The death of trailblazing US senator Dianne Feinstein presented her fellow Democrats with two key questions on Friday last week: Who will replace her in the chamber and who will take her seat on the committee that approves federal judges.
The answer to the first question has been made: California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom named Laphonza Butler as her successor.
However, filling the 90-year-old lawmaker’s seat on the US Senate Judiciary Committee touches one of the most critical levers of partisan power in Washington and will require cooperation from Republicans.
The Democrats’ majority in the chamber has temporarily shrunk by one, to 50-49, following the death of Feinstein, who had been sidelined for a month earlier this year by a bout of shingles.
The vacancy did not pose an immediate problem for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a standoff with US House of Representatives Republicans over a looming US government shutdown.
“Earlier this morning, we lost a giant in the Senate,” an emotional Schumer said on Friday last week.
Newsom, a rising star in the Democratic Party, said prior to naming Feinstein’s replacement: “There is simply nobody who possessed the poise, gravitas and fierceness of Dianne Feinstein.”
Feinstein in February said she would not seek re-election and contenders began lining up for her seat.
The California primary is on March 5 next year with a Dec. 8 filing deadline for prospective candidates. The last time a Republican won a Senate seat in the heavily Democratic state was in 1992.
Democrats and Republicans can run in the same primary, with the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, facing off in the general election.
Liberal US Representative Barbara Lee is running for the seat, as are other prominent Democrats, including US representatives Adam Schiff and Katie Porter.
Feinstein’s death leaves a 10-10 deadlock on the Judiciary Committee, which is in charge of reviewing presidential nominations to federal courts, including the US Supreme Court.
With the Republican-controlled House blocking most attempts at bipartisan legislation, the Democratic Senate has focused this year on approving Democratic US President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees. It has approved 143 since Biden took office in January 2021.
That is an attempt to balance the 234 appointments over four years by former US president Donald Trump, including three Supreme Court justices that cemented a 6-3 conservative majority.
Any move by Schumer to fill Feinstein’s seat on the panel with another Democrat would need Republican cooperation in a vote by the full Senate.
Earlier this year, Republicans blocked a request by Schumer to allow a temporary Democratic stand-in on the Judiciary Committee while Feinstein recuperated. Historically, the Senate has not stood in the way of filling committee vacancies caused by a member’s death.
Senate Republicans said on Friday last week that they do not intend to contest a move to replace Feinstein on the committee after her death.
However, they have broken precedent around judicial appointments before, most notably in 2016 when top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell refused a vote on former US president Barack Obama’s nominee to succeed conservative justice Antonin Scalia, saying it was inappropriate to do so in an election year.
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