What Ted Kennedy Wants:
He's trying to change election rules-again.
Long Story Short: If Kerry had won the presidency in 2004, the law in MA would have had then Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, appoint a replacement to Kerry's Senate Seat. Ted Kennedy didn't like that possibility, because Romney would have appointed a fellow Republican. So Kennedy pushed for a change in the law that would require a special election be held to replace such an empty seat. This was safe for Democrats, because the state of MA is reliably liberal. The law was changed, and the MA law still currently requires a special election.
But then Kennedy himself became gravely ill. In his last days, Teddy requested that the law be changed back to what it was prior to his push for changing it in the first place. He now wanted the governor to be legally responsible for appointing a replacement in the event of an absent seat. Why did he so blatantly reverse himself? Well, the current governor is a Democrat. But the current polls suggest that, in every single state, self-described "conservatives" outnumber self-described "liberals". So the tea leaves said there's a chance the people of MA would choose, in a democratic election, a Republican. Teddy didn't like that. He died before they changed the law to suit his fickle mood swings.
An interesting side-note can be read here, which explains how, if the law he wanted to be in place in his dying days were in place in 1960, it would have likely prevented him from ever being a Senator in the first place.
My sympathies go to his family. I was going to post about this before he died. I don't mean to pile-on.
8.25.2009
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