Philip Blumel: Look out below.
Philip Blumel: Hi, I’m Philip Blumel. Welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast of the term limits movement for the week of October 28th, 2019.
Stacey Selleck: Your sanctuary from partisan politics.
Philip Blumel: A new axis of self-interested legislators and special interests in Michigan are planning on extending their power and their tenure. They will be taking the low road to get there. U.S. Term Limit Executive Director, Nick Tomboulides is on the case. Hey Nick.
Nick Tomboulides: How are you?
Philip Blumel: Okay, in Michigan we have some trouble brewing. Back in 1992 the voters with 59% of the vote passed term limits law in their state legislature, six years in the house, eight years in the state Senate. It’s been successful there and popular with the people like it is in every other state that’s passed term limits. But we’re hearing that there’s an effort underway to try to overturn the people’s term limits law. What’s going on in Michigan, Nick?
Nick Tomboulides: Right. Well, I have a confession to make.
Philip Blumel: Okay.
Nick Tomboulides: I am now a conspiracy theorist.
Philip Blumel: Oh no. Okay. Let’s hear it.
Nick Tomboulides: Look, look, look. I don’t believe in the lizard people. I don’t believe in aliens. I don’t think they faked the moon landing, and I don’t think Elvis is alive except in our hearts. But I do believe a conspiracy is afoot in Michigan, and it’s a conspiracy among the political elites to screw over the voters and repeal term limits.
N. Tomboulides: To prove this conspiracy, I don’t need a magnifying glass. I don’t need a trench coat. I don’t need to do a bunch of caffeine induced Googling. The fricking dopes are admitting to it. They’re admitting to it in the press all over Michigan. There’s an article out. It was just out yesterday. It’s from a group called City Pulse. It’s called Breakthrough Coalition Working on Expanding Term Limits. First of all, you’re not expanding term limits because if you did that, you’d be adding it to more offices. But it’s not a coalition. Enough with the doublespeak. It’s a damned conspiracy.
Nick Tomboulides: It’s the Michigan legislators and their cigar chomping lobbyist buddies and they are plotting, they are scheming how they can gut the existing term limits law and keep their power forever.
Philip Blumel: Oh, boy.
Nick Tomboulides: This law, by the way, mind you that a big majority of Michiganders passed at the ballot box in 1992. They’re throwing the voters under the bus. If you live in Michigan, call up your state legislator right now and say, “What the hell is this, man? How self-serving are you?”
Philip Blumel: Well, self-serving is what it is. I think they’re talking about extending these terms as much as 20 years. I guess the proposal hasn’t been totally nailed down, but that’s the word we’re getting, that they’re looking for 20 years between the two houses. This is something that they want to see on the ballot in 2020 in Michigan.
Nick Tomboulides: They can currently six years in the state House, at least eight in the state Senate. So if you’re in the state House, 20 years would be more than tripling what your term limit is.
Philip Blumel: That’s incredible.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah, and the ringleaders on this are the majority leader in the Senate. A guy named Mike Shirkey, very aptly named, and then the Speaker of the House, Lee Chatfield. There’s a quote in this piece from Shirkey. He says, “The leader …” Well, this is a quote from his press office because in Michigan you’re not just a part time legislator like most states. These are full time legislators who rake in around six figures when you consider the salary and benefits and pension and all that. It says he has a known interest in addressing the issue of term limits and the fact that they have been a failed experiment in Michigan.
Nick Tomboulides: Get this, Phil. The same guy who calls his own legislature a failure, what was he saying two years ago when he was running for reelection? He said, this is another quote from him two years past, “We have made tremendous strides in creating a positive business environment in Michigan that has resulted in the creation of 540,000 new jobs.” He added, “Michigan has made a remarkable turnaround in the term limits era.” Those are quotes.
Philip Blumel: Okay, so look, here’s what’s happening here. When he’s running for reelection, this state is in great shape, thanks to us. But when he’s trying to overturn term limits, this state is a wreck. Thanks to term limits.
Nick Tomboulides: Yes. He’s singing a totally different tune, now saying the sky is going to fall over Michigan if a bunch of dopey politicians don’t get some extra time to sit behind a desk and fart. I’m sorry. This is infuriating to me. These guys are so full of crap that we should install flushers on the sides of their faces. This is exactly why we do what we do. This is why U.S. Term Limits exist because politicians, actually, people in general, people, when you give them this tiny little bit of power, they become sociopaths.
Philip Blumel: That’s it. Shirkey’s double speak regarding the two faces of Michigan is going to be a template for what they are going to have to do to try to get this to pass because remember it has to go through the voters. We know the voters are for it. We know it’s been successful in the state, but because it’s popular, they can’t just put it on the ballot and say, “Okay, we’re going to overturn term limits or we’re going to weaken term limits.” It wouldn’t pass, so they’re looking around the country for things that have worked or things that have almost worked and they’re going to try to apply these tactics in Michigan.
Philip Blumel: One of them certainly is they’re going to try to take the poison pill of term limits and hide it with a bunch of other proposals that the public loves and then they’re going to put a fancy name on it that makes it sound like the opposite of what it is and they’re going to call it an ethics bill or they’re going to call it a good government bill when it’s really a self service bill. There’s no question about it. Now Shirkey is the kind of person that speaks in this manner. He is a deceptive person, and he’s going to be basically in charge of this effort.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah, but like I said, it’s literally a conspiracy. You’ve got big politics and big business in the same room deciding how to slice and dice up the term limits. Let me ask you. Who’s not in that room with them deciding what should happen?
Philip Blumel: The people.
Nick Tomboulides: The people of Michigan. The other 9,999,000 people who work hard and pay these guys’ salary. They were never consulted on any of this. We know this from polling. We know the people of Michigan are against longer term limits. The people like term limits just the way they are. What you said is exactly right. They can’t change term limits without voter approval, but they’ve got the slick, sleazy, slimy way around it. Hide the longer term limits inside a fake ethics measure. Voters go in the ballot box, they see ethics reform, they vote yes, and the next day, poof, term limits are gone and nobody knows what happened.
Philip Blumel: That’s right.
Nick Tomboulides: It’s a weapon of mass corruption, man. It’s a conspiracy run a muck.
Philip Blumel: Well, we’re going to do some education in that state. Make sure the voters know that this is about upending and nixing the term limits, not about good government. If the people know that when they go into the ballot box, it’ll be shot down.
Trey Orndorff: Welcome to The Politics Guys, a place for bipartisan rational and civil debate on America politics and policy. I’m Trey Orndorff, a political scientist at Oklahoma Christian University. In today’s interview show, I’m joined by Nick Tomboulides of U.S. Term Limits.
Trey Orndorff: The argument here is that Congress is unpopular, but what about to the individual saying, “But I like reelecting my individual. Isn’t that my democratic right? I’ve seen this person in office. It’s my chance to reelect them again and again.”
Nick Tomboulides: Well, it’s an interesting question and I think part of that is people who really like their Congressman or woman and want to reelect them. Another part of it is just the epidemic of uncompetitive elections that we have in this country. Over 90% of elections for the U.S. House every two years are either uncontested or under contested, meaning that the incumbent has no challenger at all. My former Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, she hasn’t had a challenger in a democratic primary in over 10 years. That’s a democratic district. Never going to go Republican. The Democrats in that district have no functional choice. Even if they wanted to vote her out, they couldn’t. Then the other percentage are under contested, meaning someone is running but it’s not a serious candidate. It’s a gadfly who’s just put their name on the ballot for fun, maybe raised $5,000 and they’re up against a multimillion dollar political machine. So they have no chance. Part of the reason why people continue to retain their own Congressman is that they don’t have a choice to not do that.
Trey Orndorff: To hear the full interview, go to politicsguys.com and pull up the archive page for October 2019.
Nick Tomboulides: One thing we sometimes overlook about term limits because some of us tend to fall into partisan thinking at times, at least in this modern political environment of America. But that term limits is chiefly an election reform. Term limits is mainly about curtailing the power of incumbency, stimulating competition, and bringing these new faces and new voices, new perspectives into campaigns, giving voters real meaningful choices so incumbents can’t just run rough shot over the political process. In Michigan, what you’ve seen is that is happening.
Nick Tomboulides: You look at the states without term limits. They’re not so lucky. Illinois. It is not unusual for over half of the legislative elections to be canceled every two years because the incumbent is running unopposed. The Speaker there has been in office for nearly 50 years. He’s been Speaker I think for 35 of those years. Maybe that’s why this Michigan Speaker who is only 31 years old is so adamant about abolishing term limits. Maybe he wants to be the Michigan version of a Michael Madigan, the speaker in Illinois.
Nick Tomboulides: By the way, I’m just going to make an executive decision right now.
Philip Blumel: Okay.
Nick Tomboulides: I hereby rescind, this is through executive order, I rescind all scammy awards from their prior recipients and I reallocate them to the Michigan legislature.
Philip Blumel: Whoa. Well there’s going to be some folks in the Michigan legislature that are going to be fighting this tooth and nail, so we’re going to have to narrow this down a little bit.
Nick Tomboulides: By the way as an organization, I’ll just tell you, we’re going to bring political pain to Michigan for anyone who supports this power grab, Republican, Democrat, whatever. We’re talking nuclear code red stuff. Mail, digital ads, radio ads, Trojan horses, whatever it takes to reveal this corruption to the public and stop it.
Philip Blumel: It is corruption. This is low, low, low politics.
Nick Tomboulides: Amen.
Philip Blumel: Speaking of corruption as we often do on this podcast, we have a new story from Maryland, former delegate Tawanna Gaines from Prince George’s County pleaded guilty last week of wire fraud, adding herself to our already very long list of Maryland lawmakers who had been convicted, charged or reprimanded for corruption and other ethical issues in recent years. There is a political scientist out of Illinois who recently commented ironically that Maryland is one of the most corrupt states in the United States. As someone from Illinois, that’s really saying something.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah. This delegate Tawanna Gaines is going places. Where is she going? Prison.
Philip Blumel: You know it.
Nick Tomboulides: For? What is it? Drum roll. Wire fraud.
Philip Blumel: Right.
Nick Tomboulides: That’s right.
Philip Blumel: Wire fraud.
Nick Tomboulides: Wire fraud is like the official crime of politicians. You know how Coors is the official beer of Major League Baseball? Wire fraud needs a sponsorship. The government, brought to you by wire fraud. I didn’t even know people use wires anymore. What is this, like the Orient Express? But anyway, Tawanna Gaines, she was in office 18 years. She’s called delegate. She’s the equivalent of a state rep in Maryland. Spending campaign money on personal expenses. Included fast food, hair styling, dental work, a cover for her swimming pool, and an Amazon Prime membership, which means her orange jumpsuit will get free two day shipping.
Nick. Tomboulides: There were some great quotes from this professor saying Maryland is very corrupt. It’s quite alarming. You don’t often hear that about term limits states. You do in rare instances, but very few people believe Florida or Michigan are corrupt. It’s usually places like New Jersey, Illinois, New York, Maryland that come to mind right off the bat. States that have the same crooked dudes who just stick around for life. It says she’s the third delegate from Prince George’s County to be charged or convicted since 2018. It’s interesting. There have been three delegates from Prince George’s County who’ve been charged or convicted, but there haven’t been any county commissioners from Prince George’s who have been hauled away. Prince George’s County commission has term limits.
Philip Blumel: Yep. Not that the Prince George’s County commissioners actually like that. They’ve been fighting it tooth and nail ever since the voters passed it in 1992. But you’re right, they’re limited in their tenure and that sort of limits their nefarious activities. I mean, I don’t know this delegate Gaines personally, and I don’t know much about her personally, but my guess is just from my general knowledge of this issue is that she probably wasn’t corrupt when she started, but sometime over the 18 years that she’s been in office, she became full of herself, arrogant, saw opportunities, saw other people doing it, felt like this is just the way it’s done. Rationalize it to herself and over that time, became corrupt and now she’s probably going to go to prison for it.
Philip Blumel: Representative Francis Rooney of Florida is the house sponsor of the U.S. Term Limits amendment bill. First elected to Congress in 2016 and now in a second term, Representative Rooney has already announcing his retirement. He explains why on Fox News last week.
Leland: Why do you think they are so hesitant to speak out in the way that you have if they believe the same thing?
Francis Rooney: You know, that gets into the big picture of this whole entire job and how it’s so stacked against taking risks and it’s so dependent on the quest for reelection and raising money and not wanting to offend anybody. It’s not, I don’t think, what the founders had in mind.
Leland: That’s one of the big reasons you came to Congress from Naples, Florida. You were ambassador to the Holy See and you said, “Hey, I really want to serve.” That’s sort of what the founders envisioned. You’ve been here since 2017. You came in as a freshman in January. Do you need a third term? Do you want one?
Francis Rooney: I don’t really think I do and I don’t really think I want one. I came here to get the money for the Everglades projects that had been languishing for many years and to try to get this off shore drilling ban pass to protect Florida, that Jeb, President Bush and Mel Martinez and Bill Nelson got done in 2006. I thought it might take three terms. I said three terms, but I think I’ve done it in less than two. We’ve gotten over 10 times as much money per year for the Everglades as they ever got. We’ve got all the major projects underway.
Leland: Just to button this up, if we put up a list of the Republicans who’ve said they are not going to run again in 2020, do we add your picture there?
Francis Rooney: Yes you do. Yeah. I’ve done what I came to do, and I want to be a model for term limits. I’m the guy that came up with a term limits bill that doesn’t require a constitutional amendment. People need to realize this is, as you said Leland, public service, not public life.
Leland: Where is that model missing in Congress? You’re announcing your retirement after two years. Nobody does that. Most of the people on the graphic that we just put up are from districts that are incredibly tight, swing districts. You put up Will Hurd and others who won by a point, half a point in the past. Your district is Republican plus 22. You could be there for as long as you want.
Francis Rooney: Sure. Which is a problem that way too. I thought the idea was that you came and did your public service and left. You accomplished what you wanted to accomplish and you left and that’s what I want to be an example to do. I’m also really tired of the intense partisanship that seems to stop us from solving the big questions that America needs solved.
Leland: Do you feel like this announcement frees you up a little bit?
Francis Rooney: No, I’ll just do the same thing I was going to do anyway.
Leland: And you don’t know what you’re going to do?
Francis Rooney: It’s just like we raise our kids and tell our employees. You have to do the right thing at all times.
Nick Tomboulides: Should leaders of medical schools have term limits? A new paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine argues that they should and that without a policy shift for term limits, there would be a lack of diversity and a lack of new perspectives and ideas in medical schools. That is a new paper published by Dr. Reshma Jagsi. It’s a perspective piece. Term limits and medical school leadership. How do you feel about that, Phil?
Philip Blumel: Well, it’s interesting and it sort of underscores some of the points we make on this podcast over and over again. If you have any entrenched person in position of authority, it creates a situation where people that are moving through the system don’t have any opportunity. It also means that new ideas and faces can’t enter the process, so it takes a really long time for changes that are occurring to show up in that institution. We see this most prominently and most importantly at democratic institutions. But even in private institutions, people see the value of having that turnover and having new ideas welcomed in, and this is another example of that.
Nick Tomboulides: I was never able to get into medical school. I did get into law school, the shady and far less prestigious cousin of medical school, but I would love to think a lack of term limits is the reason the medical community didn’t want me. It’s an interesting story because elected officials are always actually pointing to the medical field and saying, “You wouldn’t want to term limit doctors, would you? Well, at least on the educational side of medicine, doctors are telling us term limits is a good idea. They’re saying it’s going to shake things up, improve diversity. We’re reaching a point where a majority of doctors are women for the first time, but these are highly qualified females, highly qualified who are not getting opportunities they deserve in medical school leadership because the leaders are highly paid tenured men who just never want to leave.
Nick Tomboulides: By the way we here at U.S. Term Limits, we believe in diversity for just the sake of diversity, but we do believe in that these institutions should reflect the society that they serve. If you’ve got a majority of doctors who are now women, meaning that women are coming through the process, they’re serving capably in these roles and you’ve got leadership positions controlled primarily by men, that means the leadership positions don’t reflect the current state of medicine. There’s some good quotes in here. This researcher said, “In academic medicine, clinical departments in particular have access to very large budgets and department chairs tend to wield substantial power to allocate these funds.” Even a very altruistic person will tend to want to have continued access to those resources. Doesn’t that sound like the committee system in Congress?
Philip Blumel: It does. That’s the kind of positions in the private world where term limits are appropriate. There’s an enormous number of positions where term limits are not appropriate in the private world. Certainly when you’re talking to a doctor doing his job as a doctor, but for a lot of these administrative things, bureaucratic things and certainly anything involving representation, you’re going to see some of the same phenomena that you see in democratic institutions and term limits may be a positive reform. This paper doesn’t come out of the blue. I mean just earlier this year, the National Institutes of Health announced that nearly 300 laboratory and branch chiefs will now be limited to 12 year terms for similar reasons. You get in this spot, you have power and prestige, you don’t want to leave. It prevents things from moving forward and progressing as fast as they normally would.
Philip Blumel: That’s why we are seeing it in this field. That’s why we’ve seen it in the nonprofit field, particularly with boards of directors where it’s been very effective and now has become the norm. Again, there’s all kinds of places in the private sector where term limits are appropriate.
Nick Tomboulides: Right, and CEOs also, by the way, tend to have an average tenure depending on which numbers you look at. Between six and eight years. So boards of directors making the decision on a CEO tend to acknowledge that a renewal of perspectives is helpful for corporate institutions. But I just think it’s fascinating the parallels here, that medical schools have their own little power cluster where the funds are dispersed by these long tenured chairs. It’s so similar to Congress and I totally agree with what this researcher says. You get diminishing returns when you only have one person’s vision as opposed to bringing in other points of view. It’s like new perspectives, more diversity, healthy for any institution. Let’s see it happen. Let’s get behind this and hopefully it can be a trend.
Philip Blumel: Yep. Onward and upward. Thanks for joining us for another episode of No Uncertain Terms. If you live in Michigan, please prepare to defend your state’s voter approved term limits law. If the voters recognize the anti term limits proposal is just that, it will fail. We don’t need to convince our neighbors that term limits are a good idea, but only to inform them that the upcoming proposal is a trick to weaken or abolish them. If you haven’t already, please like the Michigan Term Limits page on Facebook so you will stay fully informed with all the latest news on this anti voter conspiracy. We should have a Michigan action page up by next week as well. U.S. Term Limits will be committing financial resources to this educational campaign in Michigan, and you can help us at termlimits.com/donate. Thank you. We’ll be back next week.
Speaker 1: The revolution isn’t being televised. Fortunately, you have No Uncertain Terms podcast.
Speaker 2: USTL.
Nick Tomboulides: My voice sucks.
Philip Blumel: Okay.
Nick Tomboulides: By the way, we need to play Japanese Phil after the scream.
Philip Blumel: Oh, yes.
Nick Tomboulides: That clip I posted. That needs to be just a random thing. Get people wondering, wow, Phil speaks Japanese?
Philip Blumel: Okay, that’s good. I think we’ll have to do that for sure.
Nick Tomboulides: [crosstalk 00:22:19].
Philip Blumel: It does sound like me. It does.
Nick Tomboulides: It does.
Philip Blumel: Actually I should put my voice in it and just stick the word term limits in it.
Nick Tomboulides: Yes, you should.
Philip Blumel: I’m going to alter it like that. Actually that would be great.
Nick Tomboulides: Yes, yes, yes.
Philip Blumel: He’ll try to snip it in.
Nick Tomboulides: Every four words is term limits.
Philip Blumel: Phil appeared on a Japanese radio program last week.
Nick Tomboulides: Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 8: [Japanese 00:22:42].
Philip Blumel: Term limits. Term limits. Term limits.
Nick Tomboulides: Term limits.