This type of "courtesy" was dealt a serious blow in 1989, when the Senate failed to confirm former U.S. senator John Tower of Texas to be Secretary of Defense.
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Senatorial courtesy is an unwritten political custom (or constitutional convention) in the United States whereby the president consults the senior U.S. Senator of his political party of a given state before nominating any person to a federal vacancy within that Senator's state.
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Her nomination was blocked through a custom known as senatorial courtesy because the Democratic Party-controlled the Senate, and Florida's Senators, Lawton Chiles and Richard Stone, Democrats, opposed her confirmation.
Meyner nominated him for a second term in January 1958, but Albert McCay, the State Senator from Richman's home county of Burlington, exercised his right of senatorial courtesy and opposed the renomination.
State Senator John H. Dorsey announced that he would invoke senatorial courtesy to block her reappointment.