With Secretary of State Natalie Tennant joining the list of prominent state voices calling for an early special election to fill Robert C. Byrd's seat in the U.S. Senate, it's looking increasingly likely that, protestations to the contrary, Gov. Joe Manchin will in fact have to call a special session to correct what Tennant has described as a "quirk" in state election law.
Between the surge of public opinion, and the likelihood of legal challenges if he doesn't, Manchin will find himself with no choice but to act.
With no secret regarding his own political ambitions, Manchin faces pros and cons whether he ends up running for the U.S. Senate in a special election this fall, or not until 2012.
If there would be a special election in November, Manchin would have a very narrow timeline to raise funds. (He had only about $146,000 left sitting in his 2008 re-election fund, and that was before he handed out a number of $1,000 contributions to incumbent Democrats in the May legislative primary races.)
Meanwhile, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., is sitting on a war chest of more than $500,000, with more where that came from, with national Republicans salivating at the opportunity to pick up a Senate seat.
If the election waits until 2012, fundraising is no longer an issue for Manchin, but there will be other concerns, including having a possible drag at the top of the Democratic ticket with President Obama's re-election bid.
Meanwhile, Manchin would have to preside over the 2011 legislative session, which will have to deal with some very stormy issues, including a budget shortfall estimated at more than $150 million, the massive OPEB liability, and an ugly round of redistricting of legislative districts, as legislative leaders from the Southern counties will have to fight tooth and claw to preserve their districts in light of population declines.
(For instance, Truman Chafin's 6th Senatorial District currently stretches from Huntington in Wayne County to close to Bluefield in Mercer County. The joke has been that, unless he can extend it west to Marietta, Ohio, and east to Wytheville, Va., he could be out of luck.)
nn
So how did we get stuck with this screwy election law that says that vacancies for U.S. Senate (and many state offices) of longer than two years, six months must be filled by special election -- but includes a technicality that makes such elections impossible if there is less than two years, 11 months in the unexpired term?
Call it a case of stealth legislating at its worst.
As introduced in the House (by no less than then-Speaker Chuck Chambers, now a federal judge), the bill simply provided for election of circuit judges by single-member divisions. (Prior to that, candidates ran en masse in multi-judge districts, with the top vote-getters winning seats on the bench.)
The bill passed the House on Feb. 6, 1990.
With Secretary of State
Natalie Tennant joining the list of prominent state voices calling for an early special election to fill
Robert C. Byrd's seat in the U.S. Senate, it's looking increasingly likely that, protestations to the contrary, Gov.
Joe Manchin will in fact have to call a special session to correct what Tennant has described as a "quirk" in state election law.
Between the surge of public opinion, and the likelihood of legal challenges if he doesn't, Manchin will find himself with no choice but to act.
With no secret regarding his own political ambitions, Manchin faces pros and cons whether he ends up running for the U.S. Senate in a special election this fall, or not until 2012.
If there would be a special election in November, Manchin would have a very narrow timeline to raise funds. (He had only about $146,000 left sitting in his 2008 re-election fund, and that was before he handed out a number of $1,000 contributions to incumbent Democrats in the May legislative primary races.)
Meanwhile, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., is sitting on a war chest of more than $500,000, with more where that came from, with national Republicans salivating at the opportunity to pick up a Senate seat.
If the election waits until 2012, fundraising is no longer an issue for Manchin, but there will be other concerns, including having a possible drag at the top of the Democratic ticket with President Obama's re-election bid.
Meanwhile, Manchin would have to preside over the 2011 legislative session, which will have to deal with some very stormy issues, including a budget shortfall estimated at more than $150 million, the massive OPEB liability, and an ugly round of redistricting of legislative districts, as legislative leaders from the Southern counties will have to fight tooth and claw to preserve their districts in light of population declines.
(For instance, Truman Chafin's 6th Senatorial District currently stretches from Huntington in Wayne County to close to Bluefield in Mercer County. The joke has been that, unless he can extend it west to Marietta, Ohio, and east to Wytheville, Va., he could be out of luck.)
nnSo how did we get stuck with this screwy election law that says that vacancies for U.S. Senate (and many state offices) of longer than two years, six months must be filled by special election -- but includes a technicality that makes such elections impossible if there is less than two years, 11 months in the unexpired term?
Call it a case of stealth legislating at its worst.
As introduced in the House (by no less than then-Speaker Chuck Chambers, now a federal judge), the bill simply provided for election of circuit judges by single-member divisions. (Prior to that, candidates ran en masse in multi-judge districts, with the top vote-getters winning seats on the bench.)
The bill passed the House on Feb. 6, 1990.
On Feb. 7, the Senate received the House message, and took it up for immediate consideration (red flag No. 1). They voted to waive any committee references (red flag No. 2), and to waive the constitutional requirement that bills be read on three separate days (red flag 3).
The next day, Sen. Lloyd Jackson (known in the Senate back then as the "sneakin' deacon") offered a strike-and-insert amendment (red flag 4), which wiped out the contents of the original bill and inserted provisions of the law we have today. In addition to the provision for vacancies in office, the stealth amendment also threw in a bunch of other changes to state election law, even down to a section on ballot order on then-newfangled electronic voting machines.
The bill passed the Senate 28-5 with minimal discussion. (Ironically, then-Sen. Joe Manchin was one of the "no" votes.)
It went back to the House, where the delegates concurred in the Senate amendment without debate (red flag 5) and passed the bill, sending it to then-Gov. Gaston Caperton<P> for his signature.
(At the time, I was a rookie statehouse reporter barely a couple of weeks into covering the Legislature, so they could have snuck a runaway freight train into the bill and I wouldn't have noticed. However, the stealthiness also eluded coverage by some of the all-time best statehouse reporters, including Fanny Seiler, A.V. Gallagher, Brian Farkas and Tom Miller, to name a few.)
It also caught many legislators unaware, as Fanny reported some months later, when several delegates complained they were not apprised of a provision in the bill that extended the governor's appointment powers for judicial vacancies.
Among those quoted in the article was a Delegate Danny Jones, who stated, "It wasn't an issue. I was unaware of that change."
Of course, Jones -- now Charleston mayor -- is one of the voices calling for a special session to correct the law.
Fortunately, legislators today would have a tough time pulling off such shenanigans, with today's near-real time posting of bills and amendments on the Legislature's website.
Back in those ink-and-paper days, lawmakers were sometimes hard-pressed to get copies of amendments, let alone the press or public.
Reach Phil Kabler at ph...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1220.
