The move by the Senate to move the California presidential primary to February is set to come before the Assembly this week. The reason for the change, according to rumors in the Capitol, is to put a term limit change on the ballot before the filing period for the legislative races in 2008. If term limits are changed before the filing period, existing termed out legislators will be able to extend their terms beyond 2008.
Here is the problem.
The 2008 filing period begins right around the first week of February. Tons of people are running for the Senate and Assembly seats of the termed out members. People are announcing campaigns, raising money, actively seeking to fill the offices. Lobbyists are evaluating these candidates, and will have to make decisions soon about who to back.
So what happens if terms limits are extended? Lots of candidates, expecting to succeed the current office holders will have raised lots of money and campaign support for the offices that the incumbents will run to keep. Will they be challenged by people who have already spent a year of their lives, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, actively sought local volunteer support, and spent hundreds of hours trying to obtain the same office?
They won’t run because of the possibility of the change in term limits, you say? They have to. The likelihood of a change in term limits, based on past voting patterns, is small. All of the people seeking to succeed termed out members know what you and I know. Voters have been reticent to change term limits. If the initiative put on the ballot by legislators is rejected by voters (as is likely), prospective candidates will have less than 10 days to put together a campaign, unless they have been campaigning for the last year. Most candidates will not take the chance, because they don’t want to lose out to a more aggressive opponent who did not wait for the outcome of the term limits election.
And if they don’t wait, and the term limits initiative passes, do you think that the challenger will just walk away, or will they fight the incumbent? One year of active campaigning, especially if a candidate raises lots of money, tends to inflate a candidate’s ego, and increase the likelihood of a challenge.
Indeed, current campaign finance law prohibits termed out legislators from raising money for a re-election campaign that is now illegal to run. It is likely that the incumbents will form committees for other campaigns, but if they do, the FPPC has control over whether or not the money can be transferred to a committee formed after a change in the term limits laws. Termed out members will be at a significant disadvantage at filing time next year.
And what of lobbyists? They will have to hedge their bets, giving to both incumbents and potential challengers.
It is a mess. Not really thought through. I am not a term limits fan; I think the current system is seriously flawed. I also believe that the strategy currently being discussed in the legislature is not fully cooked. They need to go back to drawing board.
By the way, a special thanks to Bill Leonard for the ideas expressed here. He and I talked about this, and his experience pointed out a lot of the flaws in the current plan. I could go on for hours, but you get the picture from this. There are a lot of flaws.