Philip Blumel: Is it just my imagination? Hi. I’m Philip Blumel. Welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast of the Term Limits Movement for the week of August, 19, 2019.
Stacey Selleck: Your sanctuary from from partisan politics.
Philip Blumel: This podcast has been closely following the 2020 presidential election from the very start, looking for an opportunity to inject term limits into the debate. Over the past month and particularly this last week, we have seen reason to believe the spotlight may soon turn in our direction. U.S. Term Limits executive director Nick Tomboulides feels it too. How are you doing, Nick?
Nick Tomboulides: My lawyer has advised me not to answer that question.
Philip Blumel: Oh okay. I’m sorry. Sorry. We’ll move on then. Nick, I think that we have a possibility looming here for the Term Limits movement that is very exciting. As everyone who listens this podcast know, we’ve been watching the presidential campaigns very closely, even though it’s very early, looking for signs that may be our issue can become important. And I really believe it is. We have a gentleman Tom Steyer who just entered the race and it looks like he is going to be in the next debate. And man, he will not stop talking about term limits.
Nick Tomboulides:: The guy has become like a term limits machine as of late.
Philip Blumel: He has. He has.
Nick Tomboulides: He’s got multiple commercials about it. He tweeted about it eight hours ago. He really is on fire for the issue.
Philip Blumel: I just saw one of his more recent commercials. We played one on on a previous episode, but he came out with another well-produced commercial on the subject of term limits and a few other related issues. Let’s hear that right now.
Tom Steyer: Here’s the difference between me and the other candidates. I don’t think we can fix our democracy from the inside. I don’t believe Washington politicians and big corporations will let that happen. The only way we can make change happen is from the outside.
Tom Steyer: For me, this comes down to whether you trust the politicians or the people. And if you say you trust the people, are you willing to stand up to the insiders and the big corporations and give the people the tools they need to fix our democracy? A national referendum term limits, eliminating corporate money in politics, making it easy to vote. I trust them. And as president, I will give you tools we need to fix our democracy.
Nick Tomboulides: What Steyer is saying is basically I think a message that will resonate with a lot of people. Career politicians aren’t the solution to our problems. Career politicians are the problem.
Philip Blumel: Right.
Nick Tomboulides: And let’s not pretend that Steyer is not a controversial figure. He is. Like the president, he is in some circles. But you can’t deny the guy is politically savvy. As part of our work here, you and I, we sit down with candidates all the time, candidates for state legislature, candidates for Congress, wherever. And when we have these meetings, normally we have to say, “Hey, wake up, doofus. This issue is pretty popular. Start talking about it. Sign the pledge. It would really help your campaign.” Nod, nod, wink, wink.
Nick Tomboulides: But we never had to do that with him. In fact, we’ve never even met him. It reminds me of Rick Scott in a way, former governor of Florida and now Senator. Really smart people who run for office know instinctually that term limits is a white hot issue. They don’t even need to think about it twice.
Philip Blumel: That’s right. And one exciting thing about Tom Steyer is, is that he’s talking about it and people are going to hear it. One, he’s committed to spend 100 million dollars on his campaign of his own money. That’s incredible. So that’s going to propel the message.
Philip Blumel: And another thing is, is that he is on the verge of qualifying for the next democratic debate. The Democratic National Committee has requirements to be involved in the debate. And in the next one, you have to have over 130,000 individual donors. Well, he’s got that. You have to earn more than two percent in three qualifying polls.
Nick Tomboulides: It’s four. Four polls.
Philip Blumel: Oh, it’s four. Oh.
Nick Tomboulides: But he’s got three.
Philip Blumel: But he’s already qualified in three. Right.
Nick Tomboulides: Yes, he’s got three.
Philip Blumel: So he’s on the edge. And believe me, he’s got so much money to spend. You’ve got to believe that he’s going to qualify. And of course, he’s got a message that sells. When he’s talking in front of crowds saying this, the crowd’s going crazy.
Tom Steyer: We can and we must fix the way that democracy works. That’s why I called for term limits in Congress, so our government works for the American people again. Speaking of term limits, I have six words for you, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Grassley.
Nick Tomboulides: I follow predictit.com. It’s like a political odds-making site.
Philip Blumel: Right.
Nick Tomboulides: They give Steyer 83% chance of making it on stage at the next debate, which is September 12th in Houston. As you said, he just needs one more poll. He’s promised to discuss term limits. It looks like he’s going to be getting in. Let’s hope so, because there have been debates, two debates so far. Term limits have not come up. This would be a first for the democratic primary, and it needs to happen.
Philip Blumel: Right. I would like to urge him to talk about this. In fact, we ought to urge all the candidates to talk about it actually, not just Tom Steyer.
Nick Tomboulides: We can get the entire US term limits universe involved in this because we can’t do it on our own. We need a call to action. We need to get the listeners of this podcast, people on our email list, the people who’ve signed our petition at TermLimits.com to send messages to all of the candidates, Republican and Democrat, encouraging them to talk about term limits and make this a front burner issue.
Nick Tomboulides: We’re going to get the contact information together and we’re going to put this on our website. It’s going to be one click. Boom. Easy peasy. You send a message to all the candidates at once, make them hear our voices.
Philip Blumel: Yeah. Democrat and Republican.
Nick Tomboulides: After somebody wins the primary or after somebody becomes president, it’s a lot harder to get a hold of them. Everyone is scrambling right now. There’s an obvious motive and incentive to actually listen to people. Let’s take advantage of that. Let’s spread the word. Let’s build the movement.
Scott Tillman: Hi. This is Scott Tillman, the national field director with U.S. Term Limits. We ask state legislature candidates and state legislators to sign a pledge to help us term limit Congress. The pledge reads, “I pledge that as a member of the state legislature I will co-sponsor, vote for, and defend the resolution applying for an article five convention for the sole purpose of enacting term limits on Congress.”.
Scott Tillman: Last week, we reported on Mississippi’s odd year elections, but there was one race too close to call. After a recount, pledge signer Dixie Newman won the Senate race for the 50th district by one vote. This week we had 18 new pledge signers, 10 incumbent legislators and eight candidates. Please ask your legislators to sign our pledge. Pledges are available at TermLimits.com.
Nick Tomboulides: Now, someone that is not listening to the voters on this issue, we found out this week, is Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. I was very disappointed to see this. She’s interesting in a lot of ways, but she was on the stump doing a sort of town hall program and she was asked this question. Let’s hear it.
Speaker 6: Congresswoman, we have a social media question coming in here from Matt Carrier. He asks, “Where do you stand on term limits?”
Tulsi Gabbard: Term limits is an interesting question. I think it’s a problem when you have people who are more interested in making a career out of politics than those who are really interested in coming in and serving. I think this is a debate that the American people need to have, looking through what the consequences of those would be.
Tulsi Gabbard: I have heard from some folks in states who have enacted one or two term limits in their states and seen maybe an unintended negative consequence, whereas the elected official turns through … the turnover’s very high. What ends up happening is you have the chiefs of staff or the hired staff, unelected people, who then hold the power and the influence. You have lobbyists then who are coming in, and instead of people talking to the elected official, they’ll then go to the staff or the bureaucracy and wage their influence campaign there, knowing that the elected officials going to come in, maybe just stay for two or four years, and lean heavily on the staff for advice and so on, making it so that the accountability is really not there because they’re going to people who are behind the scenes and not accountable to voters.
Philip Blumel: Now, that’s too bad. It doesn’t sound like she’s really putting a whole lot of thought into this, and that answer is so generic and typical.
Nick Tomboulides: A few things really stood out to me there. First, when she said, quote, “This is a debate the American people need to have.” We’ve already had it, Tulsi. This is settled science with the American people. It’s polling at 82%.
Nick Tomboulides: Let me ask you this, Phil. Let’s say you’re with a group of 10 people. You’re deciding where to go out to eat, could be friends, family, business, whatever. Eight of the 10 people say, “We want Chinese food.” Is that a debate? That’s not a debate. Hell no.
Philip Blumel: Right.
Nick Tomboulides: The decision’s been made. You go out and you get the Chinese food. In this case, more than eight out of 10 people want term limits for Congress. Only in this bizarro world of politics do we pretend there’s a debate because a tiny minority of elected officials don’t want something to happen.
Nick Tomboulides: She also said in that clip that she had heard from people in states that have enacted term limits and yada, yada, yada. It’s been bad. Who do you think she’s heard from? Do you think she went to the Santa Monica pier with a microphone and asked average Joes and Janes what they think of term limits?
Philip Blumel: Uh, no.
Nick Tomboulides: Of course not.
Philip Blumel: Right. Yeah, if she got that message from somewhere, if she actually did, it was from legislators, it was from lobbyists, it was from the machines in the capital cities. It was not from the voters. It is most frustrating thing in the world to individual lobbyists and reduces their influence, and that’s why they’re opposed to it. That’s why they spend money to oppose term limits. That’s why they’re always on the side of weakening and abolishing term limits when politicians try to overturn them.
Nick Tomboulides: There was a funny moment in the clip, which you can watch at TermLimits.Com, when they cut to the crowd during this answer and nobody in the crowd was amused by her explanation. They all had the “here we go again” look on their faces, more doublespeak from a politician. It looked like a funeral honestly. But hey, term limits still poll at 82%, which is 81 points higher than where Tulsi Gabbard is polling.
Philip Blumel: When legislative term limits come under attack by wannabe career politicians in Michigan, citizens charge to the rescue, led by a 10-foot wooden horse. For pictures, see the Michigan Term Limits Facebook page. Activist Jeff Tillman, father of U.S. Term Limits field director Scott Tillman, is the horse’s caretaker. And he spoke to us about the latest threat to the citizens term limits law in Michigan last week.
Philip Blumel: Hey, Jeff. How’s it going?
Jeff Tillman: It is going wonderful.
Philip Blumel: Great. I’m taking a look at what’s going on up there in Michigan and I know that’s a state that passed term limits back in 1992. And it was a citizens’ initiative. Citizens collected about 400,000 signatures. It passed with 59% of vote, even though the pro term limits forces were outspent two to one. And I’ve seen polling since that term limits are just as popular as ever in Michigan. So what’s the threat you’re facing and and who could it possibly be from?
Jeff Tillman: Well, we have a situation where every once in a while one of our elected officials feels like they know better than the citizens of Michigan.
Philip Blumel: In this case, it’s a big shot though, right? It’s the Senate majority leader. Tell us a little bit about Mike Shirkey.
Jeff Tillman: He is in his last term. He has forgot that the people opened up that seat every six years so that folks like him as well as others that have an interest in doing what they can for the folks in Michigan, that seat is opened up because of term limits since the nineties, or somebody else would’ve been there for 10, 20, 30 years and he wouldn’t have had a shot at the very job he holds.
Philip Blumel: Yeah, that’s really a shame. What’s the exact threat? What’s he trying to do?
Jeff Tillman: Well, what he’s trying to do is, he’s stated up at the Mackinac Center Retreat, up on Mackinaw Island, he stated to some folks that he wants to overturn the term limits that we have in Michigan.
Philip Blumel: But what I mean is, is he looking at a referendum? Well, I guess you would have to in order to change the Constitution back, right?
Jeff Tillman: Right. He would have to get some major funding, and that would no doubt come from lobby groups or special interest.
Philip Blumel: Sure.
Jeff Tillman: And they would kick dollars in so that they could establish long-term relationships with their buddies.
Philip Blumel: Yeah. Are they looking at this in 2020 or 2022?
Jeff Tillman: I think it’s 2022 that his term comes to an end, so he’s waiting until he gets out of office.
Philip Blumel: My question for you now is, Jeff, you’re a term limits activist. I know you’ve been active in this effort for a long time. What the heck are you going to do about it?
Jeff Tillman: We are going to Don’t Touch Our Term Limits Michigan.
Philip Blumel: Okay.
Jeff Tillman: Is very much gathering the troops. We are getting the word out. We’ve taken our Calvary horse out. Folks and voters are very familiar with the horse that was used with Paul Revere and his ride to notify everybody that trouble was coming. And we’re going with the same state of mind and gathering folks, and we’re shouting from a running horse.
Philip Blumel: You’re actually talking about a horse here. You’re talking about a-
Jeff Tillman: You bet we are.
Philip Blumel: Tell me what it is.
Jeff Tillman: We’re talking about a 10-foot tall horse that is carved out of Michigan pine., And on the side of it we’re able to put billboards. And the love of horses is everywhere. I have people flag me over, wave me down, and want to know about it and of course get their picture taken with our Don’t Touch Michigan Term Limits sign on the side.
Jeff Tillman: And it ends up being a great way to shout the message out. And I can’t tell you how many times they’ve followed me into the rest areas and wanted to do the photo op with their kids standing next to a sign that they agree with. So that’s what we’re using it … It’s traveling around the state of Michigan and we tow it with my van.
Philip Blumel: Okay.
Jeff Tillman: And it’s a great eye catcher.
Philip Blumel: Well, I know what attracts media because I’m looking at a stack of articles here I took off the internet. Here’s an article about the horse in Jackson. Here’s the horse in Hillsdale and other towns. So clearly,, it does attract attention. Now where does it come from? I can’t go down to Walmart and buy myself a 10-foot horse.
Jeff Tillman: No.
Philip Blumel: Where’d it come from?
Jeff Tillman: It comes out of a pine forest of Michigan. We contacted some folks that we know do lumber harvesting and told them that we’re looking to build this 10-foot horse. And they happened to be Amish folks, and they took a huge interest in something that was as natural as Michigan pine and said, “We have just a group of trees that is perfect.”
Jeff Tillman: And so they let us pick four logs, which were the base of the horse and the four main points. And then we trimmed those down and attached them and kind of framed it out. And then we contacted a local chainsaw artist, And he did this in my shop. And a few months cleaning up sawdust, but watching this guy’s swing from a ladder with one hand and a chainsaw buzzing while he curved the horse’s features was very nerve-wracking for me.
Philip Blumel: Oh, that’s amazing.
Jeff Tillman: And I’m kind of running underneath him in case he falls, and how am I going to dodge his chainsaw? But he was quite creative. And I almost wish I had five more of them because I know that as we build this momentum that we’re going to get more calls to go to more events where these politicians that want to change Michigan term limits might be a headed.
Philip Blumel: Right.
Jeff Tillman: And we’ll go where folks ask us to go.
Philip Blumel: There was an alleged news article. It’s really a bit of a hit piece really of sort of an editorial by Steven Lemongello of the Orlando Sentinel that ran just this last week, where he got some big shots to complain about term limits. And I know that this made you hot. And of course, as you listeners may know, both Nick and I live in Florida. And so this was brought to our attention. Nick got fired up, steam started coming out of his ears, and you took some kind of action. What was that?
Nick Tomboulides: Normally, when I put the newspaper down for my dog, I don’t discriminate on which side is facing up. But in this case, I made sure. I made sure this article was front and center because I wanted Lucy to be able to take her aim.
Nick Tomboulides: It was ridiculous. It was absolutely ridiculous. It was a clear opinion editorial piece that was falsely framed as a straight news article. It says, “Critics ask why Florida’s legislature operates the way it does. It has one of the nation’s shortest sessions despite being the third largest state and some of the strictest term limits.”.
Philip Blumel: Ooh.
Nick Tomboulides: Ooh, spooky. Let’s pause right there. Florida is the number one state out of 50 in fiscal health. Thousand people move to Florida every day. And this article’s suggesting somehow term limits are running the state into the ground. Give me a freaking break.
Philip Blumel: Now, that’s so true. Florida is, relatively speaking of course, a very well run state. And I like to say sometimes that every legislature is dysfunctional, and it’s true. And there’s all kinds of dysfunction you can find in Florida, like every other state. But some are more dysfunctional than others. It’s just like every marriage is dysfunctional in the same way, but some are definitely a lot better than others.
Philip Blumel: Florida does so well in all these rankings of fiscal health and everything else. And how can you use that as a scapegoat for opposing term limits? Well, it doesn’t stop them.
Nick Tomboulides: Moving on.
Philip Blumel: Yeah.
Nick Tomboulides: Bob Graham, a Democrat who served as Florida governor from 1979 to 1987, that’s before I was even born, called for a full consideration of the legislative structure and process in Florida. Okay. Bob Graham hasn’t been relevant in 30 years. Let’s see what he thinks. “It’s not going to change,” said Dick Batchelor, a democratic consultant and former state rep. The people are not going to support additional time in office. You’re damn right we won’t.
Philip Blumel: Oh my word. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Did you say Dick Batchelor?
Nick Tomboulides: Oh yeah. You know him?
Philip Blumel: Yes. He runs the Dick Batchelor Management Group. He’s a lobbyist. He runs a team of lobbyists. He represents the American Hospital Association, Osceola County government, American Logistics Company, and others. This is what he does for living. Of course he’s against term limits. He’s a lobbyist.
Nick Tomboulides: And so the truth comes out.
Philip Blumel: Thanks for joining us for the first episode of our second year, episode number 53. Our mission this week is to push presidential candidates to talk about term limits. Do you have a favorite candidate or candidates in the ring? Go to their website, or better yet, call or speak to them in person if you get a chance and urge them to call for congressional term limits, for the good of the nation and also for the good of their campaigns. Until next week.
Speaker 2: Follow us on most social media at U.S. Term Limits.