What’s Up With Joe Biden’s Senate Seat ?
By Doug Mataconis | Related entries in Biden, SenateMSNBC’s First Read speculates that there may be a nepotism play going on with Joe Biden’s Delaware Senate seat:
With President-elect Obama having resigned his Senate seat yesterday, folks may be wondering about what Vice President-elect Biden might do.
Biden told a local TV station right before Election Day he didn’t want to resign his seat right away, leading to speculation about whether he is trying to deny the outgoing governor of Delaware — Democrat Ruth Ann Minner — the chance to appoint his successor.
Under that scenario, Biden would wait until moments before he is sworn in as vice president to resign his seat, which could enable the new governor, Jack Markell, to make the appointment.
Biden has been said for some time to be grooming his son Beau Biden to succeed him in the Senate. Beau is currently Delaware’s Attorney General. He is on leave while he serves on active duty in the Delaware National Guard, where he is a captain.
Beau Biden is scheduled to be deployed to Iraq for about a year, making it unlikely he’d be appointed now to his father’s seat. But he would be well positioned to run in 2010, when a special election will be held to fill the remaining four years of his father’s term.
The current thinking then is that a placeholder would be appointed to fill the seat for two years until the younger Biden could run. The consensus choice of Delaware Democratic officials is the outgoing Lt. Gov. Jack Carney, who lost his own bid governor to Markell in a bitter primary.
Now there’s nothing new about family members being appointed to succeed each other in Congress. Jean Carnhan was appointed to her husband’s term after he died in a plane crash. Mary Bono replaced Sonny Bono in Congress. Hubert Humphrey’s widow filled out the remainder of his Senate term when he died. Up in Alaska, Lisa Murkowski was appointed to fill her father’s vacated Senate seat by her father. And, there have already been reports that ailing Senator Ted Kennedy has maneuvered to ensure that his wife Victoria his appointed to his seat should he die before his term ends.
Just because it’s a tradition, though, doesn’t make it right. What makes Beau Biden qualified to be a United States Senator ? Other than serving as Delaware’s Attorney General since 2006, he has no political experience (and one wonders how he can serve as Attorney General while he’s deployed in Iraq). If he weren’t related to Joe Biden, he wouldn’t even seriously be considered for the job. You can say pretty much the same thing about Jean Carnahan, Mary Bono, and Vicki Kennedy.
Ideally, nepotism of this type should be prohibited, but then, as James Joyner notes, so should the whole questionable practice of allowing Governors to appoint political cronies to a Senate seats and given them a leg up on the inevitible special election.
Of course, if we were living in an ideal world we’d be talking seriously about repealing the 17th Amendment and returning the Senate to the function it was intended to service, but that’s not likely to happen.
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November 18th, 2008 at 11:43 am
What qualifies him to be a senator?
Winning a special election, which he would still have to do.
Right?
November 18th, 2008 at 11:48 am
If your complaint is that Biden will delay his resignation to allow the next governor to appoint a placeholder, who will not seek re-election, as opposed to someone who would run as the incumbent and need to be primaried by Biden, then make that argument. But comparing a sitting state Attorney General to a couple of widows and children with no governing experience is stupid. This “no experience” argument is especially ignorant considering Beau Biden has already been elected to statewide office and the experience argument has already been rejected by the Deleware electorate when they elected him AG.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Ed,
Let’s put it in perspective — Sarah Palin has more political experience than Beau Biden.
And if you think that he won that election for A.G. for any reason other than the fact that he was a Democrat with the last name Biden, then you’re pretty damn naive.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
But my point is that you make such a weak argument using Bono, Murkowski, et.al. to make your case. Now you are throwing in Palin to denigrate Biden, which just sounds like the same rejected juvenile argument used against Obama. Don’t you guys ever learn?
Political nepotism is a long-standing tradition. Argue against that if you will, but you might want to reference some others, like the Kennedys, both Bush sons, Gore, Bayh, Sununu, and on and on, who were elected due to their fathers’ political legacies.
It just seems pretty narrow-minded of you to all of a sudden be outraged over something that has gone on for many years, in both parties. And to make it some partisan issue just makes it seem even more like hackery.
November 18th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Yeah, Doug, and Beau’s not running for governor or being picked as a veep candidate. The Palin remark was pointless. So no one with less experience than Sarah Palin can seek a state senate seat? The remark about his winning his atty gen post is rank conjecture as well. Got anything to back that up, or is it *naive* to ask? I think one could make a compelling case that being the child of a Senator who has served for 36 years might be a decent background in itself, sort of the political equivalent of a coach’s son. Of course, it’s no panacaea. Just look at our current POTUS…