From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Terms of Endearment? Nope.
California voters still want to throw the bums out.
Term limits aren't the consuming issue they were a decade ago, when 21 states voted to restrict their members of Congress and state legislators to a fixed duration in office. But the movement stumbled in 1995 when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4, that states couldn't limit their own congressional delegations. But that still left career state and local officials chafing under limits and concocting imaginative schemes to evade them. Luckily, the voters keep slapping them down--as Californians overwhelmingly did Tuesday.
Knowing that term limits remain overwhelmingly popular, California's pols decided they didn't dare ask voters to repeal the state's limits of six years in the Assembly or eight years in the Senate. So they polled and focus-grouped until they came up with Proposition 45, a clever end-run around the law that they thought would trick voters. Under the guise of protecting term limits, the initiative would have allowed any incumbent to stay in office four extra years by getting the signatures of one-fifth the number of people who voted in the last election. Incumbents would still have to appear on the ballot and be re-elected to their extra terms, but in hypergerrymandered California well over 95% of incumbents routinely win re-election.
The ballot arguments mailed to voters in favor of Proposition 45 were among the most breathtakingly misleading ever written. "Yes on 45! Protect term limits and Restore Decision Making to Local Voters," it began. The initiative "empowers the people to choose their own representatives--TO THROW OUT THE SCOUNDRELS or return--for a maximum of four years--a single lawmaker whose ability and effectiveness benefits the people of that district."
That kind of talk galvanized the opposition to the con job. Although completely outgunned financially, groups such as U.S. Term Limits were able to get their message out. Opponents built a "Trojan horse" representing the deceptive nature of the initiative and hauled it around the state warning voters they shouldn't be conned.
Despite the mismatch in resources, the message that Proposition 45 was deceptive reached the voters. Sen. John McCain, an opponent of term limits, nonetheless opposed the measure because it provided an easy way for special interests to evade state campaign laws limiting contributions to $3,000. He argued that large donors would pony up the money to keep their favorite incumbents in office. Legislators less beholden to special interests would find it harder to raise the necessary money to collect the signatures they needed to hang on to power.
In the end, the initiative lost 58% to 42%, a greater statewide margin than that which enacted term limits back in 1990. Only two counties backed the measure--Willie Brown's San Francisco and Los Angeles, where Proposition 45 won 51% of the vote.
Term limits are no panacea, but they have served the country well. The president and 38 state governors are bound by them. The term limits on committee chairmen in Congress that Republicans imposed in 1995 have worked to prevent the accumulation of arbitrary and unchecked power. More women, minorities and small-business owners have been brought into state legislatures through the opening up of seats by termed-out incumbents.
In the end one of the best arguments for term limits is how much effort some of those incumbents affected by them struggle to escape them. This week in California voters sent a message that state legislators should consider expending less energy cooking up career-survival schemes and more time solving the state's problems: budget shortfalls, electricity and traffic congestion. Let's hope they pay attention.
