CNN
—
The Senate is narrowly divided and Democrats maintain a slim majority. However there’s no want for Ohio Sen. JD Vance, whom former President Donald Trump chosen as his operating mate Monday, to go away the chamber through the marketing campaign.
It is sensible to look to a senator as vice chairman: The position’s most important official obligation is to function president of the US Senate, though current vice presidents don’t are inclined to spend an excessive amount of time on Capitol Hill.
In actual fact, there’s a lengthy historical past of presidential candidates choosing senators as operating mates. President Joe Biden was on the finish of a protracted profession as a US senator from Delaware when he was tapped as then-Sen. Barack Obama’s operating mate in 2008. Biden and Obama each continued to serve within the Senate through the marketing campaign, as did Sen. John McCain, the Arizonan who was Republicans’ choose that yr.
Biden picked then-Sen. Kamala Harris as his personal operating mate in 2020.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton picked Sen. Tim Kaine as her operating mate. Kaine by no means gave up his seat and went again to serving as a senator after Clinton’s loss to Trump. In 2004, then-Sen. John Kerry, a Democrat, picked then-Sen. John Edwards as his operating mate.
So what does that imply for the seat? Often, when a senator is elected as both president or vice chairman, they are going to resign from their Senate seat in early January after the election. Biden, nonetheless, is an outlier on this. He stored his Senate seat longer than most in early 2009, maybe in order that he might edge past some other former senators within the all-time Senate tenure record. Biden sits at No. 19.
Vance won his seat within the Senate in 2022 and gained’t be up for reelection as a senator till 2028. If he and Trump win in November, Vance would want to resign earlier than taking the oath of workplace on January 20.
It will then fall to Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, himself a former senator, to nominate a substitute till the next regular state election, when there could be a particular election to fill the remainder of the time period.
This could be a fraught course of. Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich went to federal jail for basically making an attempt to commerce away the appointment to fill out Obama’s time period.
For Biden, longtime aide and good friend Ted Kaufman was appointed in 2009 to succeed him within the Senate. Kaufman didn’t run for the seat in his personal proper.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Sen. Alex Padilla to succeed Harris within the Senate, and Padilla has since been elected to the seat.