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The decision is appealed by the Republicans to SCOTUS on some trumped-up basis. SCOTUS has to either reject the appeal or issue a stay and hear the case.
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Watch Rehnquist’s head explode, along with the entire on-air staff of Faux News.
Thanks, minty. I appreciate your answer to my question.
The Wall St. Journal addressed this scenario (I think) and explained that it wouldn’t work. They said that the special election wouldn’t replace the general election.
They also offered a novel idea for another Democrat to take Toricelli’s place.
BTW, after the hash that the Florida SC made of that state’s specific time requirements, I am resigned to the worst. I have every expectation that my state’s SC will be as helpful to our Dems as Florida’s was to theirs.
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Torricelli quits.
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Governor appoints Joe Democrat to fulfill unexpired term.
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Governor calls for a special election for the unexpired Senate term, as he is authorized to do. See U.S. Const. amend. XVII and the statute you quoted above
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Since it’s a special election, Joe Democrat is not subject to the 51/48-day deadline that applies to general elections.
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Watch december’s head explode. **
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But, then, wouldn’t Joe Democrat just serve until the unexpired term is over? That is, until the new Senate term starts in January? (I think it’s January for Congress) And the name on the ballot for the Democrat who’s running to take his seat in January is Toricelli. So I don’t see how that would help the Democrats much, other than if Toricelli promises, if elected, to step down in favor of Joe. But, he could do that anyway, even without resigning now.
December, if the Democrats do seek a waiver, I’m assuming it’ll be on a stronger argument than “He changed his mind after the deadline.”, because I don’t think that’ll fly. Maybe they found some special circumstance…I don’t know.
As much as the prospect of ballistic crania makes an appealing image, lets hope not. A technicality can be found, most likely will be, and should be.
The people of New Jersey deserve a choice, an honorable one, if that be at all possible. Too many times have I held my nose and pulled the lever for the least vile candidate.
Further, the (Jerseyites?) have shown, in the past, a strong preference for Dems. The Pubbies are attempting an end run around the people themselves, which is directly contrary to the whole idea of election. If they could impose thier legalistic will on New Jersey, I have little doubt they would do so in a New Jersey minute.
Let the Dems put forward a candidate. Let the people choose.
On the other hand, Rehnquists head exploding…very tempting.
Nice of the WSJ to opine, with no textual support, that the statute “seems to have been intended” or “could be construed” to not allow a special election. There you judicial activist conservatives go again, writing language into the statute that simply isn’t there.
Well, the WSJ is opining (admittedly, without textual support) that the statute wasn’t designed to supercede the general election. I don’t know if that’s true, but it doesn’t seem to to be that much a stretch. Do you know of any cases where winning a special election for Senate did anything more than let the election winner complete the original term of the person he or she replaced?
I think the New Jersey Democratic party panicked and shot themselves in the foot. After Torricelli’s news conference, what possible reason could they advance in their papers for needing to replace him? “Your Honors, good cause exists for granting a waiver to replace Senator Torricelli as a candidate because our polls indicated that he’d probably lose, thereby threatening Democratic control of the Senate.” Even the most rabidly partisan justice is going to need more cover than that.
Sorry, Cap’n, I was responding to december and missed your post. I’ll have to get back to you when I figure out a way to weasel out of it. 
Don’t worry, minty. Chances are the weasels on the NJ SC will do the job for you. 
Like the weasels on the US Supreme Court did it for you, huh? Cry me a river, buddy.
From Joe Conason:
http://www.salon.com/politics/conason/2002/09/30/bush/index.html
"Just four days ago, Republican senatorial candidate Douglas Forrester demanded that Bob Torricelli step down. “Mr. Torricelli has disgraced himself and New Jersey,” he said. “The people of New Jersey deserve better. I reiterate my call for Mr. Torricelli to resign his office and apologize to the people of New Jersey.” But before Torricelli decided to follow his rival’s advice, Forrester’s friends began whining.
“This is a cynical attempt by party bosses to manipulate democracy,” cried the executive director of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee." In other words, they’ve suddenly realized that the Torch’s resignation would allow Gov. Jim McGreevey to name a new Democratic senator – who would probably beat Forrester in a special election. Some people are just never satisfied."
Sic 'em, Joe.
The Dems do have a candidate and he’s loosing, thats the real story behind this bullshit.
If Torricelli were leading in the polls, would he have resigned? If the answer is no, then no replacement deserves to be made.
NJ voters made their “choice” by electing him for the primary. Don’t blame the Republicans because he’s an asshole. Blame the democrats for nominating him. They made their bed, now sleep in it.
Should every senate candidate in the country who’s trailing right now by 12 points be allowed to quit the race and his/her party nominate a more viable cnadidate.
There’s no technicality to ride on. If a replacment is allowed it will be pure partisan poltics at play.
I then want all the lefties like Dershowitz, Carville, Begala, et. al to come out and slam the court for doing something wrong like they did in Election 2000. If it’s wrong then, it’s wrong now.
BTW, for the record, I believe that in electioin 2000, if the roles were reversed, each side would have made the same arguments that the other side made. I’m sure they’ll do it again.
FYI:
It is my understanding that some absentee ballots have already been sent out.
I’m not a lwayer, so I don’t know exactly how this effects things, but it seems to me like hisorically the courts have treated things a little differently after ballots have been distributed.
On a personal level, I think this sets a horrible precedent. This is clearly a case where a candidate didn’t like his poll numbers and decided to try a legal manuever to turn his disadvantage into a disadvantage for his opponent.
All of the fault lies with the NJ Democtratic party here. This scandal has been brewing for a long time. Nobody can claim they were blidsided by the allegations. The party had the ability to address this by running someone against Torricelli in the primary but chose not too. The NJ voters never made a stink about getting a new candidate either.
Forester has spent his time and money running against Torricelli. It subverts the process to let a candidate waste his opponent’s time and money fighting one candidate and then bailing out at the last second to let an unscathed opponent finish the race. It takes alot to be a legitimate candidate, it’s not like it just happens randomly. Once you put your candidate up there, all bets are off.
In addition, there are 4 other candidates running besides Torricelli. While we may all want to focus on the two fornt runners, the fact is that there are many other choices on the ballot.
The fault is more with the Democrats in Congress. They should have punted Torricelli when the guy who gave him the swag went to jail for it. That always baffled me: The guy who gives the bribe goes to jail, but the guy who *received it (the bigger crime, imo) winds up with a slap on the wrist?
The Democrats didn’t want to punt him because it would have cost them the Senate. So they held their noses and overlooked one of the worst things a public official can do. So now there’s a mess.
If the courts bail out the Democrats on this, and the Democrat goes on to win, and that results in the Democrats holding onto the Senate by 1 seat, then you’re going to hear an awful lot of screaming from angry Republicans.
After the last election fiasco, the U.S. doesn’t really need another big scandal.
I can’t see how this is supported by the past 10 years.
NJ elected a Republican Governor twice before electing the current Democrat. They might have even taken the last election if they hadn’t fielded such a right-winger. Bob Franks gave Corzine a pretty good run for his money (literally :)).
Republicans controlled both the house and the Senate until recently, and I THINK that control of the senate is evenly divided.
While NJ could be charachterized as a center-left leaning state, I don’t think you could just write it off as a gimmee to any Democrat who decided to run for office.
In addition, I don’t think you can underestimate the effects of 9/11 on NJ politics. We took quite a blow last year, and payback is still on the minds of many people here in NJ. Since a lot of people are looking at the ongoing and upcoming war as a major issue, it’s possible that a divided Senate is not as crucial to some people as it was a year ago.
Promise?
Yes, I heard on Fox News tonight that some districts had printed all their ballots, some absentee ballots had gone out and some absentee votes had been received. I don’t think this will have any effect. If the NJ SC wants to let the Dems ignore the time limit, they won’t let administrative inconvenience stand in their way.
BTW is there any significance to the NJ SC’s decision to hear the case directly, rather than first going to a lower court? Are they just trying to save time, or does this mean that they’ve already decided to let the Dems use a replacement candidate?
We’ll know the answer probably by the end of the week, so get your guesses in promptly!
My guess is that the fix is in.
All the more reason to get rid of those idiotic early voting laws. This is far from the only instance where events of the last weeks of an election cycle would have swung enough “absentee” votes to alter the outcome of an election.