Mass. House gives initial nod to temporary fill-in for Kennedy seat

By Matt Viser and Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

The Massachusetts House gave preliminary approval this afternoon to a bill that would allow Governor Deval Patrick to appoint an interim replacement for the late US Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

The House voted 97-58 to send the bill to a final vote before the bill is sent to the Senate, where Republicans are vowing to use every parliamentary maneuver they can to delay it.

Top Senate officials are planning to hold formal sessions Friday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. That would leave Republicans out of parliamentary delaying tactics by Wednesday, when the bill could be sent to Patrick’s desk. Current vote projections suggest there is a narrow margin to approve the legislation.

Patrick is prepared to make an appointment within days of the legislation's approval.

The bill's passage would reverberate from Beacon Hill to Washington on an issue that has been a focal point of Massachusetts politics since Kennedy's death last month.

Top Democrats in Washington have been aggressively pushing for Massachusetts to temporarily fill the seat to give them more leeway in approving President Obama's national health care plan. Shortly before his death, Kennedy himself advocated for the change in law.

"This bill will give us full representation today and the people of Massachusetts will have their second voice in the US Senate," said Representative Michael Moran, a Democrat from Boston who co-chairs the Joint Committee on Election Laws, as he introduced the bill. "My overriding concern is making sure the people of Massachusetts are fully represented in the US Congress."

But Representative Paul Frost, a Republican from Auburn, said he felt the Democratic Party was ramming the bill through, in order to allow the Democratic governor to put a Democratic senator in the office.

"There's no doubt in my mind that what we are going to do today or attempt to do today is nothing short of partisan," Frost said. "It is clear to me and, I think, to most people in Massachusetts that if [2006 Republican gubernatorial candidate] Kerry Healey had won that election and was governor today, we would not be here," Frost said.

The Republicans, who account for only a small minority in the state Legislature, have charged Democrats with hypocrisy, saying that the Democrats rejected making precisely the same change to the law in 2004, because they did not want then-Governor Mitt Romney to have a chance to appoint a Republican to the Senate in the event that Senator John F. Kerry won the presidency.

"I object to the process that's now under way to retroactively change our election laws to suit the whims of one political party simply because they have the power to do so," Frost said.

The Legislature's Joint Committee on Election Laws gave the bill a favorable recommendation Wednesday night, sending it to the floor by an 11-6 vote.

The original legislation would have required the governor's appointee, who would serve until a Jan. 19 special election, to be of the same political party as the person who previously held the office.

But late this afternoon, House lawmakers struck that provision by an 89-68 vote, after concerns were raised that such a requirement may be unconstitutional. Democrats broke with DeLeo and joined Republicans to support the measure.

“When you restrict the party affiliation, you tie the governor’s hands,” said Representative Alice Peisch, a Wellesley Democrat and sponsor of the amendment.