Ruling Opens Future for O.C. Delegation : Impact: All six of the county’s representatives would have been forced out in 1998 by state term limits law. Local congressman nonetheless attack the high court’s decision.

Monday’s Supreme Court decision voided state-mandated congressional term limits that would have sent all six members of Orange County’s congressional delegation packing in 1998, the first year the limits were scheduled to go into effect.

But local congressmen nevertheless criticized the high court decision, predicting that the ruling would likely spur a national effort--stymied earlier this year in Congress--to push through a constitutional amendment on term limits.

“This will energize the term limit cause,” said Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove). Dornan and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) said the invalidating of Proposition 164 would have no effect on their futures because they were not planning to stay in Congress past 1998 anyway.

“I already have said I would be here 10 or 12 years and that would be it,” said Rohrabacher, who entered Congress in 1988 and would have been forced to leave after 10 years under Proposition 164.

Dornan, who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, described the odds as “20,000 to 1 against my running in 1998.”

All six members of the Orange County delegation this year supported a constitutional amendment to set term limits as part of the GOP’s “contract with America.” But the proposals--which set the term limits at six, eight or 12 years--did not receive the two-thirds majority needed in the House of Representatives and never came to a vote in the Senate.

Passed in 1992 as Proposition 164 by 63% of California’s voters, the state measure limited representatives to six years in Congress. They were scheduled to take effect in 1998.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) declined to say whether he would leave the House of Representatives that year, though he noted he is considering a run for the Senate.

“The practical result for me is that the Senate primary in 1998 will be less crowded,” he said, explaining that fewer of his House colleagues would lose their jobs and look at the Senate primary as a logical next step.

The rest of the local congressional delegation could not be reached for comment. Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside) was elected in 1982 and is in his seventh term. Rep. Jay C. Kim (R-Diamond Bar) and Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) were elected in 1992 and are serving their second terms.

Connie Haddad, president of the county’s League of Women Voters chapter, applauded Monday’s Supreme Court decision, criticizing term limits for skewing the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches.

“The President already has enough power, and [term limits] tilt it further in that direction,” she said.

More importantly, she said, term limits are “the lazy way out for people.” Voters have “a general undifferentiated anger or hostility about things . . . so they just say, ‘Throw them all out.’ But voters must take on more responsibility than that. They need to find out who is doing a good job and vote out the others.”

Bill Mitchell, who heads the county’s Common Cause chapter, said his group’s state and national organizations have opposed term limits. “Term limits seemed like a quick fix to a complicated problem, and the Supreme Court quashed that choice,” he said.

The Supreme Court itself invited term limit advocates to press for a constitutional amendment, rather than rely on a variety of state laws that would alter the national character of Congress. Local congressmen seized on the idea and said the decision would fuel the term limit movement.

Blaming two justices appointed by President Clinton for providing the margin of victory in the 5-4 decision, and the Justice Department for arguing against the Arkansas term limit law that was before the court, Cox said Americans would “redouble their efforts both for a constitutional amendment and to punish term limit opponents at the polls. And at the top of that list will be Bill Clinton.”

Cox called the decision a classic case of judges “legislating from the bench.” He said there is no basis in the Constitution for voiding Arkansas’ term limit law.

Rohrabacher said the battle will return first to Congress, which will again try to pass a constitutional amendment that requires ratification by 38 states. Twenty-three states independently had limited the terms of their delegations to Congress.

The national term limit issue, which was a blip on the radar screen a decade ago, has won broad public support in recent years. A Times Poll in January showed that 75% of respondents favored a constitutional amendment to limit congressional tenure to 12 years, with just 21% opposed.

“The issue is not going to go away,” Rohrabacher said.

Dornan described term limits as potentially the “most important institutional change in 50 years” and essential to “anything embodied in real reform. We are never going to break the old-boy network until we” pass term limits, he said.