NY Times blog: Crist’s LeMieux appointment in place-holding tradition of Kennedys, Biden

by George Bennett | August 30th, 2009

LeMieux: latter-day Benjamin A. Smith II?

Democrats were quick to decry Gov. Charlie Crist’s appointment of former top aide George LeMieux to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy as cronyism. But this The New York Times politics blog post argues that Crist appointing LeMieux as a placeholder while he runs for the seat in 2010 isn’t much different from the Kennedy family arranging for Benjamin A. Smith II to keep John F. Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat warm until Ted Kennedy was old enough to run for it in 1962.

A more recent parallel, writer Peter Baker notes, is this year’s appointment of Vice President Joe Biden’s former Senate chief of staff, Ted Kaufman, to hold Biden’s Delaware Senate while the VP’s son, Beau Biden, is expected to run for it next year.

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Tags: Benjamin A. Smith II, Joe Biden, John F. Kennedy, Ted Kaufman, Ted Kennedy

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 1:41 pm and is filed under 2010 campaigns, Charlie Crist, George Bennett, George LeMieux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “NY Times blog: Crist’s LeMieux appointment in place-holding tradition of Kennedys, Biden”

1. whasup Says:
   August 31st, 2009 at 7:53 am

   Oh, I see. The New York Times, bastion of liberalism that it is, see clearly that our Dumbocrat, Shucking Chuckles, is less the Demobamacrat and more of a Kennedyite or Bidenist.

   Hmmm, methinks Chuckles is just biden time until Super Mario kicks his tanned backside in the Republican primary next year.

2. Peter Schorsch Says:
   August 31st, 2009 at 8:38 am

   Marco Rubio tells NRO that it’s ok to question Crist pick.

   http://bit.ly/FmU7u