Same as the Old Boss?

California's term limits are under a legal cloud in the federal courts. But what, if anything, has Prop. 140 changed in Sacramento?

Steven Hayward from the December 1997 issue

I have never been able to make up my mind about term limits. They are great fun to vote for, and I always have. Anything that causes such paroxysms of outrage within the political class must be worth doing. This may be sufficient reason to support them. An early cartoon on the issue neatly captures my feeling: Two drinkers at a bar. One says to the other, "Do you think politicians should have term limits?" The other says, "Nope. They should get life without parole."

In a more reflective mood, however, I usually have a more complex attitude toward government. True believers will call me a soft-headed sellout, but the theory of the spontaneous order was never meant as a complete substitute for government. The authors of the Declaration of Independence had it right when they wrote that protecting our inalienable rights requires that government be "instituted" among men, based on the "consent of the governed." Government today traduces the principle of consent through an administrative edifice that is practically beyond the reach of electoral majorities and runs roughshod over our rights through various subterfuges. Term limits are a potent populist expression of the perception that we are not being governed by our consent. But is tenure in office the root of the problem? Although term limits promise to wreak havoc on the political class, will the restoration of frequent rotation in office (which Alexander Hamilton assailed as a "feeble principle") lead to a fundamental change in the character of our government? Will the growth of government slow or reverse? Or will term limits end up as a fun but distracting sideshow?

The question is especially vital at the moment. On October 7, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit declared California's term limits initiative unconstitutional. Writing for the majority, Judge Stephen Reinhardt didn't invoke the typical concern raised by the opponents of term limits--that voters have a First Amendment right to select whatever candidates for public office they desire. Rather, Reinhardt made the unprecedented declaration that the 3.7 million Californians who cast their ballots for Proposition 140 in 1990 didn't know they were voting to place a lifetime ban on officeholders who complete their maximum terms. (The Supreme Court reversed Reinhardt's opinions a record 11 times last session, so the justices are expected to review this decision as well.)

I used to say that I awoke in the morning opposed to term limits in the abstract but immediately changed my mind upon seeing the first politician in action. For a long time, this didn't require tuning in C-SPAN; it involved simply walking down the street. From 1988 to 1994, when I worked for the Claremont Institute and the Pacific Research Institute, I lived just a few blocks from the state capitol and got a close look at the legislature as it chopped up and spat out nearly 5,000 pieces of legislation a year. It was seldom an edifying spectacle.

As the largest state, California has the legislature that most resembles Congress, so it's a good place to consider the likely impact of term limits at the federal level. The California legislature is a full-time, highly paid body with a large staff and adjunct agencies similar to the Congressional Budget Office and Congressional Research Service. In addition, California enacted the three-term (six-year) limit for the Assembly that term limit advocates demand for the U.S. House, rather than a 12-year maximum. The limit for the state Senate is two terms (eight years).

California has always offered a menagerie of walking arguments for term limits. My favorite is state Sen. Ralph Dills (D-Gardena), California's answer to Strom Thurmond. The 87-year-old Dills was first elected to the legislature in 1938. He still shares tales from time to time about dealing with Harry Hopkins and other New Dealers. Up against his Senate term limit next year (his slogan for his last election campaign was "Too Old to Retire"), he is planning to run for the state Assembly, where he still has six full years of eligibility, even though he had to be rolled onto the Senate floor in a wheelchair for some key votes this year.

Republicans offer their own examples of deadwood, such as the appropriately named Sen. William Craven. First elected in 1972, he is not as old as Dills (his legislative biography does not divulge his age), but he missed much of the recent legislative session because of illness. It is not clear his colleagues missed him; he hasn't attended Senate Republican caucus meetings for years, and his principal Senate task seems to be the apportioning of parking spaces for staff people. Craven's chief of staff, paid a six-figure salary, oversees this function.

Then, of course, there was the legendary Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. The legislature under Brown was a barely concealed swap meet. He used to essentially extort fabulous sums of money from business interests in the form of campaign contributions, under the implied threat that bills they wanted enacted (or blocked, in the case of the tobacco industry) wouldn't see the light of day if they didn't pay up. It was an efficient, smooth-running machine. Brown's genius was his ability to protect and expand liberal interests while buying off business interests with narrow favors. This not only stymied any broad-based reform such as tax reduction or deregulation, but also kept business interests from coalescing into a serious force against Democrats in elections. It drove Republicans crazy.

Under Brown, the lobbying community became known as the "third house," since lobbyists were a de facto branch of the legislature. The biggest statist interests--the trial lawyers, the teachers union, and other labor groups--enjoyed a stranglehold on the legislature. Membership on "juice" committees--banking, insurance, natural resources--was highly coveted because these committees allowed you to generate more campaign cash. One veteran lobbyist was legendary (before he went to prison) for the way he would stand in the back of committee rooms, wig-wagging hand signals like a third base coach to indicate to the committee chairman which bills should be killed or voted out, which amendments accepted, and so forth. Brown's whole apparatus worked so smoothly, in fact, that widespread rumor has it that when the FBI investigated political corruption in Sacramento in the mid-1980s, Willie was their main target. The Feds never laid a glove on him. Two Republican legislators went to federal prison instead.

When I moved to Sacramento, Brown was in his eighth year as speaker of the Assembly and nearing the record for the longest-tenured speaker in California history. Brown referred to himself as "the Ayatollah" of the legislature, and the description was not hyperbole. But Republicans were sure they were closing in and would get the drop on him in the next election, or the election after that. California Republicans were the Chicago Cubs of modern politics: Just wait till next year. Brown was still speaker when I left town in 1994. And even though Republicans did finally break through in the election of 1994, taking a slim majority of the Assembly for the first time in 25 years, Brown's legerdemain was such that he still kept the Assembly under Democratic control for another year.

Throughout the 1980s, Republicans salivated over polls showing that Willie Brown was highly unpopular around the state--sort of like House Speaker Newt Gingrich today. Just as Democrats last year tried to tie Republican House members to Newt, California Republicans always tried to tie Democratic legislators to Willie. It seldom worked. The advantages of local incumbency always won out over Willie's general unpopularity. The Republicans scarcely dented Brown's majority. Only three incumbents were defeated in the last three elections of the 1980s; the overall turnover rate for the Assembly fell by half during the decade.

But what if the entire state could vote against Willie through the proxy of term limits? Term limits offer a powerful means to cut through the modern electoral paradox wherein voters hate the political class in general but love their local representative. Term limits allowed you to vote against the other guy--all the other guys, in fact. Never mind that it was the political equivalent of Mutual Assured Destruction, wiping out your own local guy as well as the other town's bum. Term limit proponents in California offered all the usual reasons in favor of the idea, but its biggest attraction was left unstated: It would be the long-sought silver bullet for Willie Brown. Although term limits didn't start in California, it's hard to deny that California helped propel a national movement simply to get rid of one person.

Seven years after the enactment of term limits with the passage of Proposition 140, following a rough transition period that saw old-timers clinging to the last threads of power along with newcomers ready to change things, what judgments can be made about the effect of term limits in California? I returned to Sacramento several times during the spring and summer, visiting my old haunts in the Assembly gallery and committee rooms. The scene looked much the same, even if most of the faces were new. Committees still abused witnesses. The state budget was still woefully late. Gridlock still prevailed. Who were all these no-names? Where were my favorite old dinosaurs? Yet beneath these superficial features, there were some signs of significant change.

Although the conventional wisdom is that "the jury is still out" on how term limits are working, it is possible to give a midterm report card. The best way to begin an evaluation is to assess the conditions in Sacramento based on a balance sheet of the arguments in favor of and against term limits. The main arguments in favor of term limits are:

* Term limits will produce more competitive elections.

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