A random act of fate could turn the Senate over to the Republicans not next January, but next summer, or next month, or next week, writes greenfield64
The list of what threatens to end the Democrats’ control of the Senate is familiar: History says the White House’s party usually loses seats in midterms. The president’s low approval ratings in battleground states — even lower than his weak national ratings — portend trouble. Voters now say they prefer Republican control of Congress. And in several states, Republicans have made it harder to vote and are placing partisans in control of the vote-counting.
But there’s another possibility that should also have the Democrats reaching for the Maalox: A random act of fate could turn the Senate over to the Republicans not next January, but next summer, or next month, or next week. An illness or death could well trigger a political earthquake — by almost instantly switching control of the nation’s top legislative body.
When Glenn Youngkin becomes Virginia’s governor later this month, he will join a group of GOP governors from states with two Democratic senators: Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maryland, Georgia and Arizona.There was a brief flutter of concern about senatorial succession last January, when 80-year-old Vermont Democrat Pat Leahy went into the hospital.
When Ohio Republican Robert Taft died in office in July 1953, Ohio Gov. Frank Lausche replaced him with Democrat Thomas Burke. This gave Democrats a 48-47 majority — but the independent, Sen. Wayne Morse, who’d left the GOP out of his antipathy toward Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy, voted to keep the GOP in control of the chamber for the sake of comity and continuity.
It’s this combination of an evenly divided Senate and the scorched-earth nature of today’s political battles that makes this exercise more than just morbid speculation. Governors have been choosing members of their own party to replace senators of the other party for decades. In more than 200 cases going back more than 100 years, governors have named a replacement from the other party only three times.
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