Term Limits in the News

by Karl Kurtz

There have been two interesting articles on term limits in recent days.  On Sunday, the Washington Post ran "After Adopting Term Limits, States Lose Female Legislators."  The story quotes former Ohio House speaker JoAnne Davidson on the loss of women in the Ohio Legislature (down from 32 before term limits to 23 after) and goes on to say:

"It's been hard to keep the numbers up," said Davidson, who was Ohio's first female House speaker and now is co-chair of the Republican National Committee. "We pick them up by ones and twos and threes. When all of a sudden you have 40-some seats open, you don't have as many women step up as men to replace them."

Of women, she said: "They're harder to recruit. They're harder to convince to run."

The phenomenon Davidson described holds true across the country, where term-limited legislatures with rising numbers of women are the exception. In fact, gains during the past 12 years have been slightly greater in states without term limits, according to political scientist Gary Moncrief.

"The evidence has shown that it has had absolutely no positive effect at all," said Moncrief, a Boise State University professor who predicted 15 years ago that term limits would increase representation for women. "The logic was impeccable, the empirical evidence not at all. The problem is there aren't as many women running as we expected."

Unfortunately, the Post story doesn't recognize that Moncrief's research was part of the Joint Project on Term Limits, a four-year national study of the effects of term limits conducted jointly by NCSL, the Council of State Governments and the State Legislative Leaders Foundation.  (See the term limits category of The Thicket for more on this subject.)

The second article of note is a very nicely crafted plea in the Philadelphia Daily News, "Don't dumb down the Legislature," by Pennsylvania Rep. Daylin Leach against Gov. Ed Rendell's proposal to impose term limts on the Pennsylvania Legislature.  Here's an excerpt:

Term limits are anti-democratic. The right to choose our representatives is the cornerstone of democracy. It would be an arrogant power grab for politicians in Harrisburg to tell you whom you can and cannot elect. It's none of our business whom you choose. Which member of your community you have confidence in is up to you, not us.

Limits also would produce a less competent Legislature. If you were hiring a doctor, lawyer or CEO, would you seek out the least-experienced person? Of course not. That would be insane. So when we hire legislators, why would we say "experienced and knowledgeable people need not apply"?

Comments

[Nowak]

I don't agree. Limitation should not be blamed.