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Perhaps someone more versed in the subject can chime in, but my understanding is the U.S. Constitution dictates that senators must be a resident of the state they represent. In California that means being present in the state for 366 days before filing for residency. Is there any likelihood of this being challenged? Has something like this happened before?
She's had a string of jobs in Cali for the last decade, but twitter says she either posted from Maryland, or her bio says Maryland (I don't use twitter). Weighing that evidence, I'd bet she's a California resident.
Edit: actually on her wiki page it says.
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The actual language is
"No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen."
The language of the Seventeenth Amendment provides for replacements:
"When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct."
So it appears there is no constitutional requirement for an unelected replacement Senator to be an inhabitant of the state they represent.
Even if we interpret this as a Constitutional requirement that an appointed Senator be a resident of the state, it would be trivial to work around. Newsom could have had her move yesterday and appointed her today.
That said, this was almost certainly a drafting oversight, and Newsom is acting contrary to the spirit of the law. Seriously, there are a million black women in California. How hard could it have been to find one who would reliably vote with party leadership? Why not just pretend to care about the Constitution, when the stakes are so low?
I stand by my commentary above, that "[t]he Democrat party apparatus does not care in the slightest whether this person represents California, states are a stupid anachronism anyway". While I think GDanning credibly disputes my framing of whether she represents California here I think the punchline is that it doesn't really matter, that if they needed to reward a good soldier in Maryland, they'd reward her there, and if they instead got the opportunity to do it in California, that's fine too. The point is the national politics, not something that got written down a couple centuries ago; after all, they couldn't even fly then, so what did they know about how what it actually means to represent a state?
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Wasn't there an understanding about US VP that must cover all the eligibility criteria for president even if it is not explicitly stated in the constitution?
It is explicitly stated in the Constitution. From the Twelfth Amendment: "But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."
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I am skeptical that the Seventeenth Amendment permits the appointment of someone who is ineligible to serve. However, whether she is eligible depends on what "inhabitant" means. Because there is a very important legal distinction between one's residence and his domicile. Whether "inhabitant" refers to "residence," "domicile" or something else is anybody's guess, but I am very skeptical that this issue has escaped the attention of the Governor, and it is very likely that all that matters is where she lives at the time that she is sworn in.
PS: See this Congressional Research Service report which seems to conclude that the only requirement is that the person be an inhabitant at the time that he or she is sworn in.
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