Say it ain’t so, Joe! You’re leaving us after only… uh… 36 years? Biden’s departure from the Senate leaves some pretty big shoes to fill, and while filling Obama’s Senate seat has been a hot topic of discussion here at SSP for the last week (and even Rahm Emanuel’s seat, for that matter), we haven’t talked about the situation in Delaware much.
There may, at this point, be more uncertainty about who gets to pick the replacement than who gets picked… which is odd, because it’s quite certain that Jack Markell will take over from Ruth Ann Minner as governor. Here’s the problem, according to ABC’s Political Radar:
Just prior to Tuesday’s election, Biden told a local television station that he does not want to resign his Senate seat until the moment he were to become vice president.
Delaware has not determined the time of its Jan. 20, 2009 gubernatorial nomination. But Gov. Minner’s office tells ABC News that the decision is traditionally made by the incoming governor.
So, who gets to replace Biden depends on when Jack Markell decides he wants to have his own inauguration ceremony on the 20th. If it’s before the presidential inauguration (and if Biden gets his wish of remaining in office until the moment of becoming Veep), Markell will get to appoint the replacement. (The tea leaves seem to indicate this will happen, as the ABC story cites Markell’s spokesperson as citing Gov. Pierre DuPont IV’s 12:01 am swearing-in in 1989 as precedent for doing it early in the day.)
Who, then, does Markell (or Minner) appoint? One obvious possibility is Minner herself, but Minner is 73 and has indicated that she is not interested in the job.
The most talked-about option seems to be Beau Biden, the Delaware Attorney General who also just happens to also be Joe Biden’s son. There’s one problem: Beau Biden is a member of the military, and is currently training prior to a one-year deployment to Iraq (as a lawyer, not as a front-line soldier). Military law (as well as his inability to be present for votes) would prevent him from serving in the Senate during his deployment, which makes his appointment right now impossible or at least ineffective. In addition, Biden Jr. has seemed leery of appointment in the past, perhaps unwilling to get tarred with the brush of nepotism; in 2005, Minner offered him the Attorney General post when it was vacant, but he chose to wait until 2006 to run for it and win it.
As a result, the possibility of a placeholder occupying the seat for two years, with the understanding that Biden Jr. would run for it in the 2010 special election, seems somewhat likely. Supreme Court Justice Myron Steele, who is close to Minner, is often mentioned in that context (although it’s possible Minner herself could keep the seat warm for two years). Secretary of State Harriet Windsor Smith’s name also crops up, at least in the placeholder context.
The other likeliest outcome is the appointment of Lt. Gov. Jack Carney, who lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary to Markell. The possibility of appointing the gubernatorial loser to the Senate seat was occasionally broached during the campaign; Carney, however, made it clear that if appointed to the Senate seat, he would want it to be on a permanent basis, not as a seat-filler for Biden Jr.
Finally, as an out-of-the-box choice, Chris Cillizza says that some Beltway chatter is talking up Obama campaign manager David Plouffe for the job, who grew up and went to college in Delaware.
Regardless of whether the 2010 candidate is Biden or Carney, the 2010 race could turn into a very competitive race if Delaware’s popular at-large GOP representative Mike Castle ran for the Senate. At age 69 and in the wake of some health problems, though, that challenge doesn’t seem likely.
UPDATE (David): We also discussed Biden’s successor in this August post when he was first named to the ticket.