Philip Blumel:
Primaries and protests. Hi, I’m Philip Blumel. Welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast of the term limits movement for the week of June 8th, 2020.
Stacey Selleck:
Your sanctuary from partisan politics.
Philip Blumel:
Anywhere where representation of citizens views is important, term limits will be an issue. Let’s talk to Nick Tomboulides, executive director of US term limits about the events of the week. Hey Nick.
Nick Tomboulides:
Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna.
Philip Blumel:
So last week we had a primaries in eight states, I think, and US term limits likes to play in these states. So what kind of news do we get out of that?
Nick Tomboulides:
Good news. It was a good night for term limits. There were 210 signers of the US term limits state pledge running for state legislative offices. And a majority of them advanced, 114 of them advanced to the next stage, which will be the general election. And in addition to the 114 state candidates who advanced, 11 congressional candidates who signed the term limits pledge advanced. Good mix of Republicans and Democrats signed the pledge.
Philip Blumel:
Excellent, good. Any highlights?
Nick Tomboulides:
Definitely a huge highlight. Steve King, who is a, I want to say nine term congressman from Iowa.
Philip Blumel:
Right.
Nick Tomboulides:
Was defeated. The incumbent was beaten by Randy Feenstra, who is a US term limits pledge signer. While Steve King is a Republican and the Republican platform calls for a constitutional amendment for congressional term limits, Steve King has always opposed congressional term limits. He’s a colorful, controversial guy, and finally met the end of his political career last week.
Philip Blumel:
Yep. He’s been in office since 2003, a federal congressman. But before that, he served in these … State legislature, career political guy, opponent of term limits and went down. And I think it’s such ironic justice that a term limits pledge signer brought him down. So that was good news. I think that’s one of the highlights of the evening.
Nick Tomboulides:
It was cool. And that’s been steadily building in his district too. This isn’t the first close primary he’s faced against guys who are talking term limits and they’ve just been building more and more steam, every election cycle. And this time they finally bested him.
Philip Blumel:
Right.
Nick Tomboulides:
A lot of people think Steve King lost because he makes a lot of controversial comments. I don’t really buy that. Joe Biden makes controversial comments, Donald Trump makes controversial comments, Alexandria Cortez. saying stupid things is not enough to get one removed from politics. If it were, Congress would no longer exist. So I think the careerism played a factor. I think people in Iowa were looking at Steve King and they were thinking he’s had power for nearly 20 years, he’s not a particularly influential congressmen. He doesn’t even have committee assignments ironically, and he’s opposed to term limits. So why in God’s name would you keep someone like that around? They answered the call. Maybe 12 years too late if you ask me, but better, late than never.
Philip Blumel:
Right. Well, that suggests something, even in addition to that. I know that his races were getting closer and closer as constituents were getting upset with him, but he didn’t have meaningful opposition. He was a longterm incumbent and he kept coasting back even though it got more and more narrow until the establishment turned on him, until all the special interest actually turned on, everybody turned on him. His own party turned on him because they stopped giving him money. They gave money to the challenger, which is highly unusual. And that’s the main reason why he didn’t have any more seats is because his own party had turned against him. So even though people found him to be frustrating and ignorant and making these statements and whatnot, it really took the special interests and establishment turning on him to allow that to be expressed at the ballot box. Where he got meaningful competition that had some money behind him, he had an election and he lost. And I wish that would happen every time.
Nick Tomboulides:
And also be careful because the opponents of term limits may try to seize upon this to say that, oh, well look and incumbent can get beat. So we don’t need term limits anymore because you can beat incumbents. No, no, no, no. You can’t use an exception to prove a rule, although that doesn’t stop them from trying. They kind of try to use this as like a vulnerability of term limits, like an Achilles heel sometimes because it’s all they’ve got. But the reality is that even though certain incumbents lose from time to time, it is very rare. It is an aberration when something like this happens. Incumbents still get reelected between 90 and 100% of the time every two years. And so to make real meaningful change, you can’t just defeat one incumbent, you have to term limit all the longterm incumbents across the entire Congress. Otherwise you’re not going to see much progress in the right direction.
Philip Blumel:
That’s exactly right.
Nick Tomboulides:
And I’ll also say too, I thought it was great that it was a bipartisan night where a lot of Democrats and Republicans won. You watch Fox News or CNN and you realize our country’s kind of like in a big blood feud over everything politically, it kind of looks like the O.K. Corral out there. But instead of Wyatt Earp, it’s like your grandma with a Facebook account.
Philip Blumel:
Right.
Nick Tomboulides:
So EV everyone wants their side to win. It’s just politics. But here’s the thing to remember. When term limits win, we all win. And that’s exactly what happened last week.
Philip Blumel:
That’s right.
Nick Tomboulides:
Last week, the Jacksonville Charter Review Commission released its final report and thankfully the commission did not adopt the recommendation of one of its committees to weaken term limits from 8 years in a single seat to 12. Politicians, lobbyists, special interests, bureaucrats, insiders and journalists in the city have long wanted to weaken Jacksonville’s term limits. But this commission did not give them that opportunity. And they deserve our praise for doing that. I think it’s useful to look back at what happened the last time this issue was discussed and it really illustrates why term limits are so important. Three years ago, I visited Jacksonville City Hall because I heard local politicians had hatched a scheme to repeal their own 8 year term limits. They wanted 12 years because apparently they put themselves on a higher cloud than the President, who only gets eight as we know. It didn’t shock me that a bunch of politicians wanted to undermine the people of Jacksonville, not in the slightest because sadly elected officials thumb their noses at voters all the time.
Nick Tomboulides:
What did surprise me though, from that night’s debate was how two council members in particular were very outspoken about wanting to demolish term limits. Those council members were Reggie and Katrina Brown. Both of them went on rants defending the notion of career politicians. Thankfully two other council members, Tommy Hazouri and then councilman, John Crescimbeni stood up for the people of Jacksonville and they defeated the effort to repeal eight year term limits. But a few months later we would learn the real reason why Reggie and Katrina Brown fought so hard to increase their soon to be expired time on the city council. They were both engaged in corruption and needed their power as council members to hide it. In May, 2018, Reggie and Katrina Brown were indicted by federal prosecutors for fraud and money laundering. As a city council member, Reggie Brown approved taxpayer funding of Katrina Brown’s business, which would eventually be used to line his own pockets.
Nick Tomboulides:
Rather than admit her company was in trouble, Katrina Brown built false companies created by Reggie Brown. Companies, which according to prosecutors, performed no legitimate work or services. Together, they attempted to swindle Jacksonville out of $640,000 and the federal government out of 2.63 million. That October Katrina Brown was convicted on all charges while Reggie Brown was convicted on most. Both will soon get the 12 year terms they wanted, but in prison rather than city hall. These politician turned felons are a cautionary tale of how easily power can be abused and how Jacksonville would be taking a huge risk by ever changing term limits. By the way, Jacksonville and Florida are hardly unique in this regard. Since the year 2000, we’ve seen over 400 local state and federal politicians across America get convicted of corruption. And those were just the ones dumb enough to get caught. When politicians are given too much control for too long, they face temptations to misuse it. 12 term congresswoman Corrine Brown was another example, heading to prison in 2018 for embezzlement.
Nick Tomboulides:
This is why strong term limits like the eight year term limits Jacksonville has today are so vital. They encourage officials to serve for the right reasons as opposed to building empires of fraud. When abuses of power are discovered, eight year term limits ensure that taxpayers in the city cannot be defrauded for decades. We’re very fortunate in Florida in that we don’t need to imagine what government would look like without real term limits. We already see it on display in places like New York, Chicago and Washington, DC where career politicians are weapons of mass corruption. And by the way, those supposed that experts in politics, haven’t solved a single damn problem in 40 years. If any officials claim, they need more time to learn their jobs than the leader of the free world, then they have no business holding those jobs in the first place.
Nick Tomboulides:
The Charter Review Commission has done Jacksonville and the state of Florida a great service by recommending that the city keep eight year term limits. Longer term limits would have crippled citizen involvement, made politicians more powerful and locked in corruption for the long haul. Every citizen who values ethics and government should thank the commission for taking this stance.
Philip Blumel:
Well, in the other big story of last week, bigger story of the last week is the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of police and the controversy surrounding that. And greater than that, the protests, and then also some rioting and disturbances that sprung from that. And people are looking for solutions, they’re looking for a way to stop things like this from occurring to have justice available to people when crises like this occur.
Philip Blumel:
And I found it notable that it was reported in Dayton, Ohio, a president of the Dayton Unit NAACP, whose father was a police officer. His name is Derrick Forward. He was interviewed and was giving possible solutions to improve the system, to get to the justice system. One of his things he suggested was that elected prosecutors should be term limited. Immediately struck me as a good idea. And it’s pretty clear why you would want to do such a thing.
Nick Tomboulides:
It makes sense to me. If you’re going to term limit the people who make the laws, why not also limit the ones who enforce it because yeah, district attorneys are not super humans. They can become entrenched, they’re susceptible to corruption and putting politics ahead of people just like anyone else. And I’m reminded we have a concept similar to this, the concept of the special prosecutor or the special counsel. You see this all the time. That exists specifically because a prosecutor over time in office will develop immense conflicts of interest, particularly with police. So I think term limits, it kind of fits in with that in finding a way to make prosecution more objective and to avoid situations where a prosecutor is not capable of prosecuting police misconduct.
Philip Blumel:
Right. This is not something that we’ve looked at very closely as term limits but it’s very interesting that where this idea is coming from, and of course it plays with several of our main themes that you’ve got to have the citizen representation in a rotating position so that you don’t get entrenched people that have longterm relationships with special interests and other constituencies.
Nick Tomboulides:
And I think when you’re talking about situations like George Floyd, the question becomes how can an attorney who has such long ties to the police also be capable and objective when it comes to prosecuting misconduct among the police in any sort of objective way? I mean, it’s a fascinating question. I think, instead of debating a lot of these issues, we should just term limit everyone, just get it all over with. Term limit everyone who has even a modicum of power in this country, and many of your problems will be solved.
Philip Blumel:
Good call.
Ken Quinn:
Hey, this is Ken Quinn, Regional Director with US Term Limits. Article Five is the amending provision of the US constitution, which provides only two methods of proposing amendments. We are trying to use both of these to finally propose a term limits amendment for Congress on behalf of the American people. Now I’m going to read to you the section of Article Five, that explains how amendments can be proposed, and then I will break this down for us. But before I do that, we need to understand the intent of the framers in regard to their reason for providing both methods. In Federalist 43, James Madison wrote, “The mode preferred by the convention seems to be stamped with every market propriety. It guards equally against that extreme facility, which would render the constitution too mutable. And that extreme difficulty, which might perpetuate is discovered false. It more over equally enables the general and the state governments to originate the amendments of errors as they may be pointed out by the experience on one side or on the other.”
Ken Quinn:
Since 1789, only Congress has proposed amendments and unfortunately this has created unfounded fears of the alternative method, which has resulted in the reluctance by the state legislatures to check the abusive power and overreach of the federal government. Now let’s read the text of Article Five with the understanding that the two methods are equal as Madison stated. We will then take a quick look back at history, use a little common sense and see how clear Article Five really is. “The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this constitution or on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states shall call convention for proposing amendments.”
Ken Quinn:
Question. Since the text of Article Five refers to amendments, plural, for both Congress and the state legislatures, does that mean more than one amendment must be proposed? Answer. No, of course not. Congress has proposed 33 amendments with 27 of those being ratified by the necessary three fourths of the States. Only the first 12 amendments were proposed at the same time in 1789 and 10 of those were ratified in 1791 known as the Bill of Rights. The remaining 21 amendments were all proposed individually. Since proposing amendments are equal, that means the state legislatures can apply for a convention to propose multiple amendments or a single amendment. And this is determined in the scope of their application submitted by two thirds of the legislatures. In upcoming segments, we will be examining the irrefutable evidence that the framers intended in Article Five convention to be a limited convention, meaning that the only amendment or amendments that could be proposed in a convention are the one specifically stated in the application submitted by two thirds of the state legislatures. Stay tuned. This is going to be fun. (singing)
Philip Blumel:
Lastly, let’s follow up on the story from last week, our top story. And it’s really the top story for US term limits over the next month, and that is Louisiana. We lost a crushing vote last week. We came so close in Louisiana after winning the house, after winning the relevant Senate committees. And then in the final vote, which would have given us the fourth state, officially calling for an amendment writing convention limited to the subject of congressional tournaments, we lost the Senate vote unexpectedly. But there’s hope. We have a special session over the next 30 days and I guess our bill just got reintroduced last week in the House where it has to unfortunately pass again. But what are the prospects for that Nick?
Nick Tomboulides:
Well, I think it’s good. There’s basically new hope on the horizon now to get it done in the special session. Typically, you don’t have an opportunity like this. If your resolution fails at the end of the ordinary session, it’s over and you have to wait until the next year. That’s what happened to us in West Virginia. But in Louisiana, we’ve got two important things working on our side. Number one, we’ve got time, we’ve got a month to get this done. Number two, we’ve got an incredible commitment level within the Louisiana State House. You have to remember at Louisiana State House several weeks ago, overwhelming majorities of Republicans and Democrats passed the term limits convention to bring the states together, to write an amendment to term limit Congress. The Senate did not go as well, but it was a close vote. It was 16-18. And there were I think, six senators who missed the vote. They were absent for one reason or another, including one on our side who had health problems.
Nick Tomboulides:
That means you flip a couple of votes, you get a few senators to return, you need 20 votes for passage and you’re there. So I think it’s very doable, but we can’t take it for granted at all. And I think it really is the energy and the enthusiasm coming from the State House, which is propelling this forward. If they had written us off, we would be dead in the water, but there is a lot of momentum in the State House to bring it back.
Philip Blumel:
Excellent. So the members of the House and Senate need to hear from Louisiana voters, from citizens immediately, and everyone that’s listening to this that lives in Louisiana, please, please, please weigh in. You may have already done so during the first session, but we’re starting over. The bills are being introduced and there’s going to be new votes. So everyone needs to do it again.
Nick Tomboulides:
There’s a new bill number. It’s now House Concurrent Resolution Six. You can find it on the current actions page at termlimits.com. Just to give you a little estimate of the timeline, we’re thinking that the House may do committee hearings as soon as this week. So we could be talking Wednesday, we could be talking maybe House vote later in the week, and then the Senate is expected to take it up the week of the 15th. So now is definitely the time to contact these legislators and make your voices heard.
Philip Blumel:
Great. So we might have some good news in next week’s podcast. So stay tuned.
Philip Blumel:
Thanks for joining us for another episode of No Uncertain Terms. It is a tragedy for our nation that professional politicians who do not face significant electoral competition and are so distant, so divorced from the concerns and needs of working Americans, that they are at the helm during this current crisis. It’s enough to make you sick. America needs term limits on it’s Congress. You’ve signed already I know, but let’s get our friends and family to sign the online petition for congressional term limits. Go to termlimits.com/petition. Copy that webpage address and send it to everyone you know with a note, urging them to sign. We’ll be back next week. Thank you.
Speaker 2:
If you like what you’re hearing, please subscribe and leave a review. The No Uncertain Terms Podcast can be found on iTunes, Stitcher and now Google Play.
Speaker 5:
USTL.