Who Will Shape The Next Senate?



(image via senate.gov)

TheHill's Aaron Blake writes an interesting story about who will shape the next United States Senate, the most aristocratic club in the world. The obvious answer would be "us, the voters, it's in the Constitution." And largely that's true. But there are a lot of imponderables also written into the Constitution. For example, if Senator Obama wins, there will be two immediate vacancies in the US Senate and they -- the Illinois seat and the Delaware seat -- will probably be replaced by Governors.

If McCain wins, the Arizona seat and the one for Connecticut -- Joe Lieberman, to be sure, will almost definitely be chosen SecDef in a McCain administration -- will also be chosen by the respective state Governors.

And that's not even counting the Cabinet positions that could potentially be filled by Senators. From TheHill:

"With the next president coming to the Oval Office straight from the Senate, Cabinet appointees next year could have a distinctly senatorial flavor. And that means congressional vacancies.

"In fact, if John McCain or Barack Obama appoints even two or three senators to the executive branch, the vacancies in the upper chamber could shift the balance of the next and future Congresses by multiple seats, as many potential appointees come from states where they would be replaced by governors of the opposite party.

"Senators were often tapped for the Cabinet early in American history, but according to the Senate historian, only three have been appointed directly from the chamber since 1950 — Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) in 1993, Edmund Muskie (D-Maine) in 1980 and William Saxbe (R-Ohio) in 1974.

"... Jennifer Duffy, a Senate race analyst with The Cook Political Report, said the confluence of circumstances could add to the waning number of senators-turned-secretaries.

"'I think maybe you’ll see a couple [senators], and there may be people who want to leave,' Duffy said, suggesting that members like Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) might be looking for a new challenge after decades in the Senate."

Also mentioned in the article are Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, a potential McCain Attorney General and Arlen Spector as a potential McCain Veterans Affairs Secretary (Wonder if that'll influence Chris Matthews and/or the gritty Ed Rendell to covet that Pennsylvania Senate seat). The full, interesting article here.