A Bad Call on Term Limits Is a Boon for GOP

Crime is down. Welfare reform is the law. The Soviet Union is ancient history. So Republicans have been looking around for another issue that we can use in next year’s elections. Who would have thought that a liberal federal judge appointed by Jimmy Carter would have given us the answer to our political prayers?

The decision of a federal circuit court last week to throw out California’s term limits law, from a public policy standpoint, is not nearly of the same magnitude as a return to the Cold War. But in terms of the potential benefit for Republican candidates in 1998, it’s not too bad at all.

When Californians voted seven years ago to pass Proposition 140 to limit the amount of time that the state’s elected officials could serve in office, voters sent a message that they were tired of a political elite that had lost touch with the concerns of everyday people. Proposition 140 sent shock waves through Sacramento, as politicians of both parties began scrambling for other offices that they could seek in order to avoid the indignity of returning to private life.

Career politicians, as well as the career journalists who covered them, warned of the public policy catastrophe that was bound to occur if the governing process was left in the hands of amateurs. But the world hasn’t ended. In fact, this year’s Legislature, which includes a huge majority of members elected under term limits, was responsible for the most productive session in a generation.

With the ranks of the career politicians dwindling and the Legislature dominated by members with stronger ties to their constituents in their own communities than to the special interests in the state Capitol, the legislative process this year wasn’t smooth and it wasn’t pretty. But by the time the session ended, the amateur politicians had managed to pass legislation on welfare reform, health care reform, class size reduction and the largest state tax cut in a generation.

So voters have come to realize in increasing numbers over the past seven years that term limits are not the danger to society that opponents have tried to portray them. Proposition 140 passed in 1990 with 52% of the vote, but polls this year show that support for term limits has increased to between 60% and 65%.

If the courts had not stepped in to abolish term limits, these statistics would serve as nothing more than a debating point for political scientists and campaign hacks. But the judges’ decision puts the issue back at ground zero of the political debate.

Citizens’ groups already are working to qualify a new term limits initiative for next year’s general election ballot. Assuming they are successful, Republican candidates have been given the most valuable of political gifts: a wedge issue that cuts strongly in their favor.

Pete Wilson endorsed Proposition 140 during his gubernatorial debate with Dianne Feinstein in 1990 and immediately opened up a lead in a race that had been too close to call. Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, the all-but-certain Republican nominee for governor next year, will be able to establish the same contrast, as will other GOP candidates in down-ticket races.

Feinstein opposed Proposition 140, as did most Democrats. It will require a feat of political gymnastics worthy of Kerri Strug on two good ankles to get on the right side of the issue this time around. But most Democrats won’t even try.

There is a state senator in Sacramento who was first elected to office during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Implicit in the argument against term limits is the assumption that there is no other person in the state of California who is as qualified to participate in the legislative process.

This assumption, whether on the part of a federal judge determined to legislate from the bench or a politician afraid to face the real world as a private citizen, is not just naive. It is not just arrogant. It is political malpractice, and next year Californians will have yet another opportunity to reform a system of government that discourages fresh thinking and rewards entropy.

A public policy win for Californians, new blood in Sacramento and a political windfall for Republicans. Maybe judicial activism isn’t such a bad thing after all.