[Impy]

I forgot all about that stuff in Alaska. That dirty bastard (not that I wouldn’t have done the same as a Republican Governor). And then Frank appoints his freaking daughter, and she’s still there. Ugh......

Your 5 day period sounds good to me. I like the idea of having a special election sooner than later (2 friggin years to get rid of the widow Carnahan), 3 months or however long it should take, but not having an appointee in the interim is stupid. If you want you could make the appointee ineligible for the special election (or could you? Would that violate the constitution?).

[AuH2ORepublican]

Yes, it would violate the Constitution to make a Senate appointee ineligible to run for reelection (U.S. Term Limits SCOTUS case). But I guess that the governor could call fir the special election with a filing deadline (for both partisan and independent candidates) 10 days away, and not appoint the Senator until the filing deadline has passed and the governor is assured that the person he appoints isn't running fir the seat (except maybe as a write-in, I guess). The question, though, is why is it such a big deal that the appointed senator not run for reelection when the election is a couple of months away? It's not as if he would have enough time to entrench himself. Maybe his senate attendance would suffer if he's campaigning throughout the state, but that could be true for any senator seeking reelection, not just appointees.