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Says me, on the basis of a vast amount of American political history, and the knowledge of what happened in Massachusetts in the 2000s. The usual process for filling a Senate vacancy is the appointment of a replacement by the Governor, and that appointment lasts until the next even-year November election. This is the well-known procedure in most states, both now and for the past several decades at a minimum. There are exceptions; they are unusual.
In 2004, Massachusetts had a Republican Governor (Mitt Romney, as it happens) and a Democrat supermajority in the state legislature (an odd combination, but not unheard of in Massachusetts). Anticipating the vacancy of John Kerry's Senate seat if he won election to the Presidency that year, the legislature amended the procedures for filling a Senate vacancy over Romney's veto, stripping him of his appointment power, and calling for a special election to fill the vacancy temporarily. As far as I'm aware, the legislature definitely had the power to do exactly that, but it was also an obvious political power play, and calling such "(legal) shenanigans" is defensible.
This power play did not pan out as expected. First, Kerry lost the Presidential election in 2004, so no Senate vacancy was had. Second, Romney was succeeded by a Democrat, Deval Patrick, in the 2006 gubernatorial election. Third, Ted Kennedy provided the next vacancy by dying in office in 2009. Shortly before his death, Kennedy persuaded the Massachusetts legislature to re-empower the Governor to appoint a temporary replacement pending the results of the special election. While Patrick could (and did) appoint a Democrat to replace Kennedy, the people of Massachusetts picked a Republican, Scott Brown, in the special election. Brown's election dropped the Democrats' Senate majority from 60 to 59, triggering the next round of drama in DC.
Had Massachusetts followed the "usual process" in filling the Kennedy vacancy, Patrick's nominee would have continued in office for several more months until the next general election in 2010, maintaining the Democrats' 60-vote Senate majority for that period. That this did not occur was the ironic result of political gamesmanship on the part of the Massachusetts state legislature.
But the shenanigans were in 2004; you seemed to imply that they were in 2010, in response to Kennedy's death.
"Shenanigans" was your phrasing, not mine, though as I said, it's a fair description. I originally referred to "a cascade of political maneuvers," and at no point implied that the political maneuvering in Massachusetts connected to filling Senate vacancies began after Kennedy's death or was a one-time event. Yes, stuff happened in 2004--stripping the Republican Governor of his appointment powers--but the reauthorization of those powers for the now-Democrat Governor in 2009 was also obvious political maneuvering, as was the threatened (though not enacted) constraint on those powers for the following Republican Governor in 2020.
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