Last night, the Star-Ledger Editorial Board showed that they didn’t fully understand election law in New Jersey when they misstated the process of holding a special election to fill a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The New Jersey Globe was happy to tutor Tom Moran and his crew on what they got wrong, but in fixing their editorial to reflect their election law, they made a new mistake that was significantly worse: the Star-Ledger showed they hadn’t read the U.S. Constitution.
Their corrected editorial said today: “The governor also has the option of filling the seat Kim would vacate in the House with Herb Conaway, the Democratic nominee – allowing Conaway to get seniority over everyone else who arrives in January. A win-win.”
But as any competent fourth grader who has finished New Jersey’s government unit would know, the only way to become a member of the People’s House is through direct election. There is no legal, constitutional path to serve in the House without winning an election.
Team Moran learned that later and corrected their editorial for a second time. Now Conaway’s name doesn’t appear at all.
“A previous version of this editorial incorrectly stated that a special election could be held in September to fill Andy Kim’s House seat, if he vacated it for the Senate. It couldn’t be held until the end of November,” Moran, the editorial page editor, said in an editor’s note. But the correction did not address the issue of Murphy appointing someone to the House.
In Moran’s defense, television sitcom writers sometimes get that part of the Constitution wrong too; that could be where Moran developed his unfortunate lack of facts.
In 1995, CBS aired a spinoff of “Designing Women” called “Women of the House.” Suzanne Sugarbaker, played by Delta Burke, was appointed to her late husband’s seat in Congress. The show was canceled after nine episodes.
In the sixth and final season of “Maude” in 1978, Norman Lear sought to revive failing ratings by having the governor of New York appoint the lead character, played by Bea Arthur, to Congress. That extended the series for three more episodes.