On November 30, one New Jersey legislator, Assemblymember John McKeon, had introduced A4271, to provide that when a vacancy occurs in the U.S. Senate, the Governor must appoint someone from the same party as the Senator who had just vacated the seat.

On December 8, another New Jersey legislator introduced a new bill on the same subject. This time the author is Assemblymember Joseph Cryan, who is state chair of the New Jersey Democratic Party. His A4339 says that no governor may ever appoint a U.S. Senator. Instead, the seat remains vacant until the state holds a special election to fill that vacancy. The bill number isn’t known yet. In the meantime, the earlier bill has not made any headway, even though the New Jersey legislature is in session.

The apparent reason for the interest in this subject is that soon New Jersey will have a Republican Governor being sworn in to office, and one of the U.S. Senators from New Jersey is 85 years old.