Senate Selection Scam

Americans who imagined their Senate as a democratically elected body representing the popular will were rudely disabused of that notion after the presidential election, when the departure of four senators to the White House and cabinet unleashed a frenzy of back-room wheeling, dealing and scheming so extreme it has led to charges of patronage and nepotism, an arrest and an impeachment.

Regardless of the personal or political merits of newly minted senators Michael Bennet of Colorado, Ted Kaufman of Delaware, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Roland Burris of Illinois--two electoral newcomers, an admitted statewide unknown and a five-time loser running for governor, senator and mayor--it is no stretch to suggest they were ill positioned to get to Washington by unseating incumbents or winning open seats. Instead, all four benefited from a constitutional loophole that allows governors to fill Senate vacancies according to their whims.

At the opening of the American experiment, the founders borrowed several ideas from the British Empire, against which they had recently rebelled. They established a legislative branch with two chambers: a popularly elected variation on the House of Commons and an elite variation on the House of Lords. Members of the House of Representatives would be elected via regularly scheduled elections and, when vacancies occurred, special elections. Members of the Senate would be selected by the solons of the various state legislatures. Appalled by the bartering off of seats to wealthy and connected bidders, in 1913 Progressive reformers succeeded in amending the Constitution, shifting the selection of senators from the back rooms to the ballot box. Unfortunately, the Seventeenth Amendment was badly written, with one lesser clause allowing state legislatures to grant governors the right to make "temporary" appointments.

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