A bit perplexed?  Sounds like a great guy...but every day in the Senate is a battle, and needs the most seasoned and adept person possible so the Commonwealth does not lose ground or voice.  Frank, Dukakis, or those of that caliber would have been a better choice.....disappointed.

Path to the Senate?  Are you kidding yourselves.  It's an honorable position to have but Mo Cowan is appointed Interim Senator.  A path indicates getting into a political race doing due diligence in debates, stomping the state, discussing views and horror of horrors, raising funds, non of which Mr. Cowan has done nor will do.  Please, less drama around an appointment.  

Affirmative action is a great thing if you are a minority. 

I just love the huff from people over naming a person with an overabundance of qualifications for a five-month tenure.  Now I am a Centrist and not fond of a lot of the liberal tendencies of this state.  That said, I applaud Mo Cowan's appointment as a gesture of trust and friendship by the Governor amidst the normal tumult of calls from all corners for all the same cronies. You go, Mo!!!

Upon seeing the news of this appointment, the esteem in which I hold Governor Patrick has dropped considerably.  In a state where we have so many fabulous candidates from which to choose for this position, it saddens me that Patrick chose an insider, one relatively unknown to the public, and one who also shows no background needed for fighting the good fight for the voters of Massachusetts.  I'm a loyal Democrat.  But to me, this appointment doesn't make me happy or proud to be Democrat.

Last month, when the Republican Governor of South Carolina named GOP U.S. Representative Tim Scott to the U.S. Senate, the “first African American U.S. Senator from the South since Blanche Bruce of Mississippi in 1881” according to The State newspaper, thus becoming the only black -- Democrat or Republican -- in the Senate, ABC’s World News didn’t mention it.

Fast-forward to Wednesday night, and ABC anchor Diane Sawyer suddenly found it newsworthy that the Democratic Governor of Massachusetts appointed an African-American to replace new Secretary of State John Kerry, trumpeting: “Look closely at this picture. That is William ‘Mo’ Cowan of Massachusetts. He will be heading to Washington, DC soon and straight into the history books.”