Tag: term limits

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Political Babes

Robert Dover , Nebraska, term limits

Robert Dover is a freshman state senator in Nebraska’s unicameral legislature, appointed last year by the governor to fill a vacancy. Dover says that learning the ropes at the capitol has been like “drinking from a fire hose.”

I sure hope he’s found the bathrooms. 

But have no fear: This rookie has already overcome that lack of experience, sponsoring a constitutional amendment, which faster than a Nebraska minute has 40 of 49 state senators enthusiastically signed on. 

What has folks at the capitol so excited? His amendment, LR22CA, would dramatically weaken their current term limit by giving legislators an extra term, so they can serve 12 years, before taking a break, and not be limited to just eight.

“Dover,” the Nebraska Examiner informs, “said he quickly learned how term limits were a bad idea after talking with legislative veterans, state agency heads and lobbyists.”

“Everyone I talked to said it was a horrible thing,” he offered. “To a person, they said (term limits) took away from the consistency at the Capitol.”

By which he means, the senator elaborated — and as the Lincoln Journal Star reports — maintaining “the right relationships between senators or interest groups to strike compromise.” 

Yes, indeed: the longer politicians stay in office the more they do “compromise” with special interests. 

“Dover said he understands term limits ‘are very popular’ among the electorate,” the Journal Star noted. Apparently, he just doesn’t get that those are the folks he is supposed to work for. 

The senator complained that Liberty Initiative Fund, my organization, is sending postcards to voters across the state to inform them about his bill, calling our effort “a waste of money.”

That tells me it is money well spent. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Term limits have a long history of battling the political establishment in the Cornhusker State, which I wrote about back in 2011.

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national politics & policies term limits U.S. Constitution

The Demand for Term Limits

Rep. Matt Gaetz, US Capitol, Term Limits

Lots of talk about term limits last week — in Washington. 

Of all places. 

What bizarre chain of events caused career congressmen to start jawboning and horse-​trading about the popular reform that most of them viscerally oppose?

It was the work-​product of a small number of hardcore conservative Republican legislators, a mere 20, flexing their strength and commitment at a critical political point — the election of the House Speaker — and armed with concrete demands.

“We offered Kevin McCarthy terms last evening that he rejected,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R‑Fla.) told reporters last Tuesday. One of those? “We’ve sought a vote in [the] first quarter of the 118th Congress on term limits.”

By week’s end, however, McCarthy had been elected Speaker of the House … but only after having pledged to bring to the floor that congressional term limits amendment, authored by Rep. Ralph Norman (R‑SC), one of the 20 holdouts, along with making other concessions. 

Meet the Press host Chuck Todd yesterday cast shade on the effort, calling these “show votes.” 

While it’s true that incumbents are unlikely to vote for the term limits amendment in the 2/​3 supermajority the Constitution requires, or for the balanced budget amendment for which the holdouts, mostly Freedom Caucus members, also secured a commitment from McCarthy. 

“We’ve got to start taking steps to make fundamental change in America,” Rep. James Comer (R‑Ky.) told Todd. And putting every U.S. representative on record on term limits sounds like a great first step for early 2023.

Worth the battle.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Sketchiest Etching

term limits, Michigan, hourglass, sand

State legislators placed Proposal 1 on the Michigan ballot to weaken their own term limits. It would let current incumbents stay up to twice as long in a single office and allow termed-​out former legislators to return. 

Nonetheless, its elite backers insist that it makes term limits tougher.

To give proponents something to talk about other than this term limits scam, Proposal 1 also adds weak financial disclosure requirements for legislators — similar to (but weaker than) the rules that keep the U.S. Congress … so clean and honest.

“Never have so few applied so much lipstick to such a pig,” is how one Michigan term limits activist describes it.

That’s big lie #1 on the Great Lakes State ballot. 

Big lie #2 is Proposal 2, leftists’ feel-​good voting rights measure funded by $10 million (and counting) in outside dark money (which I thought they abhorred). It guarantees stuff like a ballot dropbox on every corner and free postage for mailing back absentee ballots, etc., etc., etc.

Its real purpose is to place a new right into the Michigan Constitution: The right to vote WITHOUT showing any official photo identification. In fact, no ID whatsoever. Instead, the amendment establishes that simply signing a statement that, aw shucks, you are who you say you are, is all that can be required.

With Proposal 2 making any actual voter ID requirement unconstitutional, what’s their pitch to Michiganders?

“Proposal 2 etches voter ID into our state constitution,” declares one television spot.

Another proclaims Proposal 2 puts “voter ID requirements” into “our constitution” to make elections “safe and secure.”

Michigan’s Etch-​a-​Sketchiest insiders are actually promoting a prohibition of voter I.D. as a demand for that very thing. That’s the audacity of … fraud.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Fix Wasn’t In

Al Jaeger has been the Secretary of State in North Dakota

Something totally unexpected — by me, at least — happened earlier this month in North Dakota. It concerned a citizen initiative to term-​limit the Peace Garden State’s governor and state legislators.

Not unexpected, however, how often term limits measures meet resistance from long-​serving politicians, judges, and officials.

Al Jaeger has been the Secretary of State in North Dakota for the last 30 years. This is Mr. Jaeger’s final term; at age 79, he’s not seeking re-election.

Back in February, Jared Hendrix and the North Dakota Term Limits committee submitted over 46,000 voter signatures on petitions to Jaeger’s office, enough to far surpass the 31,164 requirement to earn a spot on this November’s ballot. 

Yet, in March, Secretary Jaeger ruled that the petition fell far short of the requirement, throwing out over 15,000 otherwise valid signatures because the petitions were notarized by someone he “suspected” of fraud. Before making this public announcement, however, Jaeger had brought proponent Hendrix into his office and, along with the state’s attorney general, threatened criminal prosecutions unless he withdrew the petition.

Hendrix refused to cave. And with help from U.S. Term Limits, the North Dakota group challenged the secretary’s denial. Still, when a lower court judge agreed that Jaeger, with all his experience, could make such sweeping judgments to disqualify petitions, I feared the fix was in. 

But earlier this month, the surprise: the North Dakota Supreme Court ruled, unanimously, that Jaeger had misapplied the law and ordered the amendment placed on the ballot as Measure 1.

Yes. Misapplied. Deliberately?

Thankfully, the term limits amendment includes a provision to prevent itself, if passed, from being overturned except by another citizen initiative. 

We know how eager establishment politicians are to kill term limits by hook or by crook, mostly crook.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom term limits

Too Many Words

Mount Pleasant, lawsuit, Attorney Chris Smith Kelly Gallaher,

The Institute for Justice (IJ) asks a question: “Does the First Amendment protect your right to criticize public officials without being subject to frivolous lawsuits?”

Kelly Gallaher is an activist in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, who provoked the ire of Village Attorney Chris Smith.

Seeking punitive damages, Smith has sued Gallaher for inflicting “emotional distress.” Her sin is penning “hundreds of posts on social media” criticizing Smith and other officials and their policies. (Hundreds! So many scribblings by just one person?)

The issue that apparently caused him to say “By Gawd, this is the last dang straw!” is term limits.

Recently, the town’s board of trustees voted to lengthen their elective term from two to three years. Gallaher and others called for a referendum to reverse the term-fattening.

To assuage concerns, Smith claimed that changing term limits had been discussed since 2018; in other words, the change wasn’t something being sprung without prequel. When Gallaher, remembering no such previous discussion, found no evidence of it, she suggested that Smith had lied.

Smith demanded a retraction. Gallaher didn’t want to retract, but did, fearing a lawsuit. Smith sued her anyway.

“The village attorney thinks he can use his law license to bully a political opponent into silence,” says Robert McNamara, the IJ attorney assigned to defend Gallaher. “But government officials are not in charge of how members of the public talk about politics, which is something we’ll be happy to explain to him in court.”

A politician so far from the spirit of American free speech is a politician who needs something more than a withering rebuttal in court. Think: recall vote.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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A Bazooka to Congress

Congress, term limits, chairman

It is “like bringing a bazooka to a sword fight,” complains an anonymous long-​serving Democratic congressional aide.

“Democratic leaders are hammering Republicans,” Mike Lillis explains in The Hill.

At issue? The House Republican caucus is “considering term limits,” Punchbowl News was first to report, “on committee leaders of both parties if the GOP flips control of the House next year.” 

Republicans, since taking Congress back in the 1994 term limits wave, have mostly imposed a three-​term limit on committee chairmanships, when in the majority, and on a committee’s ranking opposition member, when in the opposition. What may be different in the next Congress is that Republicans are looking to impose term-​limits on committee leaders of both parties. 

Democrats, too. By House rule.

Though Democratic Party bigwigs won’t like it … especially current committee chairs who would get the heave-​ho next year, such as Representatives Frank Pallone (D‑N.J.) now in his 34th year in Congress; Bobby Scott (D‑Va.), in his 30th year; Adam Smith (D‑Wash.) in his 26th year; Bennie Thompson (D‑Miss.), in his 26th year; and Maxine Waters (D‑Calif.), in her 32nd year.*

Some younger congressional Democrats, on the other hand, see term limits … as an opportunity.

“High functioning organizations become so by building strong benches and limiting the tenure of leaders,” tweeted Rep. Dean Phillips (D‑Minn.), now in his 4th year. “No matter which party controls Congress in ’23, we should adopt term limits for committee chairs & get serious about developing a new generation of leaders.”

Lillis calls it “a recurring predicament for Democratic leaders.”

But no fuss at all for the rest of us: we’re for term limits. On committee leadership as well as Congress membership.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Even without this change, these Democrats would lose their chairmanships in the next Congress, should the GOP gain a majority in this November’s elections. But with this change they would also be denied the position of ranking member and thus would lose their hold on the chairmanship if Democrats won back the majority in 2024.

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