Approval of Prop. 140 Doesn’t End Cawdrey’s Term-Limit Challenge

Despite passage of Proposition 140, the statewide measure limiting terms for California legislators, Redondo Beach City Councilman Ron Cawdrey says he will press on with his bid to strike down his city’s two-term limit on its mayor and council members.

“It doesn’t change anything. Why should it?” Cawdrey said of Tuesday’s election results in an interview during a break in Wednesday’s council meeting. “If the voters really want to throw the rascals out, why the hell did they vote so many incumbents in?”

Cawdrey, whose second term expires in March, announced in September that he will seek reelection next year despite a City Charter provision mandating that he retire from the council. He has maintained that Redondo Beach’s two-term limit on the mayor and council members is unconstitutional and has vowed to test the restriction in court if the voters reelect him March 5.

But Mayor Brad Parton and others on the council have criticized Cawdrey’s move, charging that it will force the city into costly litigation, defy the voters who wrote the limits into the City Charter and run counter to what appears to be statewide sentiment against career politicians.

“I think (the passage of Proposition 140) is a signal, overwhelmingly,” Parton said Wednesday. “People want their representatives to serve a limited time, and I think that goes for everyone from the city councils to the President.”

In fact, Parton tried on Wednesday to persuade the council to put an expanded term-limit proposal on the ballot in time for the city election next year. Parton said he hopes not only to uphold the two-term limit for the mayoral and council posts, but also to apply the limits to the offices of the city clerk, city attorney and city treasurer.

Under the charter, those officeholders can be reelected indefinitely.

But for a variety of political and philosophical reasons, the council rebuffed Parton’s suggestion, and none of the members would make a motion in the mayor’s behalf.

Council members Cawdrey, Terry Ward and Kay Horrell have spoken against term limits in the past, arguing that they deprive the city of experienced representation. Council members Barbara Doerr and Stevan Colin, meanwhile, have long been political allies of City Treasurer Alice DeLong, whose office currently is exempt from term limits.

Parton said, however, that if he cannot get action from the council, he may use the petition process to limit the terms of the clerk, treasurer and city attorney. Meanwhile, he added, he is confident the courts will uphold the existing City Charter restrictions.

Cawdrey has represented North Redondo Beach’s 5th District since 1982, when he was appointed to fill the unexpired term of Gene King, who resigned. The following year he was elected to a four-year term, and in 1985 he withstood a recall campaign led by community activists who opposed his backing of a plan to develop the defunct Aviation High School campus. He was reelected in 1987.

According to the City Charter, Cawdrey must relinquish his council seat next year and cannot serve on the council again, except as mayor. In that position, too, the charter would limit him to two terms.

Cawdrey has argued that term limitations are illegal because, under the California Constitution, the state holds jurisdiction over questions of eligibility to hold office.

An appellate court in San Francisco used that reasoning last year to rule that General Law cities--those without charters whose blueprint for governing is derived from laws passed by the Legislature--cannot impose term limits. But the ability of charter cities such as Redondo Beach to limit terms has never been determined by the appellate courts.

A challenge to the limit in the charter city of Cerritos failed in Superior Court last year and was not appealed.