The governor of Massachusetts named former Democratic Party chairman Paul G. Kirk Jr. on Thursday to temporarily fill the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat, acknowledging the appointment was controversial but saying the issues before Congress were "too important to Massachusetts for us to be one voice short."
Kirk, a Kennedy family friend, served on Edward Kennedy’s staff for eight years and is chairman of the JFK Library Foundation. Kennedy’s widow, Vicki Kennedy, and son Edward Kennedy Jr. had urged Patrick to pick Kirk and attended the announcement at the Massachusetts Statehouse.
"He (Sen. Kennedy) often said that representing the people of Massachusetts in the Senate of the United States was the highest honor that he could possible imagine, and it is certainly nothing that I imagined, but it will be my highest honor, as well," Kirk said.
Read the story from the Associated Press