What Causes Leadership Turnover?

by Karl Kurtz

In a story summarizing legislative leadership battles earlier this month, Stateline.org's Eric Kelderman reported, "While challenges to sitting leaders are full of political drama, much of the turnover this year is due to term limits...."  Not doubting that term limits are a bigger cause of leadership change than intraparty conflict, I wondered if they are more important than changes in party control or voluntary retirements.  I decided to do my own count.

With the convening of the legislative session in North Carolina yesterday and the formal election of Rep. Joe Hackney as speaker and Marc Basnight as president pro tem, NCSL's roster of legislative leaders is complete, except for two positions in the Massachusetts House that have not yet been decided, we are now in a position to summarize the changes.

NCSL currently tracks 332 leadership positions with the titles of speaker, minority leader, majority leader, president, president pro tem and speaker pro tem.  The number of positions in each legislative chamber varies from two to four based on the structure of leadership in the body, but the average is about three per chamber.

Of these 332 positions, 145 leaders (44%) are new to their positions (though they may have moved from, say, majority leader to speaker) after the 2006 election.  That's a higher proportion of new leaders than after the 2002 or 2004 elections, the only previous years for which we have compiled those numbers. Leadership turnover in houses (48%) was greater than in senates (39%).

Looking at leadership change by legislative chamber provides a different perspective.  Of the 99 legislative chambers, 89 of them reorganized after the November elections.  (Four states--Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia--and two senates--Kansas and New Mexico--did not have elections this year.)  Among those 89, the largest category had no change in leadership positions.  One-third (30) of the legislative chambers kept the same legislators in the same leadership positions.  Remarkably, this included some term-limited chambers like the senate and house in Colorado and the California Senate.

(Find out the largest category of leadership change after the jump.)

Looking at the causes of leadership change, it turns out that term limits were tied with voluntary retirement from the legislature or from leadership positions as the most important factors.  Term limits and voluntary retirements generated changes in leadership positions in 16 chambers (18%) each.

The next leading cause of leadership turnover was a change in party control, accounting for 12 (13%) of the chambers that reorganized.  Intraparty conflict (what Kelderman called "challenges to sitting leaders") brought about leadership change in only eight chambers.  Traditions of rotating party leaders every two years and election defeat of incumbent leaders caused changes in four and three chambers, respectively.

This wraps up The Thicket's coverage of leadership change in legislatures for this election cycle.  For all of our stories on this subject, click here.

[Photo courtesy of Flickr]

Comments

[Eric Kelderman]

Karl, I’m either incredibly flattered or deeply concerned that you completed such an in-depth analysis of changes in leadership based on my story. I think, you’re conclusion was that I was, at least, close to right (term-limits tied with retirements). I’m only sorry that I didn’t have the statistics on turnover being greater this year than in the past two election cycles.

In fact, your blog entry was very good and included the levels of leadership that I completely ignored in my piece, meaning anyone besides the presiding officer.