The Star-Ledger editorial board has made a third misstep in an editorial that faced a multitude of factual inaccuracies over the last 24 hours: an imprecise hypothesis that a couple of months head start for Andy Kim in the U.S. Senate would mean a more rapid advancement under the Senate’s seniority system.
The first two iterations of the editorial made false statements that didn’t consider state election law and the U.S. Constitution. Draft number three’s errors are more subjective.
In arguing for the appointment of Kim to the Senate if now-convicted incumbent Bob Menendez resigns, the Star-Leger notes that “getting a leg up on the freshman senators coming in next term would mean Kim could get a chairmanship faster – a tangible advantage for New Jersey in the hustle to secure funding.”
The statement might turn out to be accurate – or maybe not.
Editorial page editor Tom Moran’s team assumed that all committee chairmanships turnover at the same pace and that Democrats will be in the majority through the duration of Kim’s tenure in the Senate if he wins. The editorial didn’t appear to consider what committee Kim might get or the ages of the other members of that panel.
Menendez’s meteoric ascent to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairmanship was fueled by others moving up: Joe Biden was elected Vice President in 2008, and John Kerry was named U.S. Secretary of State in 2013; he became chairman after just seven years in the Senate and six on the committee. Senators with more seniority had left the committee: Chris Dodd retired, Russell Feingold and Bill Nelson lost re-election, and Barack Obama was elected president. And Menendez only became chairman after Barbara Boxer, who outranked him, chose to remain at the helm of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, a perch that enabled her to clawback more federal dollars for her home state of California.
A quick rise is not always the case: John Sparkman waited 31 years to chair Foreign Relations after J. William Fulbright, elected to the Senate less than two years before him, held the gavel for sixteen years until losing a Democratic primary.
Frank Lautenberg was elected to the Senate five times, non-consecutively, the most wins in New Jersey history, but never chaired a full committee.
(Lautenberg was actually appointed to the Senate on December 27, 1982, by Republican Gov. Tom Kean, one week before he was due to be sworn into his first term. Republican Nicholas Brady, who had been appointed in March after Harrison Wiliams resigned, stepped down early so Lautenberg could get a jump on seniority. A federal judge swore Lautenberg in at a ski lodge in Colorado; two senators, John Glenn and Rudy Boschwitz, happened to be vacationing in Vail, so both watched Lautenberg take the oath.)
Another New Jerseyan, Frank Pallone, chaired the powerful House Energy & Commerce Committee and is now its ranking member, but he was not assigned to that panel until his second term in 1991; he waited in line for 24 years to become the senior Democrat.
Gary Peters was elected to the Senate in 2014 and became the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee as a freshman. Michael Bennett, elected in 2008, Kristin Gillibrand, appointed in 2009, and Cory Booker, elected in 2013, don’t chair full committees.
The Senate President Pro-Tempore – the Democrat in the Senate with the most seniority – Patty Murray, became chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee last year after 30 years in office; that’s when her predecessor, Patrick Leahy, retired after 48 years in the Senate.
One more thing: Moran and the Star-Ledger editorial board beat the crap out of Republican Rodney Frelinghuysen in 2017 and 2018 – not that there’s anything wrong with that – but they didn’t worry that he chaired the House Appropriations Committee – the mothership of bringing money back to his home state.
It’s not clear if Moran knows how many potential freshmen would have more seniority than Kim. Spoiler Alert: if Adam Schiff (California), Ruben Gallego (Arizona), Lisa Blunt Rochester (Delaware), Colin Allred (Texas), and Elissa Slotkin (Michigan) win, it could be as many as five Democrats.
Star-Ledger gets N.J. election law wrong
Star-Ledger fixes election law mistake, forgets about U.S. Constitution