Word: appointments
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Governors often appoint members of political dynasties to Senate vacancies because of their name recognition and fundraising connections. This makes it easier for the newly minted senator to win a full term and puts the weight of an influential family behind the governor’s own reelection efforts. This consideration caused Governor David Paterson to initially favor Caroline Kennedy ’79 for New York’s open seat. Though Kennedy was widely panned for her inexperience and poor performance in press conferences, Paterson stood by the former first daughter, hoping to gain the Kennedy family?...
...most states, the governor is allowed to appoint a new senator who does not belong to the same party as the senator leaving office. But an unexpected vacancy should not be an opportunity for a governor to change the Senate’s balance of power through a partisan political ploy. Though this situation has not arisen in recent years, it nearly occurred in 2006, when Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) suffered a major stroke. Had Sen. Johnson died, Mike Rounds, the Republican governor of South Dakota, would have appointed a Republican to the vacant seat, thereby delivering...
...true, I think it’s a fantastic appointment,” Pepper D. Culpepper, an associate professor at the Kennedy School, said of his colleague. “For the Obama administration to appoint someone of his caliber underscores the importance of U.S. strategic plans and vision...
...17th Amendment to the Constitution states that, in the event of a vacancy in the Senate, the state legislature may empower the governor to appoint a replacement to serve out the remainder of the term. All but five states still retain this outdated procedure, although it raises some troubling issues...
...appointment of senators by governors circumvents the democratic process and leaves the electorate completely out of the process of selecting its own representative. Governors’ personal political interests can easily take precedence over voters’ preferences, leading to the selection of senatorial appointees with little or no appeal outside their district. Moreover, as the Blagojevich-Burris saga demonstrated so well, there are virtually no limitations on a governor’s power to appoint, which raises the possibility that corruption and nepotism could play into the decision. By the time the competence of appointed senators is eventually...