IS THIS FAIR? Massachusetts House OKs Senate Succession Change

As the article below shows, Massachusettes may allow the current governor to give a replacement to Ted Kennedy in the Senate. Is this fair that they wouldn't let a Republican governor do the same?
For more about Ted Kennedy's Senate stint, click here and here . (h/t www.TexasInsider.org/ CQ Staff)


Massachusetts House OKs Senate Succession Change
By Emily Cadei, CQ Staff

Massachusetts is well on its way to having a second senator.
After a long day of often spirited debate, the state House on Thursday voted 95-58 to pass legislation that would give Gov. Deval Patrick the power to appoint an interim senator to fill the seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy .
As it stands now, the seat would remain vacant until the Jan. 19 special election.
“This bill will give us full representation today and the people of Massachusetts will have their second voice in the U.S. Senate,” Democratic state Rep. Michael Moran, co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Election Laws, told the Boston Globe. “My overriding concern is making sure the people of Massachusetts are fully represented in the U.S. Congress.”
The state Senate is expected to pass the bill as well, but Republican stalling tactics could delay that until the middle of next week.
State Sen. Stephen J. Buoniconti predicted to CQ Politics this week that “it will take several sessions to pass the bill.”
“The hopeful time frame” for passage “is Thursday next week,” said Buoniconti, who sits on the joint Election Laws Committee.
Patrick has indicated he would move immediately to name an interim appointment once the law is changed.
Among the names being floated as possible appointees are Michael Dukakis, the former Democratic governor and the party’s 1988 presidential nominee; former state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, who lost a race for governor in 1998; Peter Meade, the new president of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate at the University of Massachusetts in Boston; and Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor and a professor at University of California, Berkeley.
The statutory change was requested by Kennedy, himself, days before he died of brain cancer.
The small Republican minority in the legislature has balked however, calling the move a partisan ploy. They have pointed to the fact that Democrats changed the law governing Senate succession just five years ago, in what was interpreted as a move to prevent Republican Gov. Mitt Romney tapping a replacement for Sen. John F. Kerry if Kerry had won the presidential election.
And they say the Democratic push to change the law smacks of hypocrisy and is nothing more than an attempt to ensure a 60th Democratic vote for the health care overhaul bill currently pending in the Senate.
“I hope that works out,” U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said earlier in the day. “It would be nice to have 60, of course.”
That’s not the uniform opinion in the majority party on Capitol Hill.

“I don’t agree with them changing the law,” said Sen. Russ Feingold , D-Wis. “I think they did it right when they gave it to the people of Massachusetts.”

In the Massachusetts Senate, members have the ability to stand up and object during the first, second and third readings of the bill, which delays the debate, he said.

— Bart Jansen and Kathleen Hunter contributed to this story.