Tennessee, North Carolina, and Louisiana are shaping up to be leading battleground states for term limits in 2024. Through our pledge program, our national field team works on relationship building to shepherd our resolution through nearly twenty state capitols each year. Along with our digital team, USTL helps coordinate grassroots supporters to contact their lawmakers to vote in favor of our resolutions. Another tactic that has proved quite successful, our “secret weapon” if you will, is our term limits education program. We are in the business of letting term limits supporters know if lawmakers and candidates for office are naughty or nice in regards to their stance on term limits for Congress. This year, we employed the use of direct mail postcard campaigns, social media, letters to the editor, commercials, ads, billboards, and postcard mailers, among other tactics.
We also have a successful state chair program where prominent term limits ambassadors in each state promote our efforts as spokespersons on local and national media. In Louisiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina, we sent postcard mailers letting constituents know which candidates champion term limits in their state. Our resolution has passed the state house in both Tennessee and North Carolina, so we need to pass the senate in each state in 2024 to add two more states to our growing list of states calling for a national term limits convention.
In the Louisiana state elections in November 2023, term limits candidates came out ahead due to our direct mail program. In 2024, 47% of the house and 33% of the senate will be term limits pledge signers. In Tennessee and North Carolina, we had teams canvas neighborhoods leaving door hangers thanking U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson state house members who voted in favor of passing our bill. This gave us a great opportunity to get out into the community and speak with local residents about our passion, placing term limits on Congress… and they overwhelmingly agree. In Rhode Island, Washington, Illinois, and Ohio, we leased billboards thanking term limits lawmakers in Congress. And, in California, Texas, and Wisconsin, we sponsored billboard messages to let supporters know when legislators broke their pledge and refused to cosponsor our bill.
What this proves is that when we educate the public, we see movement in the right direction. More lawmakers are motivated to cosponsor our resolutions. More candidates sign the term limits pledge promising to support our mission. And, we hold existing lawmakers accountable to pass our measures.