Christie's recent appointment, as you can recall, I had a lot to say about, and with Christie's appointment of Jeff Chiesa, he chose a relatively safe avenue for the appointment. Chiesa is a "first do no harm" sort of appointment-Attorney General of New Jersey, he won't run in October, and as a result is unlikely to make any sorts of waves whatsoever in the Senate.
Because Chiesa, a Republican, took over for Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat, this is a rare circumstance in politics where, thanks to a single appointment, the political makeup of the United States Senate changed. The last time an appointment was able to do this was in 2000, when Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-GA) died and was replaced by former Governor Zell Miller (a Democrat).
It doesn't seem like it should be this rare; there have in fact been seventeen appointments in between Miller's and Chiesa's appointments, and only in one case was there an opportunity for a takeover that was barred by law (for the curious, it was in Wyoming, when Sen. Craig Thomas died and would have been replaced by a Democrat considering that was the party of the then incumbent governor Dave Freudenthal, except state law barred him from appointing someone of the opposite party). All other instances it was the governor and the senator who was leaving office were of the same party, despite 26 of the 100 senators currently belonging to a different party than that state's governor.
So, I have to say that from a tactical position, Christie choosing a caretaker was a foolish move. For starters, it doesn't set the Republicans up for success at all. Chiesa, were he to run, would have the many advantages enjoyed by even the most novice of incumbents (franking privileges, NRSC funds, etc), and were he to win (a steep climb against Cory Booker, but not an impossible one with a potentially divisive primary looming), he would have been a surefire endorsement for Christie's 2016 presidential run (not to mention high profile proof of coattails in a blue state for Christie).
But this caretaker trend has started to become the norm, and from a tactical position, I think that it's a foolish idea. Yes, one could make a statement that those senators who sought reelection traditionally have difficulty holding the seat, but only one appointed senator since Miller who did run for reelection lost (Jean Carnahan), so that statistic has lost most of its shine. In fact, the caretaker route one could argue cost the incumbent party in Massachusetts (when appointing Martha Coakley outright likely would have been enough to take down Scott Brown in an election due to the additional advantages that come with amassing a liberal voting record in a liberal state).
So why not try to influence? It makes little sense to me, personally, that you wouldn't want to set up your party for success, unless you were in a Joe Manchin situation where you wanted the seat for yourself and didn't want to turn yourself into Wendell Anderson (a 1970's era Minnesota governor who essentially appointed himself to a Senate seat that, had he appointed a caretaker, he likely would have won and probably would still be in office). Additionally, you're depriving your state of a senator who can actually make a difference-there's nothing less effective in Washington than a lame duck, and one that has little-to-no prior credentials in Washington is going to be nothing more than a vote, and have very little influence.
My thoughts are that the governors should start being a bit more strategic. Yes, appointing a caretaker may seem more democratic (giving the people full-range over the selection of the candidate), but the non-caretaker still has to survive a primary and a general, and now the people get the democratic right to vote on the appointed senator, rather than just being stuck with them and never getting to deliver a message regarding the senator's performance. Gov. Deval Patrick (who has appointed two senators in his career-anyone know if another governor has done that?) made a costly mistake in not appointing Coakley or someone who would have run for the seat in 2010 and we had Scott Brown for three years as a result. Hopefully that mistake isn't repeated with the upcoming race between Rep. Ed Markey and former Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez, but he should have gone with Markey to begin with to give him a leg-up. In politics, you rarely get opportunities to assist your party (and your own political career) more than a Senate opening, and the timid nature of both Christie's and Patrick's appointment decisions makes me wonder if they have the political elbows to make it in a hypothetical race for president in 2016.
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