In 2006, Rep. Anthony Petruccelli fought a bill to let the governor of Massachusetts temporarily fill U.S. Senate vacancies while a five-month special election campaign was held.If someone served only 145 to 160 days, as the bill proposed, "it would really be difficult for a replacement to make any kind of impact," he said, according to notes of the March 22, 2006, House session.
Three years later, following the death of fellow Democrat Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Petruccelli has a different view.
Petruccelli, now a senator, favors letting Democrat Gov. Deval Patrick make such an appointment, a top aide to the Boston lawmaker said Wednesday. Petruccelli did not return repeated calls or an e-mail seeking elaboration about his change of heart.
The shift exemplifies the 180-degree turns, tortured processes and contradictory claims made by Bay State lawmakers -- the vast majority of whom are Democrats -- as they consider undoing a change in the succession law they rushed through five years ago. Back then, legislators didn't want Republican Gov. Mitt Romney filling the Senate seat if Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John Kerry won the 2004 presidential election.
Today, the Legislature is considering reversing itself and letting the governor temporarily fill Senate vacancies after Kennedy gave a deathbed appeal to Patrick and House and Senate leaders. Kennedy didn't want the seat vacant during the national push for health care reform, his signature issue.
"The whole situation is ironical," said Rep. Bradley H. Jones Jr. of Reading, the House Republican leader. "We changed the law in 2004 primarily because of Sen. Kennedy. ... If we had done nothing in 2004, Gov. Patrick would have had the power today to appoint someone until November 2010, when we would have had an election to fill the seat permanently."
Among the many contortions in the current debate:
-- Lawmakers are pushing the same proposal they rejected in both 2004 and 2006, and moving ahead despite the fact the special election process has already begun: The state's chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Martha Coakley, has already declared her candidacy.
-- Patrick is pledging to appoint someone who will promise not to be a candidate in the special election, even though the governor -- once the top civil rights official at the U.S. Justice Department -- concedes he's been told such a demand could be unconstitutional.
-- When they changed the law in 2004, lawmakers manipulated their rules with a tactic that allowed them to make the change during a single afternoon and evening, preventing Republicans from slowing them down. Now, they're reversing themselves under an accelerated schedule that's moved their first hearing on the matter from October to next Wednesday.
-- Kennedy interrupted the 2006 debate on a temporary appointment with his first-ever speech to the Massachusetts House, urging them to reject the idea. Three years later, Democrats have been inspired by Kennedy to do the opposite.