A Short Interim
Black Named to Serve As Senator as Kerry Chosen

 

By CHARLOTTE S. MORRIS
Special to the Chronicle

 

BOSTON—Gov. Deval Patrick last week appointed a Boston lawyer and a longtime friend and former aide to serve as an interim U.S. senator until voters choose a successor to U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry (Dem., Mass.).
Mr. Kerry was confirmed as secretary of state.
William Cowan, 63, will serve until a special election is held on June 25.
Mr. Cowan is a former partner in the politically-connected law firm of Mintz Levin and will become Massachusetts’ first Black United States senator since Edward Brooke, a Republican, held the seat from 1966 to 1978.
His appointment makes Mr. Cowan the second Black member to be seated in the current Senate, after U.S. Rep. Tim Schott (Rep., S.C.) was appointed by Gov. Nikki R. Haley.
Gov. Patrick had said he wanted to appoint someone who did not want to run for the seat later because that person would have to conduct a campaign while learning the ropes in the Senate, and would be unlikely to do either job well.
At a packed news conference at the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Mr. Cowan said he would not seek the permanent office or use the appointment as a springboard later.
“This is going to be a very short political career,” he vowed.
The clock is now ticking toward the special election. It promises to be another bruising campaign, with two Democratic congressmen likely to face off in a primary in April.
The biggest question remaining in this drawn out episode, which began last fall when Sen. Kerry’s name surfaced as a possible successor to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, is whether former U.S. Sen. Scott P. Brown (Rep., Mass.), will jump in.
Mr. Brown has remained mum on the subject, and his camp has sent few signals about his intentions, but he may find the opportunity hard to resist.
Polls show him beating U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey (Dem., Mass.), the only Democrat who has officially declared his candidacy.
Mr. Brown has a high name recognition and money left over from his unsuccessful race last year against Elizabeth Warren.
If he entered the race and won, Mr. Brown would be in the awkward position of becoming the junior senator to now-U.S. Sen. Warren, even though she has been in office only a few weeks.
The Senate historian said that those who return to the Senate after leaving—like Dan Coats of Indiana and Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey, for example—lose their seniority, although the distinction has little meaning beyond a way to refer to a state’s senators in the formal oratory of the Senate floor.