Abstract
The most fundamental change in American elections and representation since the 17th Amendment provided for the direct election of Senators looms on the horizon. In 1990, voters in three states, Oklahoma, California, and Colorado, elected to amend their state constitutions to limit the length of legislative tenure (and, in the case of Colorado, on congressional tenure as well). After one failure in 1991 in Washington state, voters in 1992 approved term limit initiatives in 14 states. During the 1993 legislative sessions in New Hampshire and New Jersey, state legislatures came close to approving congressional term limits. The importance of the change wrought by term limits is difficult to overstate because it fundamentally changes the relationships between our legislators and the public, between the legislature and the other actors in the political environment, and within the legislature itself.
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Endnotes
See, for example, “Aiken Urges One 6-Year Term for Presidents,” Washington Star, 1 April 1970, sec. A;
“Nixon Urges 6-year Limit on Presidents,” Chicago Tribune, 16 May 1973, sec. A;
“Watergate Spurs Campaign Reform Moves”;
Nixon Backs One 6-year Term for President, Wall Street Journal, 16 May 1973;
Hearst, William Randolph, Jr., “Virtues of a 6-year Term,” The Hearst Newspapers, 23 November 1977.
George F. Will, “Is 18 Years on the Hill Enough?,” Washington Post, 1 January 1990, sec. B.
For a detailed examination of the Oklahoma term limit campaign, see Copeland and Rausch (1993) and McGuigan (1991).
John Greiner, “Legislative Limit Petition Launched,” Daily Oklahoman, 15 September 1989.
John Greiner, “Voters Pass Measure Limiting State Lawmakers’ Terms,” Daily Oklahoman, 19 September 1990.
Steve Lackmeyer, “Walters Backs Limiting Terms in Legislature,” Daily Oklahoman, 28 May 1990.
Rob Martindale, “Noble Beats Establishment to Win Term Limits,” Tulsa World, 21 October 1990.
John Greiner, “Runoff to Decide 3 State Questions,” Daily Oklahoman, 10 September 1990.
Lackmeyer, “Walters Backs Limiting Terms.”
John Greiner, “Term Limit Opponents Organize,” Daily Oklahoman, 14 September 1990.
John Greiner, “Lawmaker Says Term Plan Will Limit Voters’ Rights,” Daily Oklahoman, 11 September 1990.
See Carroll 1992.
Jennifer Gavin and Eric Anderson, “Term-limit Law’s Effects Not Expected to Be Felt Until 1998,” Denver Post, 11 November 1990.
“What the Ballots Will Say,” Denver Post, 6 November 1990.
Gavin and Anderson, “Term-limit Law’s Effects.”
Tracy Seipel, “Schroeder Easily Wins 10th Term in Congress,” Denver Post, 7 November 1990;
J. Sebastian Sinisi, “Skaggs Pulling Away from Lewis in 2nd Congressional District,” Denver Post, 1 November 1990.
John H. Fund, “Four Days to Term-Limit Tuesday,” Wall Street Journal, 2 November 1990, sec. A.
Seth Mydans, “California Politicians Reel After a Vote Limiting Terms,” New York Times, 11 November 1990.
John Balzar, “Van de Kamp’s Limited-Term Plan Blasted,” Los Angeles Times, 8 September 1989, sec. I. The proposition was severely criticized by Van de Kamp’s chief rivals in the Democratic primary, State Controller Gray Davis and former San Francisco Mayor Diane Feinstein.
“Comparing Props. 131 and 140,” Los Angeles Times, 13 October 1990, sec. A.
“Comparing Props. 131 and 140.” A subsequent decision by the California Supreme Court held that the term limits and legislative budget cutback were constitutional, but declared that the pension elimination section was unconstitutional (sec Legislature v. Eu 1991; Price 1992, 124–125).
“A Primer on the Propositions: Who Sponsors Them, Who Opposes Them, and What They Would Do,” Los Angeles Times, 4 November 1990, sec. M.
Fund, “Four Days to Term-Limit Tuesday.”
According to Attorney General Van de Kamp, Brown and Roberti violated the state’s Truth-in-initiative law with the commercial. The commercial did not identify its major financial sponsors. See Virginia Ellis, “Brown, Roberti Draw File Over Commercial,” Los Angeles Times, 24 October 1990, sec. A. For a biting editorial on Brown’s wrongdoing in this campaign, see Fund, “Four Days to Term-Limit Tuesday.”
“Term Limits,” The American Enterprise Public Opinion & Demographic Report, January/February 1991.
George Skelton, “Legislative Term Limits Backed by Big Margin,” Los Angeles Times, 30 September 1990, sec. A. It is worth noting, though, that further analysis reflects what we already know about the topic. The Times poll indicates that voters disapprove of their legislature by about 2 to 1, but by a 2 1/2 to 1 margin believe that their legislator deserves to be reelected.
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© 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Rausch, J.D., Copeland, G.W. (1996). Term Limits in Oklahoma, California, and Colorado in 1990. In: Grofman, B. (eds) Legislative Term Limits: Public Choice Perspectives. Studies in Public Choice, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1812-2_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1812-2_13
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