Robert Speel – 12/20/06

This page was last updated on December 20, 2006.

Midweek Perspectives: Block this sneaky exception; Commentary; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; December 20, 2006.

According to the PG, “Robert Speel is an associate professor of political science at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College.”

Call me skeptical, but I doubt we’d have seen this column if Mr. Speel believed there may be an opportunity for a Democrat governor to appoint a Democrat to fill a vacant Senate seat formerly held by a Republican.

Rather than do a point-by-point critique, I’ll address only a couple of points.

Though Mr. Speel focuses on the possibility of a “Republican governor [having] the opportunity to hand the Senate majority back to the Republicans through a simple appointment,” in none of the historical examples he listed did a Republican governor replace a Democrat senator with a Republican. Indeed, in all examples except one, the replacement senator was of the same party as his predecessor. The lone exception? When Democrat Gov. Robert Casey, Sr., appointed Democrat Harris Wofford to replace Republican Sen. John Heinz. Though he told us Mr. Heinz was a Republican, Mr. Speel didn’t mention Messrs. Casey and Wofford were Democrats. I wonder why. (You could argue Mr. Speel assumed we knew Messrs. Casey and Wofford were Democrats, but why wouldn’t he also assume we knew Mr. Heinz was a Republican?)

There’s another example of a Democrat governor appointing a Democrat to replace a Republican that Mr. Speel failed to mention. When Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-GA) died in office in 2000, Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat, appointed Democrat (and former governor) Zell Miller to fill out the term until the next election.

Mr. Speel’s piece leads off with, “If a U.S. Senate seat becomes suddenly vacant, governors should be required to appoint someone from the senator’s party” and concludes with, “It might be time for more states to consider changing their laws so that senators continue to represent the preferences of voters in their states, even if a member resigns or dies in office.”

A key assumption of these statements is that people vote for political parties, not individuals.

Let’s accept this assumption for the sake of argument. If voters are really voting for a party and not an individual, what should happen when a representative decides to change party while in office? Should the representative be forced to resign so his state’s governor can replace him with a representative of the same party?