OPINION:
Anything goes, we suppose, in politics as in love and war. Life expectancy in the United States now stands at 78.8 years, and Maryland Democrats, stung by losing the governorship last November, are trying to change the rules of Senate succession to protect their aging senators.
Both Barbara Mikulski and Benjamin Cardin appear to be healthy, but Sen. Mikulski is 78 and Sen. Cardin is 71, and even if 70 is “the new 50,” nobody lives forever and the governor, who appoints interim senators when there’s an unexpected opening, is of that most despised species, a Republican.
So two Montgomery County Democratic legislators have introduced companion bills in the House of Delegates and the state Senate that would strip the governor of the power, in the event of a sudden vacancy, to name U.S. Senate replacements who serve until the next biennial statewide election. Instead, the vacancy would be filled quickly through a special election, and the interim senator named by the governor would be a placeholder who would forgo running for the seat in his or her own right.
The Democrats held no such concerns as recently as four weeks ago. What accounts for this sudden fierce urgency? Senate succession was not an issue at all during the previous eight years of the tenure of Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat.
The Maryland bills are reminiscent of what happened a decade ago in Massachusetts, when Mitt Romney was an unexpected Republican governor and John F. Kerry was a candidate for president. Democrats in the legislature were afraid that, were Mr. Kerry to win, Mr. Romney would appoint a Republican senator. The Democrats mandated a quick special election in that event. When Mr. Kerry lost to George W. Bush the issue was mooted, and five years later, and the governor was a Democrat again, the legislature changed the law again, restoring the governor’s prerogative.
The sponsors of the Maryland legislation insist, naturally, that their partisanship has nothing to do with partisanship. “You can’t go wrong with the principle of election by the people,” state Sen. Jamie Raskin, Montgomery Democrat, told The Baltimore Sun. “I’m something of a zealot for democracy.” But only a part-time zealot. He showed no such zealotry for changing the law during the O’Malley years.
The Maryland Republican Party understands what’s going on. “It’s interesting that the first year of a Republican governor, they’re trying to strip powers from him,” says Joe Cluster, the executive director of the Maryland Republican Party.
The House bill has more than 50 partisan co-sponsors; the Senate bill has 15. All are Democrats. The measures do have one attractive provision, requiring that the governor’s interim appointee would be ineligible to run for a full term. With no incumbent, there would be a level playing field on which to select a permanent senator.
Despite having lost a few seats in November, Democrats hold sufficient majorities in both houses of the General Assembly to override a gubernatorial veto. If the bill clears the legislature, Gov. Larry Hogan should use his line-item veto and sign into law only the seat-warmer provision. That would put the Democrats in an uncomfortable position deciding whether to override the governor’s veto in pursuit of naked partisanship.
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