Hi
Can Congressman be appointed as opposed to elected to office?
I heard Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez say that under New York rules Joe Crowley was appointed as opposed to elected to office under New York government rules. Is she correct?
I look forward to your feedback.
Yes. Article 1, Section 2, paragraph 4 of the US Constitution:
I think what Ocasio-Cortez is referring to is when Tom Manton retired unexpectedly in 1997(?), after having filed to run for reelection, and chose Crowley as his replacement on the ballot without really telling anyone.
Representatives still must win a popular election to be seated in the House, either a normal one or a special election in case of a vacancy. Only the Senate allows terms to be completed by appointment in the case of a vacancy, but the manner in which that is done is left to each state to decide.
Exactly what part of that sentence allows a Representative to be appointed to office?
Here’s the clip (5 minutes 10 seconds into the video)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Interview with NowThis – Extended Cut | NowThis
Well, it seems I’m wrong. I thought a writ of election was an appointment in lieu of election. But it turns out that it’s an order for a special election.
Never mind!
Thanks dtilque. Do the law vary from state to state? Does that go for Senators too?
Members of the House of Representatives can only be elected. Joe Crowley could not have been appointed to the US House. (As mentioned earlier, she was probably talking about the way he was chosen as the Democratic nominee.)
Senators can be appointed to fill a vacancy if state law allows. Currently, 46 states allow appointments and four do not.
Note that in the original constitution, Representatives were supposed to represent the people of the state, while senators were supposed to represent the state governments. The direct election amendment (16th IIRC) failed to upgrade the way vacancies were filled.
There was a proposed amendment to ban appointments to the Senate a few years ago, but it didn’t pick up much support. I think it was in response to the shenanigans surrounding the vacancies left by Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy.
As mentioned, all US Reps must be elected. That is in the Constitution and is not subject to state law, although the way the states schedule those elections vary.
Senators are not required to be elected to fill vacancies. They can be appointed or the office can be held open until an election is held. It varies by state, and the rules have been changed fairly often as the party in power may make changes to their own benefit.
This touches on a rather interesting quirk in the question of how to reconstitute the Federal Government in case of a nuclear war, huge terrorist attack, etc. that results in the near-decapitation of the Government.
The Executive Branch is relatively easy to rebuild, in terms of leaders. There’s a whole raft of people in line for the Presidency, so while it’s possible all of them are incapacitated, that’s a very, very, very long shot. And once you have a President, they can use the constitutional power to make recess appointments to have at least heads of all Executive agencies. All of that is pretty straightforward.
The Senate is a little more tricky, but for the most part, various governors could appoint successors to get that body up and around probably within days to weeks.
But the House? Nobody has ever figured out what to do about the House. If the majority of the House is out of work, there’s no fast method to restore that body to working order, because hundreds of special elections would need to take place to do so. Nobody has the legal authority to appoint a House member.
Now, in such dire circumstances, the House may have no other choice to act extra-constitutionally and just declare that one House member (or whatever) constitutes a quorum for passing laws that may be needed (like funding the recovery of the country), but if we go by the book, it really is a difficult issue.
The difficulty of re-filling the House was a major plot point in the recent Kiefer Sutherland TV show Designated Survivor.
Massachusetts, in particular, changed its law several times over the span of just a few years, depending on whether or not the majority in the state legislature was of the same party as the governor: PolitiFact | Massachusetts legislature flip-flops on governor's senatorial appointment power
Yep, we had a bunch of threads about it back in 2004 and 2009. One of the unintended consequences was that it led to the election of Scott Brown (R) for 3 years - had they left law alone in 2004, Deval Patrick could have appointed a Democratic Senator to fill out the entire term. This didn’t kill Obamacare, but it certainly made those last few weeks more interesting that they needed to be.
And though it’s a long shot, we may be facing another such situation in a few years - if Charlie Baker (R) is re-elected governor in 2018, and Elizabeth Warren runs for President in 2020, it will be interesting to see if the legislature decides Massachusetts actually can live with only a single senator for 5 months.
About the only member of the Executive branch who couldn’t immediately be replaced by appointment is the Vice President. Per the 25th Amendment, a replacement VP has to be approved by a majority of both houses of Congress. So in the event Congress was wiped out, a new VP couldn’t be confirmed until a new House had been elected. Of course, the VP is one of the least essential members of the Executive Branch for the functioning of the government.
Now that we’re over the rainbow, one has to wonder if an House controlled by the opposing party as the President would decline any appointed VP, keeping the Speaker of the House a heartbeat away from the Presidency.
A Democratic House approved Gerald Ford for VP.
Yes, and a Democratic Senate approved William Rehnquist for SCOTUS. That was back when the political parties saw their job as working with the opposing party to govern, not to impede governing.
The Democratic House chose Gerald Ford for VP. Nixon was not given much of a choice.
Nixon’s political maneuvering room was certainly limited by late 1973, but I think you’re overstating things.