Comments on: It’s Senator Laphonza Butler till the next election

By: Bruce Hayden.

Bruce Hayden. — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 19:32:54 +0000

“On the residency issue, I looked at the Constitution. It says a Senator must be a resident of the state represented at the time of election. Butler isn’t elected, she’s appointed. She’s going to re-establish formal California residence for the optics, but she would be legally a senator even if she didn’t. She’d have to be a California resident if she decided to run for the office next year.”

I think that distinction is crucial here. The residency requirement appears to only apply when Senators are ELECTED, and not appointed.

One additional thought – if she doesn’t get CA residency, she wouldn’t be able to run next year for election. That maybe part of the plan. They needed someone of the right gender, race, and sexual orientation quickly. That’s what they got, a good leftist black female lesbian. But Newsom may have determined that putting someone in that seat semi-permanently, with such notables as Adam Schifty, etc, trying to grab the seat, that would have been politically perilous. We shall see.

By: tregonsee314

tregonsee314 — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 19:20:48 +0000

There may be some issue still with the residency. Remember that originally (until ratification of the 17th ammendment) ALL Senators were appointed not elected. I think we may have a meaning shift in the word elected from late 18th century until now. The usage is probably closer to that of election meaning selection as used for religious purposes, That said I doubt the Democrats would pay any attention to it and constitutionally the Senate has final say on who may be a member of the Senate.

By: Abraxas

Abraxas — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 13:06:18 +0000

This is an indication that locality doesn’t matter as much in politics as it once did. Politics have become nationalized and politicians don’t represent a particular place and its interests, but rather ideological (and ethnic) groups. It would still be different if Butler were running for election — she’d clearly be labeled an outsider and rejected — but looking around Congress, the regional flavors aren’t there in the way they once were, especially in urban and suburban districts.
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Bet also she does not know the identity of her sperm donor “father”.

I have no “Deep South experience,” but that seems to me to me more what happens in urban areas, not in rural Mississippi.

By: Kate

Kate — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 12:44:04 +0000

On the residency issue, I looked at the Constitution. It says a Senator must be a resident of the state represented at the time of election. Butler isn’t elected, she’s appointed. She’s going to re-establish formal California residence for the optics, but she would be legally a senator even if she didn’t. She’d have to be a California resident if she decided to run for the office next year.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 12:12:28 +0000

The third Senator was Robert Kennedy.
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Robert Kennedy’s estate was in Fairfax County, Va. and august enough to have a name (“Hickory Hill”), where he’d lived for about a dozen years. He’d previously attended law school at U.Va. in Charlottesville. He wasn’t salable as a Senate candidate in Virginia in 1964.
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RFK had in the course of his life lived all up and down the BosWash corridor (in addition to time in Britain when his father was the ambassador). There were a couple of family compounds for common use (one of which I believe he had been using as a notional residency). In 1927, his father had bought a home in Westchester County, NY and moved his wife and children there, making use of it as their primary residence. So, he wasn’t a stranger to New York the way Hellary was, but he hadn’t been a palpable resident for 13 years and his wife and children were down in NoVa. When I was active in local politics in New York, voter rolls were published at the end of March; these published rolls indicated who was eligible to sign a designating petition and who was eligible to vote in the upcoming primary. The petition period ran from the 3d week of June to the 3d week of July. I don’t believe Kennedy was a New York registrant in March of 1964. There’s the principal scandal right there.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 11:50:52 +0000

It was a selection pretty much destined to happen
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No it wasn’t.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 11:50:01 +0000

One of her sisters was a spinster who died in 2021, at the age of 60. She was employed in the records department of a hospital in Baton Rouge.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 11:46:31 +0000

Evidently, the late Mr. Butler’s widow, Sarah, was not the mother of all of his children. Some or all of his children were the issue of his first wife, Lula Mae Butler. The 1st Mrs. Butler died in 1984 at the age of 43. Apparently, she had several children who were not his, so it appears they were divorced at that point.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 11:34:28 +0000

one can bet it was the product of a marginally literate black mama, in my Deep South experience.
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Prior to about 1966, the marginally literate black mama would have given her child (1) a Biblical name, though perhaps misspelling it, (2) an off-beat but recognizably Indo-European name, (3) and ordinary Anglo-Celtic name, or (4) a familiar as a formal name. This last is not all that unusual among white Southerners, though the nicknames do differ. She’d have been named Esther or Regina or Valerie or Fannie Mae.
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Her father was named Delos Lamar Butler, Sr. He died at age 57, in 1996. He was married and he and his wife had nine children. She’s his youngest and the only one with an idiot name.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 09:28:10 +0000

The 17th amendment is starting to make some sense.