The Governor recently called term limits "crazy."  Now, I don’t agree that they are crazy, there were good reasons for term limits, and the voters were not crazy in enacting them.  But I have come to the conclusion they are not a good idea.

I ran for office in 1990 supporting term limits.  I believed at the time that doing whatever it took to remove Willie Brown as the Speaker of the Assembly was justified.  Dem Legislators weren’t going to do it, it appeared voters weren’t going to do it.  Maybe term limits would.

Well, the voters did, in 1994, when they elected the first Republican majority in the Assembly since Reagan’s first term as Governor.  I was elected to the Assembly in 1992, then in 1994, two terms in the Senate, and when my term there was done, I went back to the Assembly.  I supported term limits through my first term in the Assembly and my two terms in the Senate.  I changed my mind when I went back to the Assembly.

My first term in the Assembly was an interesting one.  We were the first class elected knowing we were subject to term limits, but we were mixed in with some of the war horses of the Legislature.  The battles between Willie Brown and Pat Nolan were legend.  Ross Johnson, Bill Jones, Gil Ferguson in the Assembly, John Lewis, Frank Hill, and others in the Senate would tell us the stories of the Gang of Five, the deal the Assembly Republicans had with George Deukmejian.  Ferguson talked about the rampant spending of the 80’s (when state spending skyrocketed from $22 billion to $40 billion, of course in the 90’s it went from $40 billion to $79 billion).  Interestingly enough, the average length of a legislative term was around 8 years, but the core of Legislators that had served more than ten years stayed the same, and acted as an institutional anchor.

That anchor was gone when I returned to the Assembly.  The entire nature of the institution had changed, and not for the better in my opinion.  While I did not agree with Willie Brown, he had the good sense to know when his members, and his constituency groups, were out of control, and he would reign them in.  He would tell them no.

Just so you know, in politics, the hardest thing to do is say no to your friends.  The people who were there for you at the beginning, the people who helped you make your career, sometimes want things you, as a policymaker, think they shouldn’t have, or things which may hurt the cause for which they advocate.  In those times, a good legislator will look his friends in the eye and say no.  There is usually a price to pay for that.  Your friends get mad, and they may not support you in your next attempt at higher office.  It usually takes about 5 years to repair such a relationship.

Of course, in the Assembly, you only get six years.  And worse than that, in the era of term limits, if you say no, your neighboring legislator will say yes, and when you run against him or her in the next election, your former friends will support your neighbor, because you believed your friends were wrong before (and they of course thought they were absolutely right).

For Republicans, this is not much of an issue.  Republicans don’t really need to say no to their friends.  Democrats will do that for them.  For Democrats, however, it is a huge problem.  Elected official jobs are a great gig.  They don’t want to lose the jobs, and the unions are ruthless masters.  If a Democrat says no to the unions, or the lawyer lobby, or the enviro nuts, the likelihood is that they will lose their job very soon, not in a primary, but in their next attempt to move to higher office.

As a result, no Democrat, not the Speaker, not the President Pro Tem of the Senate, and especially not any of the individual members, say no to any of the Democrat constellation of special interest groups.  They are afraid that, if they do, their political careers will end as a Legislator, and they don’t want their career to end.  Term limits have taken away their independence.  The Democrats, once supplicants to these groups, are now slaves.  They refuse to say no, and, as a result, the Capitol is out of control.

Term limits are not crazy.  There are some very good reasons for limiting individual terms.  They have, however, some very nasty unintended consequences.  They have made sure that no leader will lead, they will only follow some very powerful, and unforgiving, special interest groups.  These groups actually benefit from indulging the worst of their agendas, and the state taxpayers are paying the costs.  I think it is time to rethink term limits, not because I like this set of legislators, but because term limits actually punishes politicians who want to do the right thing, and lead.  They are not crazy, as the Governor said, but, in my humble opinion, they are not a good thing for the state.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 31st, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.