Another Republican Senator, Mel Martinez (R-FL) is resigning. He claims that he is in good health and is only resigning to get on with the rest of his life. He also claims to have no plans to run for higher office. He will resign as soon as Governor Crist (R) appoints a replacement. Charlie Crist is considerably more moderate than Martinez. It is possible that Crist will appoint a moderate Republican replacement (if one can be found). Crist is also running for the other Senate seat for Florida. This puts Crist in a position to potentially appoint his own colleague.
Crist is facing a fairly weak primary challenge for the Republican nomination for the senate in that 2010 election. Right now, Crist is way ahead of the main challenger, Rubio, but he may feel pressure to appoint a real wing nut.
This is a lot like what Palin did. Crist had previously announced that he would not seek reelection to a second term (he was first elected in 2004). Now he is saying he'll resign as soon as a replacement can be found. He's not even serving his complete first term. The difference is that Martinez seems to be serious about quitting politics. Of course, given the recent track record of conservative Republicans, one would be forgiven for speculating that a new scandal is about to break.
When the Democrats got creamed in the Congressional elections in 1994, there was a similar wave of retirements, resignations and party switchings among Democrats. It's just no fun to be in the minority.
3 comments:
Crist will not appoint himself, so he has said, so he will appoint someone weak to serve for a year. Good for Dems. His departure from the Special Committee on Aging will help Dems, since he was the ranking member and a Floridian to boot, therefore interested in senior citizens' issues. Richard Shelby, from Alabama, won't care (the new ranking member).
It is interesting that he voted for Sotomayor, then quit. He could have quit last week, before the Sotomayor vote, if he had wanted to avoid it. I suspect he wanted to vote for a Latina to allow him some nice standing among Latino groups in Florida, then avoid the flak from conservatives.
At least Al Franken isn't going to be #100 in seniority anymore.
Does this mean that Franken doesn't have to wear the beanie anymore?
He still has to do the Starbucks run because he's the most junior of his party...
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