Lawmakers Face Limits : Politics: Some call term-limits a reform. Others are angry that they will have to retire or seek another office.

Assemblyman Pat Nolan (R-Glendale) may win two more terms in the state Assembly, but he will not win a third and that is all right with him.

Assemblyman Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) is in the same boat and he is angry about it.

The term limit initiative upheld by the state Supreme Court this month, he said, puts incumbents “in the same category as felons--we can’t run (for office).”

But Nolan said he welcomes the coming shake-up in the Legislature as needed reform, even if he is forced into premature retirement.

The new law limits Assembly members to three two-year terms and state senators to two four-year stints. That means that most of the current members of the Legislature will be replaced by 1996.

The ban is for life. Lawmakers may never again run for the same office after reaching their term limits, though some observers think some of them will just flip-flop positions, with senators running for the Assembly and vice-versa.

Polanco said the limits will force many legislators into retirement and give California “a very inexperienced Legislature.”

The newcomers, unfamiliar with Sacramento, will be at the mercy of special interests, he predicted.

“The lobbyists will be the experts. And they will be able to pull the wool over the eyes of the legislators,” he said.

But Nolan said the newcomers are unlikely to be cowed.

“Shrinking violets don’t run for office,” he said. “(The new legislators) will go in with things they want to accomplish, will know they have only a short time to do it and will be more aggressive about pursuing it.”

Nolan said term limits could have been avoided if legislative district lines had been drawn to permit competitive elections and not to protect incumbents and the party in power. Only a handful of incumbents have been defeated in recent years, he said.

The 41-year-old legislator added: “I was in the eighth grade when (Assembly Speaker) Willie Brown was elected.”

Sen. Newton R. Russell, who opposed the initiative when it was on the ballot last year, said the term limits are much too short. Almost as soon as new legislators have learned the ropes in Sacramento and become productive, the Glendale Republican said, they will be leaving office. And as lame ducks with no incentive to maintain voter approval, they may ignore constituents, he said.

Alan Heslop, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, said the loss of experience and expertise in the Legislature will be more than offset by the benefits gained by replacing professional politicians with ordinary citizens.

“We’re going to have a better Legislature,” he predicted. “We’re going to have higher caliber people.

“It’s true that (the new Legislature) won’t be acculturated in the folkways of the Capitol,” the educator said. “But that’s not a detriment. It’s a major advantage.”

Newcomers are more likely to shake things up, the professor said. “It’s the freshmen who take the feisty view, ready to fire staff and tangle with lobbyists.”

Heslop said the Legislature has increasingly been populated by people whose entire lives have been spent in politics--going from college political clubs, to service on political staffs, to running for office, with no other significant career in between. As a result, some legislators are more at home in Sacramento than in their own communities.

Term limits will open up the process, Heslop said, producing legislators who know what ordinary life is like in their districts and who have a better understanding of their constituents’ problems.

But Polanco, who said he has spent his life preparing to be a legislator, said his experience in Sacramento has not estranged him from his constituents.

“I come from the community,” he said. “I was a gang counselor . . . I sold oranges on the street.”

The imposition of term limits, he said, simply means that voters who might want to reelect him will be denied that opportunity after he completes the maximum number of terms.

Polanco was first elected to the Assembly in 1986 and before that served as a legislative aide.

“I have geared my career path to be an elected representative,” he said. And now “I will be denied the right to run.”

Polanco said he intends to seek reelection next year, and he could win another term in 1994. But after that, he will have to find another elective office, or retire.

Russell, 64, who served 10 years in the Assembly before being elected to the Senate in 1974, said he plans to seek reelection next year for what would be his last term.

Nolan, who came to the Assembly in 1978, said he expects to run for reelection, but will also consider running for the Senate, or Congress, if suitable districts emerge from the reapportionment that is now in the hands of the state Supreme Court.

Who’s Leaving When

Under the term-limit initiative upheld earlier this month by the state Supreme Court, all of the 80 members of the Assembly must give up their current seats in 1996. But the term limits for California’s 40 state senators take effect on a staggered schedule, with some required to give up their current seates in 1996 and others in 1998. Here are the departure dates for senators whose districts include parts of the Glendale area:

1996: David Roberti, Newton Russell

1998: Art Torres