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incumbents term limits

Go Ask Gary

North Dakota, term limits

A mystery confounds the minds of North Dakota’s legislators.

It has a fake part and a real part. 

The fake part itself has two parts: 1) how to learn whether voters support term limits, and 2) how to learn how a legislative body can function unless incumbents, whose advantages over challengers enable them to return to office sporting reelection rates exceeding 90 percent, may remain in place until ousted by death or scandal?

The answer to the first everyone knows. The answer to the second is to write down procedures and give tutorials and guidebooks on how the legislature works to newcomers in legislative halls.

The real mystery, though, is how to overthrow term limits given voters’ massive continuing support?

The answer? 

This is where they get “clever”! Their plan appears to be: concoct the fake mystery and set up investigations premised on it.

And maybe sacrifice lambs and the first-​born to the gods, hoping and praying and hoping some more that something turns up … anything to enable downtrodden entrenched legislators to cling to power for all eternity.

Regardless of popular support for term limits — support, after all, that has been confirmed in polls on the question conducted over the past four decades as well as in election after election.

This all explains why North Dakota legislators are paying $220,000 to Gary Consulting to find out how voters — who in 2022 passed term limits of eight years on the state house and eight years on the state senate — feel about term limits and how lawmakers feel about term limits.

I’ll tell you for free: voters love them; incumbents hate them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Mad-​Libs Incumbency

term limits

In late April, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s delegate to the U.S. House for these last 35 years, “stumbled through a short speech in which she appeared to struggle with both reading and comprehension, unable to deliver more than a garbled, Mad Libs-​style version of her intended remarks,” according to a report in Washingtonian magazine and confirmed by an audio recording.

Annie Karni’s story last week in the The New York Times discloses concerns among Norton’s “colleagues and friends” of “a notable decline … that has quieted her voice, leaving her vastly diminished and struggling to fulfill her congressional duties.”

Karni’s other tidbits?

  • “In hearings, she often sits quiet and alone, sometimes relying on staff aides to remind her where she is.”
  • “She sometimes does not seem to recognize people she has known for years.”
  • “Ms. Norton is unable to function independently.”

That means she is unable to function as an effective representative of the people of Washington, D.C. 

“In Ms. Norton’s case, the signs have been evident for years,” explains The Times article. Her activity on the House floor has dwindled precipitously.”

Still, when questioned earlier this week about possible retirement, Norton declared, “I’m going to run. I don’t know why anybody would even ask me.”

The 88-​year-​old non-​voting delegate from our nation’s capital would be 90 if reelected next year and able to complete a 14th term. When of course she might yet run again.

“Ms. Norton’s story is a familiar one in Congress,” acknowledges The Times reporter, “an institution littered with towering figures who have stayed around well past the prime of their lives.”

Yet this is not really about age. It’s about incumbency. Politicians leveraging their positions for unlimited rule … resulting in rule by the old, the doddering, the feeble.

We all know — ’cept for incumbent politicians — that the answer is term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Old as the Hills

Congress, term limits, age limit,

“I’ll give up power when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.”

This is the operative principle for today’s politicians.

The examples are so obvious: 

  • Nancy Pelosi, born in 1940, continues to represent California’s 11th District despite having lost the Speakership for the second time, despite having spent nearly four decades in the House of Representatives. 
  • Senator Chuck Schumer, a decade younger than Mrs. Pelosi (and thus not yet an octogenarian), is still serving his fifth term as a senator from New York State.
  • Senator Dianne Feinstein demonstrated extreme mental fragility before dying in office at age 90 — after serving more than three decades.

There are Republican examples, too, but age, as The Wall Street Journal puts it, “is a bigger headache for Democrats than Republicans for one central reason: Democrats have a lot more old members.” While the median ages are nearly identical between the two parties, “of the 20 oldest House members elected in 2024, 16 were Democrats. In the Senate, where tensions over age are more subdued, nearly all of the oldest senators — 11 of the 14 who were older than 75 at the start of this Congress — were Democrats.”

This may strike a sense of dissonance, I know. The old cliché is that Republicans are tired old men and Democrats are wild young (and female) firebrands. But the true nature of the establishment doesn’t quite fit the old saws and preconceptions.

The Journal notes that 70 percent of Americans support an age limit on holding office.

Sure, as the next best thing to term limits! We know the crux of the problem is not age, it is the advantages of incumbency, and the length of time in power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Missing in Congress

Congress, term limits, incumbency, age, power

Her “constituents in Texas Congressional District 12 have asked, ‘Where is Congresswoman Kay Granger?’

“Some Tarrant County residents,” The Dallas Express further reports, “have begun to speculate.”

“I’m hearing she’s in a memory care unit,” one posted on X. 

Express reporter Carlos Turcios explains that “the Congresswoman has been residing at a local memory care and assisted living home for some time after having been found wandering, lost, and confused in her former Cultural District/​West 7th neighborhood.”

Granger, 81, did not seek re-​election last November after 28 years in Congress. Thankfully. She has not voted in Congress since July 24 of this year. Which, given the circumstances, is also a good thing.

Her son told the media she was suffering from dementia and had declined rapidly, but that could be a slight stretch.

Don’t condemn the congresswoman, argues former Texas legislator Jonathan Strickland. “Six years ago (as an elected official who worked regularly with/​around her) it was obvious she had serious memory issues. She has had no idea what was going on for a while,” he explained, blaming “her friends, family, and staff” who “left her in office for their own benefit.”

The last six years in Congress … without … cognition. (Is that about par?)

Utah Senator Mike Lee, a fellow Republican, says Granger makes a “compelling case for term limits.” Yes. Sure. Of course. 

Even if these over-​the-​top instances of incumbency running amok overtime weren’t spilling out so often, however, we would still need term limits. 

The fact that things have gotten this bad is a sign we’ve needed term limits for a very long time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Nineteen Seconds and Counting

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

We witnessed the epitome of uber-​experienced Washington, last week, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) froze mid-​sentence during a press briefing, unable to utter a sound or make any movement for a seemingly interminable 19 seconds. 

The Republican leader, 81 years of age, the last 38 spent in the United States Senate, was eventually rescued by fellow Republican senators, led away from the microphones.

McConnell has plenty of company in Washington. There’s our doddering octogenarian president. And in Congress, incumbency leads to longevity, which leads to old age. The Senate, Newsmax notes, now “has the highest median age in U.S. history at 65.”

Americans were treated to another gerontocratic spectacle with 90-​year-​old Sen. Diane Feinstein (D‑Calif.), appearing confused at a committee hearing, and being told to vote “aye.” 

And sheepishly complying. 

I started to write, “If this is what experience leads to …” but there is no need for the “if.” It is.

And grist for a million memes. “Family Torn Between Placing Grandpa In Hospice,” runs a Babylon Bee headline, “And Having Him Run For Senate.”

Funny, sure. But this problem isn’t. Getting old isn’t always pretty. And even career politicians such as McConnell and Feinstein deserve better.

So do ‘We, the People’! 

Term limits would solve the problem and be better than age limits. Both are popular — 75 percent favor age limits, while over 80 percent want term limits. But with Congress having dodged the congressional term limits enacted in 24 states back in the 1990s, citizens in North Dakota, with help from U.S. Term Limits, have launched a ballot initiative for 2024 to place an age limit of 80 on their federal representatives.

Three decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly struck down state-​imposed term limits, 5 – 4. Today, what will the High Court determine on age limits?

Inquiring minds want to know. And I really love the movement’s relentless agitation!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Term Limits for Thee

Nancy Pelosi, term limits, gerontocracy

Last Sunday, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now with her own MSNBC program, asked Representative Nancy Pelosi (D‑Calif.) about packing the Supreme Court. 

Rep. Pelosi’s response was, shall we say, telling.

“It’s been over 150 years since we’ve had an expansion of the court,” Pelosi said. “It was in the time of Lincoln that it went up to nine. So the subject of whether that should happen is a discussion. It’s not, say, a rallying cry. But it’s a discussion.”

Ms. Psaki also asked about term limits for the justices, and Nancy eagerly endorsed the idea, insisting there “certainly should be term limits. There certainly should be and if nothing else, there should be some ethical rules that would be followed.”

Justices aren’t getting as rich as congressmen … but still.

“I had one justice tell me he thought the other justices were people of integrity, like a Clarence Thomas,” Pelosi went on. “I’m like, get out of here.”

This plays as comedy off the MSNBC channel, of course. Nancy Pelosi, introduced by Psaki as being in Congress for a long, long time (“first elected to the House when Roe v. Wade had been the law of the land for 14 years”) is herself a fit poster ch — er, octogenarian — for establishing legislative term limits. Highlighting the High Court’s dip in popularity, Pelosi scoffed that the 30 percent approval “seemed high.” Of course, congressional approval is ten percentage points lower, and has been consistently. 

Limits to power is something that applies to others, not oneself, I guess.

With permanent leaches at the teat of the State lingering year after year in office, like Pelosi, our attitude should be, like, get out of here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Do Anything

term limits

How far will officeholders go to kill term limits?

Around the country, so-​called representatives have repealed state legislative term limits enacted as statutes rather than constitutional amendments; gone to court to get term limits outlawed; and even, in one or two instances, ignored term limits on themselves until forced to step aside by judicial action.

I bet that even if voters enact a term limits law with a provision specifically prohibiting legislators from sending a question to the ballot to weaken or repeal voter-​enacted term limits, such a prohibition would not stop lawmakers from proposing just such measures.

Well, it’s time for me to collect on the bet.

In the current legislative session, North Dakota State Representative Jim Kasper submitted a resolution, HCR 3019, to ask North Dakotans to weaken legislative term limits they’d passed just five months ago, last November. Kasper wants a limit of 12 consecutive years in a chamber instead of a lifetime limit of eight years.

What a shocker! He’d like to stay in power longer.

The law voters passed months ago states that the legislature “shall not have authority to propose an amendment to this constitution to alter or repeal” the term limits. This ability is instead “reserved to initiative petition of the people.”

It seems so clear.

Nevertheless, Kasper’s unconstitutional constitutional amendment barreled ahead in the North Dakota legislature until finally expiring in the senate just days ago.

Perhaps the new law should have included something about tarring and feathering lawmakers who try to ignore the ban on acting to undermine their term limits?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Breaking the Jell‑O Mold

jello, Congress, term limits

American politics has become amazingly “gerontocratic.” 

Congress is run by really old people, the faces of the Supreme Court Justices are as wrinkled as the Constitution they allegedly serve, and the oldest U.S. president in our history is a Silent Generation stumbler with one foot in the grave and the other in his mouth. 

Enter Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, sporting an “I” and not an “R” or a “D” next to her name, followed by a hyphen and the state from which she hails: “AZ” for Arizona. She won office as a Democrat in 2018 but with some ballyhoo left her party last December. Wikipedia says she still caucuses with the Democrats, but in recent reporting Sinema has denied this: “I’m formally aligned with the Democrats for committee purposes,” Sinema was quoted in The Daily Wire. “But apart from that I am not a part of the caucus.”

Indeed, she stopped going to the Democrats’ bi-​weekly caucus lunches because, as she puts it, they are “ridiculous”: “Old dudes are eating Jell‑O, everyone is talking about how great they are.”

Ah, Washington!

“The Northerners and the Westerners put cool whip on their Jell‑O, and the Southerners put cottage cheese,” she adds, laying it on a bit thick.

While Senator Sinema makes much of her status as an Independent, and the increasing popularity of that stance in her home state, getting re-​elected without a major party is tricky business. Politico quotes Sen. Mitt Romney (R‑Utah) as being on the verge of endorsing her, as well as expressing hopes that Republicans can seduce her to the GOP side.

There is nothing wrong with slurping down Jello, per se. The real problem is unbridled power that calcifies our career politicians … and with them our political system.

We need term limits. If not age limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Citizen Initiatives, term limits, North Dakota

North Dakota state representatives (and I use that term loosely) are unhappy. 

Very unhappy.

They have no use for the Ethics Commission that voters established back in 2018 by passing a constitutional amendment initiated by citizen petition. State legislators reacted by trying to — ahem — “fix” the horse the ethics measure “rode in on.” 

That is, wreck the state’s ballot initiative process, to prevent citizens from making such reforms happen … without any “help” from politicians.

Legislators placed a constitutional amendment on the ballot to require that any citizen-​initiated amendment be approved not merely by North Dakota voters, but then by both chambers of the state legislature. Their amendment, amid uproar, was finally amended so that if legislators voted the initiative down, voters would get a second vote on it. 

Still, 62 percent of voters said, “No, thanks!”

Then, in 2022, the state Chamber of Commerce and other special interests attempted to use the citizen petition process, which they always say is way too easy. Yet, these insiders failed to gather enough signatures to qualify their measure requiring a 60 percent supermajority to pass an initiative. 

Meanwhile, term limits supporters gathered enough signatures* and, last November, North Dakotans said, “Yes!” 

Seems politicians in Bismarck, the state capital, are even less fond of term limits. They’ve introduced a raft of bills designed to kill the citizen petition process:

  • House Bill 1452 would slap a 90 percent tax on contributions to ballot measures by any American living outside North Dakota. 
  • House Bill 1230 would fine a campaign committee $10,000 and each of committee member $1,000 each if the petitions they turn in fail to have enough valid signatures to qualify the initiative.
  • Senate Concurrent Resolution 4013 would amend the state constitution to (a) require 25 percent more voter signatures, (b) outlaw any payment to signature gatherers (something the U.S. Supreme Court has already unanimously ruled state governments cannot do), © block new residents from petitioning in the state for in some cases over a year, and (d) mandate a 67 percent vote to pass a citizen-​initiated ballot measure. 

North Dakota legislators prove the case for term limits. And the horse it rode in on: citizen initiative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Though term limits supporters had to fight the 30-​year incumbent Secretary of State’s attempt to block the petition all the way to the state’s highest court, which ruled unanimously to place term limits before the voters.

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Hypocrisy Not at Issue

Ted Cruz, term limits

“I’ve never said I’m going to unilaterally comply,” Senator Ted Cruz told Face the Nation.

The Texan Republican was talking about term limits. On January 23, he and Rep. Ralph Norman (R‑S.C.) introduced an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to impose term limits on Congress.*

But he was also addressing a complaint.

“Ted Cruz wants two-​term limit for senators – and a third term for himself,” ran the headline in The Guardian; “Ted Cruz Confronted on Seeking 3rd Term Despite Pushing for 2 Term Limit” was the story on MSN. “Why aren’t you holding yourself to that standard?” asked Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation. The insinuation is inconsistency, hypocrisy.

Yet, the senator’s run for a third term isn’t either of those things.

Term limits make sense as a systemic fix. As a strategy for any one voter or any one politician, it’s another matter. 

Why does so much of the media fail to understand this difference?

Simple: They don’t like term limits. Period. 

They envision a big government run by career politicians and reported on by expert journalists while we little people lap up their narratives, keep quiet, and pay the bills. 

Who wins, after all, if those who seek to make government more responsive and responsible through reforms such as term limits cede the congressional arena to the Washington insider incumbency, which stays and stays term after term?

Devoid of any rational argument that could sour Americans on the term limits that four of five of us love, the press plays this phony “hypocrisy” game.

Ted Cruz sees through it. He not only understands the advantages of term limits, but also knows that applying them to himself alone makes no sense for his career or for the term limits movement.  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* The amendment would limit senators to two six-​year terms and members of the House to three two-​year terms after the date of its enactment.

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