As a resident of Massachusetts, I have a little sequence of events I want to share with the out-of-state progressives.
In 2004, Ted Kennedy requested that the State Legislature change the law so that then Governor Romney could not select a replacement for Sen. John Forbes Kerry (D-MA), who was on the cusp of winning the 2004 presidential election.
The pre-2004 law said the the governor could select a replacement for the rest of the term.
Globe Story outlining Ted Kennedy's direct involvement
...so in 2004 the Mass legislature, changed the law: a special election would be held within 130 days of the seat becoming vacant. And so it was until the summer of 2009... when Ted Kennedy again prodded the legislature to change the law to allow the governor (a democrat this time) to appoint a replacement. Kennedy was dying. Kennedy knew he couldn't get a replacement selected for the rest of the term, since that kind of a raw power grab would be too obnoxious to the people, so he settled on a compromise: to have the governor select an interim and still have the special election in 130 days. Paul Kirk (the head of the Kennedy Library) was selected by the Kennedy family as the interim Senator - in the hopes that Health Care would soon be passed with in the next few weeks of his arrival -- last summer.
If Ted Kennedy had left well enough alone in 2004, the now democrat Governor, Deval Patrick, could have selected a replacement for Kennedy in the summer of 2009 that would have held the office until 2012.
The unintended side-effects of Teddy's well-intentioned meddling in State law opened the door for Scott Brown.
Teddy caused his own pet project to stall on the cold brown rocks of a stormy special election.
Way to go boys...way to go...