The Thicket at State Legislatures

Our Founders were not New to Governing

by Karl Kurtz

Reflecting on current public distrust of elected officials and anti-incumbent sentiment among voters, renowned Brown University historian Gordon S. Wood wrote yesterday in the New York Times about the role of experience in the founding of our country.

...[O]ur founders were not all that new at it: the men who led the revolution against the British crown and created our political institutions were very used to governing themselves. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams and John Adams were all members of their respective Colonial legislatures several years before the Declaration of Independence. In fact, these Revolutionaries drew upon a tradition of self-government that went back a century or more. Virginians ran their county courts and elected representatives to their House of Burgesses. The people of Massachusetts gathered in town meetings and selected members of the General Court, their Colonial legislature....

If one wanted to explain why the French Revolution spiraled out of control into violence and dictatorship and the American Revolution did not, there is no better answer than the fact that the Americans were used to governing themselves and the French were not....

Wood goes on to summarize the early history of term limits in the United States:

Learning from the 1935 Edition of the Book of the States

by Karl Kurtz

I have recently completed writing a chapter on state legislatures for the 2010 edition--the 75th anniversary--of the Council of State Governments' Book of the States.  This work occasioned a thorough study of the first 1935 edition of that venerable reference work.  It's a slim volume (181 pp.) compared to the modern 600+ page tomes, but it contains some fascinating information and enabled me to write about "75 Years of Institutional Change in State Legislatures," forthcoming later this year.

That first volume was published jointly by the American Legislators Association, which was founded in 1925, and  the Council of State Governments, formed in 1933.  The driving force behind the two organizations was Colorado State Senator Henry W. Toll, who served as executive director of both.  Eventually the activities of the American Legislators Association were merged into those of CSG, and the ALA ceased to exist.

The scope of my article did not allow me to capture some of the more interesting or humorous tidbits contained in the 1935 edition.  Here are a few of those nuggets.

The initial volume of the Book of the States has a marvelous dedication:

To the tens of thousands of American citizens who, as state legislators, have given more honest and competent service to their government than their constituents will ever know.

One of four (!) forewords to the volume ("a symposium of forewords") contains this prescient comment:

This volume is nothing but a lick and a promise.  It is the meager and unorganized beginning of a periodical publication which may eventually become a very useful reference work.

California Speakership: From Ayatollah to Herder of Cats

Dan Walters has an interesting column in the Sacramento Bee today about the position of speaker of the California Assembly.  He reflects on how Willie Brown legendarily referred to  himself as the "ayatollah of the Legislature" when he was speaker for 14 years in the 1980s and 90s. Walters says:

After Brown's departure (to become mayor of San Francisco), term limits, adopted by voters in 1990, reduced the speaker from a dictator to, more often than not, a herder of political cats.

He goes on to summarize leadership patterns in both the Assembly and Senate under term limits and to report on the most recent battle for speaker:

Term limits – and the gerrymander of legislative districts after the 2000 census – did create a new pattern of legislative leadership, however. The top Senate position, president pro tem, would be informally reserved for a white man from Northern California (Bill Lockyer, John Burton, Don Perata and now Darrell Steinberg) while the Assembly speakership would alternate between African American and Latino members from Los Angeles.

That's why it's long been assumed that a Latino from Los Angeles would succeed Speaker Karen Bass, who is black – but the question has been which politician. Kevin de León, a protégé of Bass' predecessor, Fabian Núñez, had been the presumed front-runner, but had been unable to pin down an absolute majority of Democratic members, apparently because of an off-putting personality.

Suddenly, therefore, first-termer John Pérez (photo), a cousin of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (also a former speaker) emerged as the likely winner, even though Villaraigosa and Núñez had supposedly worked out a deal to give de León a clear shot. Bass, apparently angered that de León wanted to take over immediately, threw support to Pérez.

It's intriguing to Capitol insiders and it's historically noteworthy that Pérez would become the first openly gay speaker. It also reveals something about the perpetual infighting in Los Angeles' Latino political community.

It means very little, however, to 38 million other Californians, and has no effect on the deficit-ridden state budget and myriad other unresolved issues. It's just changing the name on the speaker's rather ornate office on the second floor of the Capitol.

Photo credit: "Ayatollahs of the Internet" by David Holtzman

An Unexpected Benefit of Term Limits

by Karl Kurtz

States with term limits have higher proportions of former state legislators serving in Congress than states without term limits. The national average of former legislators in Congress is 50.5 percent, ranging from 100 percent (of three seats in the U.S. House and Senate) in Montana and Wyoming to zero percent (of five seats) in New Mexico. But among term-limited states the average is 60.7 percent compared to 46.1 percent in non-term-limited states.

I arrived at these numbers by a somewhat circuitous route. Several weeks ago, the Sacramento Bee had an interesting story, "Political merry-go-round diminishes Democrats' clout in Legislature." The premise of the story was that California Democrats are very close to having the two-thirds majorities necessary to approve budgets in both chambers of their Legislature, but they are continually stymied by having vacancies in the Legislature created by legislators moving to other offices. For example, two California members of Congress have been appointed to positions in the Obama Administration. It is likely that current state legislators will run for those seats, causing vacancies in the Legislature. A state senator moving on to another office often creates a vacancy in the Assembly because Assembly members move to the Senate.

What the story does not say is that, from a comparative perspective, California has a unique set of circumstances that exacerbate the problem of musical chairs in the Legislature. First, it is the only state that has more members of Congress (55 including U.S. senators) than it does state senators (40). This means that California state senators who want to move to Congress are especially well-positioned to do so, as they are likely to have already run and won in districts larger than the congressional ones. Second, along with Arkansas and Michigan, California has the most restrictive of all term limits: six years in the Assembly and eight in the Senate and a lifetime ban on any further legislative service. California legislators who want to continue a career in politics have especially strong incentives to run for other offices.

This got me to wondering about the career path from state legislatures to Congress, how the number of former state legislators serving in Congress varies from state to state and what might explain the variation. To get at this, I turned NCSL's list of former legislators serving in Congress into numbers by state.

Fund-raising Bans During Legislative Sessions

by Karl Kurtz

Are bans on campaign fund-raising by legislators during legislative sessions a good idea?  That's the question that A.C. Kleinheider addressed in Nashville's TheCityPaper last week.  His commentary focuses on a proposal by Tennessee Lieutenant Governor (and Speaker of the Senate) Ron Ramsey, who wants to run for governor in 2010, to repeal his state's ban on fund-raising during session:

“To tie someone’s hand when they’re in the legislature when they’re running for another office doesn’t seem fair. The governor himself can raise money, if you’re a sitting congressman you can raise money, why shouldn't someone in the legislature, if they’re running for an office also be able to raise money? So that’s something we need to look at seriously,” Ramsey said discussing the law.

Kleinheider goes on to give a history and argue in favor of the repeal:

South Dakota Term Limits Repeal Proposal

by Karl Kurtz

CNNPolitics.com had a nice story last week about the ballot measure in South Dakota to repeal term limits.  The leader of the repeal campaign is Sen. William Napoli who, before he became a legislator, had led the campaign in favor of term limits when they were approved in 1992.

"I wanted to get the old guys out of there and get some fresh blood in. I wanted term limits worse than anybody," said Napoli, the owner of an antique car museum in Rapid City.

The measure passed in 1992, and Napoli became one of its "beneficiaries" after he was elected to the House in 1994. He served the maximum of four two-year terms in the House before switching to the Senate in 2002.

Under South Dakota's term limits, he could seek re-election this year one last time, but he's not going to. On his way out, he is hoping to undo the term limits legacy by sponsoring a constitutional amendment to remove them.

"We've seen the results of term limits, and they have decimated the legislative process. They put too much power in the hands of the government, bureaucrats and lobbyists, and they've neutered the third branch," Napoli said.

The story goes on to summarize the history of repeals of terms limits in six states and New York City, drawing heavily on information from NCSL's Jennie Drage Bowser.

Polls show the South Dakota repeal measure trailing.  It's one of the many ballot proposals that we'll be following tonight.  We'll update this post before the night is out.

Son of Arkansas

by Brian Weberg

A few years back, when Bill Gwatney still served in the Arkansas State Senate, I interviewed him for a comprehensive study that NCSL was conducting to help the legislature prepare for massive turnover about to  occur due to term limits.  At that time I was pretty comfortable in the halls of the Capitol in Little Rock, having participated in a couple other projects for the legislature in previous years.  It's a small place and you get to know people.  I knew a little about Gwatney, his car-dealership private life and ambitious, confident style.  He had the look and the sound of someone going somewhere important.  He had energy and that combination of sly quick wit and charismatic charm that seemed to be a trademark of successful Arkansas politicians of the day. 

Yesterday, when the news first broke about the shootings at the Arkansas Democratic Party Headquarters in Little Rock, I figured I would know something about who was there.  I did not know that Senator Gwatney had become Chairman Gwatney and that he was the target of the shooter.  First reports were of critical injury to the chairman. Then quickly the tragedy turned horrific.  Gwatney had been killed. 

Rare State Legislative Primary Defeat for Incumbent in California

by Karl Kurtz

Yesterday was state primary election day in California.  In a highly unusual event (the last time was 12 years ago), incumbent state Sen. Carole Migden was defeated in a Democratic primary in San Francisco by Assemblymember Mark Leno (photo).  In most term-limited states, and especially California, quality challenges to incumbent legislators are rare because most ambitious challengers wait for term limits to open up a seat.  But Leno was termed out in the Assembly, and Migden's highly publicized campaign finance irregularites and personal foibles made her an inviting target, despite the fact that she had won elected offices for 18 years and served as chair of both the Assembly and Senate budget committees. 

Because the Senate seat has a heavy Democratic advantage in registration, Leno is likely to win this Senate seat in November.  See today's Sacramento Bee for a rundown on that race as well as the two property rights initiatives on the ballot.

In an aside, as the presidential race has turned out, imagine what the stakes would have been if California had not pushed its presidential primary up to super Tuesday and kept it with the state primary in June!

Fixing a Deficit in State Legislative Experience in the Presidency

by Karl Kurtz

In Governing's Ballot Box blog today, Alan Greenblatt notes that it is rare in modern political history that former state legislators become president and that Sen. Barack Obama's claiming of his party's nomination for the presidency means that "...now every state legislator in the country -- all 7.400 of them -- can, like U.S. senators, look in the mirror and see a potential president."

In January 2007 in The Thicket we noted that six of 19 declared candidates for president in the 2008 election were former state legislators.  How soon we forget Tancredo, Gravel, Vilsack, Thompson and Kucinich, leaving only Obama as a presidential candidate with state legislative credentials.  We have also written in "State Legislators who Became President" about how 22 of 43 (51 percent) presidents are former state or colonial legislators but that there have been only five since 1900.

This reminded me that in 1994 I had proposed a fundamental change in American government that would have had the sure-fire effect of producing presidents who had backgrounds in state government: requiring that all candidates for federal office have previous state legislative experience.  The piece was entitled "Reinventing Federalism" and was based on a hypothetical question that U.S. District Court Judge William L. Dwyer had asked both sides in a constitutional challenge to Washington state's limit on the terms of members of Congress: If states can make experience a disqualification for federal office (i.e. term limits), then could they impose an experience requirement as a qualification for office? 

I pounced on this idea and, tongue-mostly-in-cheek, urged that "State legislatures across the nation should immediately initiate state constitutional amendments requiring six years of state legislative service for anyone who runs for the U.S. House of Represenatives, Senate or president."  I spun this fantasy out into a number of variations that would strengthen American federalism by repairing damage done by the establishment of direct election of senators in the 17th Amendment. I concluded with the idea that the combination of term limits for members of Congress and experience requirements for federal office would mean that: "The best and the brightest state legislators would have someplace to go at the end of their terms, and Congress and the presidency would be replenished with experienced and committed practitioners of federalism."

Had the states taken me up on my proposal, then neither John McCain nor Hillary Clinton would have been eligible for the 2008 nomination for president.  That's not a knock on them; it's only a daydream of a state legislative junkie.

State Legislative Primary Elections in Texas and Ohio

by Tim Storey

Ohio and Texas held legislative primaries yesterday, and it appears that there were relatively few surprises. 

Unofficial results show that a handful of incumbent Texas legislators lost in their effort to return.  Those included Democratic Representatives Kevin Bailey, Juan Escobar, Borris Miles, and Paul Moreno.  On the Republican side, incumbent Representatives Corbin Van Arsdale, Pat Haggerty and Thomas Latham all lost.  One race that saw about 30,000 total votes cast is likely headed to a recount.  Incumbent GOP Representative Nathan Macias trailed by 38 votes after initial vote tallies.

It does not appear that any sitting Texas Senators lost primary elections yesterday. 

The big question is whether these incumbent losses will affect the heated battle for Speaker of the Texas House.  The Austin American Statesman has a great wrap-up that seems to conclude that Speaker Craddick is positioned to retain his leadership post. 

And one Democratic Texas legislator earned the right to be an underdog this fall.  State Representative Rick Noriega won the Democratic primary and will challenge incumbent Republican U.S. Senator John Cornyn.  The last time a Democrat won statewide in Texas was 1994. 

In Ohio, term limits fueled a wave of state legislators running for Congress, and several of them won primary bids on Tuesday.  In the Republican primary for U.S. House district 5, State Representative Bob Latta won big.  State Senator Steve Austria won the Republican primary in Congressional district 7 that is being vacated by retiring Congressman Dave Hobson.  In another open U.S. House seat, two legislators will face off in the fall to replace Ralph Regula (R).  Democratic State Senator John Boccieri will run against Republican State Senator Kirk Schuring for Ohio U.S. House district 16.

The next round of statewide legislative primaries are 47 days away on April 22nd in Pennsylvania.