senate vacancies via special election only.Ībate said that an argument could be made in support of Beshear’s constitutional intent comment in the veto message. 11 states are like Kentucky in that they allow the governor to appoint with some limitations – seven of the 11 have state parties provide a list like Kentucky – and four states fill U.S. He also noted that some legislators sit on their state parties’ executive committees, raising some ethical questions about their participation in the appointment process.Īs of mid-2022, according to Pew Research Center, 35 states allow their governors to appoint replacements to the U.S. The Seventeenth Amendment does not authorize legislatures to direct how the Governor makes an appointment to fill vacancies, and the legislature may not impose an additional qualification on who the Governor may appoint beyond the qualifications for a United States Senator set forth in the Constitution,” Beshear wrote. In doing so, Senate Bill 228 is contrary to the United States Constitution. “The bill… upends a century of precedent by delegating the power to select the representative of all Kentuckians to an unelected, unaccountable committee of an organization that represents only a fraction of Kentuckians. He said that involving an unelected state party board in the appointment process goes against that intent and “upends” precedent. senators and toward the voters electing their senator. In that message, Beshear pointed out that the intent of the amendment was to shift the nation away from state legislatures appointing U.S. Cameron, who some consider to be a McConnell protege, shot up through the ranks of the Kentucky GOP with a decisive win to his current post in 2019. The question of whether the governor might appoint a Democrat instead of a Republican to fill a GOP-filled senate seat could become moot if Beshear loses his impending re-election challenge to Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron. A McConnell aide stated that on Wednesday the senator felt “light headed” and that after the freeze-up he came back and was “sharp” during a Q&A. When asked about what Beshear might do should a vacancy occur, McConnell’s office referred to his comment to reporters after the incident that he was “fine.” His office also pointed to the work he was doing Thursday in Washington, delivering remarks on the Senate floor and meeting with groups like Commerce Lexington in the Capitol. Beshear has often challenged the state’s Republican legislative majority, which is dominated by roughly 80-20 GOP majorities in both chambers.
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