After four votes in the legislature, several delays, and the remaining possibility of a pending legal challenge, it appears that the state of Massachusetts is about to get full representation in the Senate again:
Governor Deval Patrick will announce on Thursday that Paul G. Kirk, Jr. will be named as the temporary replacement to fill Ted Kennedy's vacant senate seat, WBZ has learned.
The reliable source confirmed to WBZ the governor will name Kirk during a news conference Thursday at 11am.
Multiple media sources this morning, indeed, are pointing to the 71 year-old Kirk, a Boston-based attorney who served as the head of the Democratic National Committee in the late 1980s. Kirk, perhaps most importantly in this matter, served the late Senator Edward Kennedy as a top-level staffer for nearly a decade prior to his tenure at the DNC.
It became apparent over the past two days that several members of the Kennedy family were lobbying Governor Patrick to give Kirk the nod to replace Senator Kennedy. Prior to the Kirk boomlet, the name most often cited was that of former Governor Michael Dukakis.
Kirk's selection makes sense on a couple of levels. For one thing, one must assume that the Kennedys would not endorse an individual who was unwilling to carry out Kennedy's political legacy. For another, his decade at Kennedy's side in the Senate means that he can hit the ground running:
Appointed Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), who like Kirk was a longtime aide to the previous incumbent, Joe Biden, suggested Kirk was the man for the job.
"People say it’s great that I got [appointed] because I know this town, but Paul Kirk would be totally, completely brilliant," Kaufman said. "Gov. Dukakis is great too, but I think Paul just has the edge because he knows the Senate and how the place works."
There is, even at this final hour, the slight probability of a snag for Governor Patrick. Because the legislature failed to pass the measure with the two-thirds of the vote necessary to create an "emergency preamble", the bill is not supposed to take effect for 90 days. Patrick can get around that by declaring the bill a response to an emergency situation, which will allow him to waive the 90-day requirement. Not surprisingly, the Massachusetts GOP is crying foul:
Republicans have toyed with the idea of challenging Patrick’s legal authority to declare such an emergency, and legal challenges could also come from citizens.
"This is not an emergency," state Rep. Paul Frost (R) told The Associated Press, noting that it would be difficult for Patrick to declare an emergency after the State Legislature declined to do so.
With public opinion in favor of the interim appointment bill, there might be a political price to pay if the Massachusetts GOP tried to delay this any further. Then again, with no members in the Congressional delegation and just 21 of the 200 seats in the state legislature, they may feel like they don't have a heck of a lot to lose.