The tea leaves all point to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren being a top contender for Joe Biden’s vice presidential nod, as does strong polling among Democrats, including Black Democrats. Among the arguments against her pick, one appears to be very valid on the surface: that picking her puts her Senate seat at risk.
For sure, it’s not a 100% risk-free situation, but those fears are wildly overblown. Let’s examine the issue in detail.
If the hypothetical Biden-Warren ticket were victorious this fall, her vacated seat would be filled by Republican Gov. Charlie Baker on an interim basis until a special election filled the seat for good within five months of the vacancy—so March 2021. Given that a 50-50 Senate is well within reach, this would give Republicans control of the chamber for roughly two to three months into the Biden administration.
That’s the state of the current law.
I emphasize “current” on purpose. Democrats hold a veto-proof majority in the state legislature. The balance of power is comical—34-4 Democratic in the state Senate, 126-31 in the state House.
Those legislatures can change that law of vacancy anytime they want, and they have—twice in the last decade. It was changed in 2004 when it looked like Sen. John Kerry might win the White House. Republican Mitt Romney was governor. And it was changed in 2009 when Sen. Ted Kennedy died, giving the then-Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick the right to pick the successor.
Now Democrats might want to avoid charges of hypocrisy, which may have led to us losing that Kennedy seat in a special election to Republican Scott Brown—the same Senate seat that Warren ended up picking up two years later. But there’s an easy answer to that.
Several states have laws that say any vacancy must be replaced with a member of the same party. Makes sense, right? Governors shouldn’t reverse the balance of power in the Senate based on their own political alignment. The voters should be respected.
So Massachusetts Democrats can mandate that Baker replace Warren with another Democrat. Five months later, a special election would determine the ultimate holder of that seat. Easy enough. (Steven Wolf arrived at the same conclusion back in January.)
But here’s the fun part: Even if Democrats don’t touch the law, Baker isn’t exactly a Republican Republican. He’d be a moderate Democrat in any other state—socially liberal, fiscally conservative-ish. He’s resorted to smuggling personal protective equipment into his state to get around the Trump administration’s confiscation of such goods. Baker joined his region’s multistate coronavirus planning compact, the only Republican to do so. And none of this is new. “Baker was a vocal opponent of the Republican health care plan, which was poised to deliver a serious blow to funding for the state’s health care structure. He’s also spoken out against the travel ban and Trump’s immigration policy,” reported Politico back in 2018. He refused to endorse Donald Trump in 2016, and he certainly isn’t doing it this year.
What that means is that national Republicans are through with him. He’s persona non grata outside of the Bay State. He won’t curry favor with them by giving them a senator.
Worse than that, his huge popularity in the state is bolstered by that feud with Trump and national Republicans. Would he surrender all his political capital in order to reward the very people he’s been at war with since 2016?
Also note the last three Republicans to win governorships in Massachusetts:
Bill Weld
Mitt Romney
Charlie Baker
Weld attempted a quixotic primary challenge against Trump this year.
Romney was the only Republican to vote to impeach.
Baker is cut from the same mold. These people are not “Republicans” as you and I understand them. Massachusetts Republicans are living fossils, vestiges of the old fiscally conservative, socially liberal Rockefeller Republicans. Do we want any of them in the Senate? Heck no. But there’s a good chance that whatever Republican Baker scrounged up for the seat (Bill Weld?) wouldn’t exactly be an ally to the national Republican Party.
But still, no need to even risk that. Just pass a law that says Baker has to nominate a Democrat, and everyone is happy—even Charlie Baker. He has no interest, political or ideological, in fighting for McConnell’s Republican caucus.
As for the special election, I have two words: Ayanna Pressley. The Boston-area congresswoman would be easily the most dynamic person to enter the Senate since—well, perhaps ever. I’d bet money on her becoming the first Black woman president. She’d raise mountains of cash, becoming an immediate national sensation. Not only would I not worry about her winning the special against any Republican; the thought of her running gives me goose bumps.
Yes, she’s my political crush. And it’s 100% justified.
And lest anyone bring up Scott Brown and the loss of that Senate seat in the 2009 special election, that was an entirely different world with a God-awful Democratic candidate (Martha Coakley) who (literally) didn’t even bother to campaign, thinking she had the election in the bag. Brown was boosted by the then-nascent Tea Party movement, and Coakley, the attorney general, was the laziest and perhaps most hated politician in the state. How awful is she? She now works for Juul.
Pressley—or pretty much any other Democrat—wouldn’t take any campaign for granted. And really, you think Massachusetts Democrats would give McConnell the Senate in this climate? It really is a completely different world.
So that’s why we don’t need to worry. 1) Republican Gov. Charlie Baker is not a national Republican, and he’d have no incentive to prop up the national party. And 2) we don’t have to worry about it anyway, because the state legislature can mandate that Baker pick a Democratic replacement. Then 3) sometime in March 2021, we’d get to promote Ayanna Pressley to the Senate, getting her one step closer to the presidency.
There are other, more compelling reasons to hope Warren stays in the Senate, or that Biden picks someone else for vice president. Worrying about the state of her Senate seat isn’t one of them.