BOSTON — Paul G. Kirk Jr., chairman of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Foundation and former head of the Democratic National Committee, will temporarily succeed the late Sen. Edward Kennedy in the U.S. Senate, Massachusetts' governor announced Thursday.
"He shares the sense of service that so distinguished Sen. Kennedy," Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, told a news conference in Boston. "The interests of the commonwealth have never been more vital or at stake in the Congress today."
Kirk, a longtime friend of the Kennedy family and onetime special assistant to Sen. Kennedy, will serve until a Jan. 19 special election. He was the favorite of the late senator's two sons and some officials in President Barack Obama's administration, according to people familiar with the matter.
Sending a Democrat to Washington before the election preserves the party's 60-vote control of the Senate. That would be enough to keep Republicans from blocking legislation. The succession issue became a proxy battle over Obama's proposed health-care overhaul, a goal Kennedy called the cause of his life.
Obama called Kirk an "excellent, interim choice" to carry on Kennedy's work until the special election. The appointment will mean Massachusetts is fully represented during the debate on health care, financial regulations and energy policy, Obama said in a statement.
Kirk, 71, said he expects to take the oath of office today and will keep the late senator's staff. Kirk also said he won't run in the Jan. 19 special election.
Kirk graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He lives with his wife, Gail, on Cape Cod. He also co-founded the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has sponsored those events since 1988.
Since 1997, Kirk has served on the board of the Hartford Financial Services Group, an insurance and investment company. He stepped down in May as lead director of the company, based in Hartford, Conn., and is now a board member.
Asked Thursday about his business ties, Kirk said he has "no conflicts." He said he had represented pharmaceuticalfirms in 2002, that those client representations had ceased, and starting Thursday he was resigning from all boards that he serves on.
The selection capped weeks of partisan wrangling as Democratic state legislators pushed through a new law to allow the governor to name an interim senator before the special election.
Republicans accused Democrats of hypocrisy, pointing out that Democrats changed the law in 2004 to prevent then-Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, from having the chance to appoint a senator if Democrat John Kerry had succeeded in his presidential bid.
In picking Kirk, Patrick invoked emergency powers to make the appointment immediately and bypass the 90-day waiting period for new lawsto take effect.
Kennedy, 77, died on Aug. 25. The senator chosen in the Jan. 19 special election will serve the rest of Kennedy's term, which ends in January 2013.
Candidates are lining up to run in that contest. Democratic candidates include state Attorney General Martha Coakley, U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano and Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca. Democrat Alan Khazei, founder of City Year, a youth service program in Boston, is expected to announce this week that he will run.
Scott Brown, a Massachusetts state senator, and Bob Burr, a selectman from Canton, are seeking the Republican nomination.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 09/25/2009