the plan. A 2004 state law, passed to prevent then-Gov. Mitt Romney from possibly naming a replacement to then-Democratic Party presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, requires that a special election be held within roughly five months of a Senate seat becoming vacant.
According to the poll, 66 percent of voters support a special election; 27 percent support the governor having the power to directly appoint someone to the seat. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percent.
Legislative leaders and Patrick have been cool to Kennedy’s request, but a pair of lawmakers, Sen. Robert O’Leary (D-Barnstable) and Rep. Robert Koczera (D-New Bedford) are trying to generate support for it, with the latter asking Patrick to consider calling lawmakers back to Beacon Hill to act on the matter.
O’Leary said he hoped to apply a “blanket prohibition” against the interim senator seeking to retain the office. “We’re circulating a letter among the Cape delegation and then we’re going to circulate it Monday among our Senate colleagues,” O’Leary said.
Aides to Senate President Therese Murray, who has been publicly noncommittal, “didn’t have an opinion one way or the other” during discussions with his office, O’Leary told the News Service.
O’Leary said he had spoken with Koczera, who is pushing legislation that would allow for the appointment after candidates qualify for the ballot. O’Leary, whose Cape Cod district includes Kennedy’s Hyannis Port home, said he preferred a ban on the interim senator seeking the office, and said, if that effort proved constitutionally tricky, “That would have to be worked out.”
The Barnstable Democrat said, “I think the intent is to try and do something and do it early in September.”
O’Leary weighed in with an endorsement of former Gov. Michael Dukakis as “a perfect choice. He’d be my nominee.”
Koczera has also ramped up his lobbying on behalf of his bill, sending a letter to Patrick Thursday and reaching out to legislative leaders to highlight a bill he filed months ago, but which was thrust into the spotlight Thursday by news that Kennedy wants a rewrite of the succession law.
The appointee would personally commit to not seeking the seat in a special election, under Kennedy’s plan. Koczera’s proposal (H 656) is similar but seeks to protect against the appointee running for the seat in the special election by allowing the temporary senator to be named only after candidates have been qualified for the ballot.
In his letter to Patrick, Koczera said he believed his bill reflects Kennedy’s position. “I suggest you consider this matter and in discussion with legislative leaders consider calling the Legislature into session to act upon the matter,” Koczera wrote.
In an interview, he acknowledged his plan might leave the seat vacant for two months, but said that would be preferable to a five-month vacancy and a necessary safeguard to prevent an appointee from getting a leg up on competitors via incumbency. “My feeling was that five months was a long time. If there’s business before the Congress Massachusetts should have a voice and a vote,” Koczera said. “I didn’t file it expecting these circumstances to arise.”
Koczera said his bill, filed in January, isn’t scheduled for a hearing until October 7 but added that he’s willing to expedite its review.
President Barack Obama is scheduled to vacation on Martha’s Vineyard beginning Sunday. Kennedy aides have sought to quell speculation that the president would visit with his ailing political ally.
Republican lawmakers on Thursday ripped Kennedy’s plan, labeling it a political power play and noting Democrats rejected a similar proposal five years ago.
While the GOP alleged hypocrisy behind an effort to restore appointment powers now that there is a Democrat in the Corner Office, Koczera said it was Republicans who are being hypocritical, noting it was not long ago that they were defending the gubernatorial appointment power held by Romney and fighting the Democrat-controlled effort to force a special election as the method of filling Senate vacancies.
“It’s being politicized a lot, especially by the Republican Party,” Koczera said. “At one time they were in favor of an interim. It’s like newfound religion. They choose to be opposed to any kind of an appointment.”
House Minority Leader Bradley Jones on Friday pounced on Koczera’s criticism.
Noting Koczera in 2004 voted against a Republican-sponsored interim appointee amendment and took to the House floor to push for the proposal’s defeat, Jones reiterated his claim that Democrats were contemplating politically-based public policy changes.
“A hypocrite right out of the gate – Bob Hypocrite Koczera,” Jones said in a News Service interview. Jones added, “I haven’t said that I’m against the idea of an interim appointment” and said he was open to a change that applied only after the 2010 elections.
Jones reiterated his beef that Democrats appeared to be engineering policy based on political circumstances rather than the state’s best interests, saying the plan wouldn’t be under discussion if Kennedy weren’t ill or if Republican Kerry Healey had beaten Patrick in the 2006 gubernatorial election.
Jones said, “If we had not changed the law in 2004 at all, this conversation wouldn’t be happening right now.”
He said Democrats on Beacon Hill were responsible for a potential “crisis” should the Senate seat become vacant. The GOP-sponsored interim appointee amendment failed in 2004, with 44 voting in favor and 104 against. The 44 votes in favor were split evenly among Democrats and Republicans.
So far, Koczera said, he hasn’t received much of a response to his letter. He said a couple of lawmakers he talked to at the State House Thursday were noncommittal. “The bill’s been filed,” he said. “It’s going to be heard and voted upon in some fashion.”
Koczera said all timely filed bills are voted upon in committee and that he hoped his bill would receive a favorable report. He said he had received no assurances of a floor vote on his bill in the House. Koczera added he is working with O'Leary to push for a hearing in September rather than October.
"I'm definitely in favor of wanting to get early action,” he said.
Perhaps his doctors can prolong his suffering while leaving him physically unable to cast senate votes even from stretchers. Granting he’s already mostly embalmed, maybe they could keep him gasping through his 2012 re-election campaign and spare us the actual votes any replacement would cast.
The Kennedy Family Dictatorship continues in North Korea, oops I meant Massachussetts.
Who needs any pesky elections?
It’s a joke, lighten up. Just like the state’s political landscape, with the taxpayers of Massachusetts as the butt of it.
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