Philip Blumel: Victory at the grassroots, the illustrative story of Wilsonville, Oregon. Hi, I’m Philip Blumel. Welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast of the Term Limits movement. This is episode number 239, published on June 3rd, 2024.
Stacey Selleck: Your sanctuary from Partisan Politics.
Philip Blumel: On this podcast, we spend most of your time talking about the big prize at the national level term limiting the US Congress, and of course, the progress we’re making there is astounding. 2024 has been the best year since we launched the Term Limits Convention Project some seven years or so ago with three states, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Florida for a second time, approving the Term Limits convention, and we may not be done yet. We have won in the North Carolina house and waiting for the state Senate there to finish their budget negotiation and move on to the Term Limits resolution. If the North Carolina Senate approves the Term Limits movement will win our fourth state in 2024 and the ninth overall. Wow. But we shouldn’t forget on the local level, there are also many Term limits dramas, and importantly on most of these, the pro-Term limits forces win.
Philip Blumel: I have to confess, this was a major appeal of the Term Limits movement to me and why I got so deeply involved originally. I mean, Term Limits, as we know are a great idea, but the world’s full of great ideas. What hooked me on this is that pretty much whenever I got involved in a local Term limits effort, we won almost every time. My time and energy were not just, a small part of some theoretical long term moving of a needle, some increment in a process that would continue long after I left the earth. I mean, so many issues are like this, right? No. Instead, I could see my efforts and those of my local comrades lead to success today, and this experience is one reason why I’m so confident about the success of the Term Limits convention project at the national level. The fact is term limits win.
Philip Blumel: Let me share a recent example from Wilsonville, Oregon. Wilsonville is a small but rapidly growing town of less than 30,000 people in North Oregon. Like so many other municipalities across America, the citizens in Wilsonville were tired of entrenched politicians, particularly mayors in this case, running their city and opted for rotation office and more competitive elections via Term limits. Well, good idea. Citizens collected the requisite number of signatures and put the measure on the May, 2020 ballot. These Term limits weren’t particularly strict, a limit of 12 years over a 20-year period, but they were also retroactive. That is time served by a politician counts under the term limit, so it prohibited the current long-term mayor and one current veteran council member for running for reelection immediately. Hmm. Well, the voters approved the measure by nearly 65% of the vote, and everyone lived happily ever after, the end.
Philip Blumel: Well, of course that is not the end of the story, but things did start happily for the new law, at least for the voters. Term limits squashed a shady political tradition in the city called the appointment privilege. It was typical for a council member once they had decided to retire or run for another office to resign early and then appoint a friendly successor to fill out their term. Why? Well, due to the power of incumbency, such an appointee would have a lock on the seat going into the next election, and indeed, in the history of the city, only one such appointee ever lost the subsequent election. This Machiavellian maneuver is what one would expect from an entitled political class, the time that Term Limits inhibit, particularly at the local level. So the local political establishment attacked the measure and having played fair and lost in 2020, they decided now to take the low road. First, a series of friends of the council started showing up at council meetings and cataloging the defects and the unintended consequences of this well-meaning, but poorly designed law.
Philip Blumel: They were calling for minor alterations to improve it. Please pardon my sarcasm. These altruistic concerned citizens persuaded the council to put two such revisions on the ballot for May, 2024. One, would give a two term city councilor the right to run for two terms as mayor. Hmm. These are four-year terms. So here they were asking to further weaken a 12-year limit to a 16-year limit. If you do the math, the second revision would not count appointment time on the council against a councilor’s term limits effectively reviving the appointment privilege. Now note, zero signatures from citizens were collected to put these ideas on the ballot. Now, term limits required the work of citizens to put it on the ballot, but in this case, the council simply placed these new referenda on the ballot to satisfy their politically connected friends who were in fact not altruistic and not aiming to improve anything beyond their own political power.
Philip Blumel: This is an old trick. We have discussed this on this podcast so many times, often municipalities will launch a charter review commission of handpicked citizens to justify changes to or even abolition of voter approved term limits. Well, the Wilsonville Council didn’t have time for that, but they did do their homework. They also resorted to other traditional tricks politicians used to beat popular term limits. The hands down favorite is the misleading ballot title. Since voters have already demonstrated they favor term limits by over overwhelmingly approving them, the politicians have to create ballot titles that make it sound like their anti-Term limits measures are In fact, pro-term limits measures. They just wanna make this great term limits measure even better. Yeah, that’s the ticket. But unfortunately for them, two Wilsonville residents pro-Term Limits, attorney Eric Winters and Eric Postma challenged the ballot titles and won. This was a major blow to the politicians’ chances, but they still had an ace in the hole, Money.
Philip Blumel: Important allies of the council had a favorite referendum of their own, an expensive urban renewal project that was to appear on the same ballot with the anti-Term limits measures. You support our measure and we’ll support yours. Do we have a deal? Apparently so the local political class was all in on these three measures. Recognizing the situation. Pro-Term Limits citizens decided to take on all three referenda also as a group. This was small town cronyism at its worst, and their fellow citizens were going to hear about it. The aforementioned attorney, Eric Winters, is a friend of US Term Limits and piqued our interest in the case. We teamed up with existing organizations in Clackamas County, including the right-leaning Clackamas Strong and the left-Leaning Oregon Progressives for accountability both objected to the cronyism and joined the coalition to save the Term Limits Law and sink the costly urban renewal project leading up to the election, both effectively reached out to voters.
Philip Blumel: Hey, education works. On May 21st election day, all three measures went down to defeat. Winters told me he believes the outreach from these organizations, mostly a series of text messages, made the difference. “Wilsonville had a good month” he said, indeed they did. There are many lessons in this story, which is not just about a small town in Oregon. This scenario occurs all over the country again and again and again. Here are the key lessons I take from the Wilsonville case. One, you can pass term limits in your community. Are you seeing long tenure by politicians backed by local special interests who face minimal if any, electoral competition? If you have the initiative process, you can put a term limits measure on the ballot. That’s the hard part. The voters will do the rest. Two, politicians will often try to wiggle out from the voters will even after the ballot measure passes. They will create a charter review commission or otherwise parade handpicked experts out to the public to expose the alleged problems the new law has caused.
Philip Blumel: They’ll float their own anti-Term Limits referenda with the misleading ballot titles. They’ll team up with local money and special interest to battle the pro-term limits citizenry, but, and this is the most important lesson, the anti-Term limits forces will lose if the public is educated about the nature of the so-called improvements offered to the Term Limits law in time. Is this happening in your hood? Reach out to US Term Limits. We’ve been there. You know where to find us termlimits.com. Next, Holly Robichaud provides some additional updates on the US Term Limits pledge project, recent elections and other issues via her breaking news on Term Limits Show on YouTube. Take it away. Holly.
Holly Robichaud: Congressional Term Limits is becoming a major issue in some of the key Senate races across our nation. In Ohio our state chairman Bernie Marino, is running against incumbent Sherrod Brown. Bernie is making term limits a key issue in that race against Brown who supported term limits before he didn’t. In Pennsylvania Senate race, challenger David McCormick has also made congressional term limits a major issue in his race against incumbent Bob Casey. McCormick pledged to serve only two six-year terms if elected and will vote to support congressional term limits. Hi, I’m Holly Robichaud and this is Breaking News on Term Limits.
Holly Robichaud: We’ve been working closely with Unite New York holding webinars, lobbying days with our state chair Liz Geraghty to raise awareness for a bill that enacts term limits on the New York governor and other statewide officials. But we’re running out of time to pass the bill for more information on what’s happening in New York. Hey, sign up for their mailing list @unitenewyork.org/join. New York is one of 13 states that doesn’t have term limits on its governor. But with your support, we can make it join the other 37 states that do. This is an important reminder for our viewers in North Dakota. Age limits will be on the primary ballot on June 11th. Make sure to vote yes on the ballot measure one for age limits on Congress vote yes. State legislative candidates across the nation are getting the message that voters want Congressional term limits an additional 71 2024 candidates have signed our pledge in the past two weeks.
Holly Robichaud: This continued exponential growth is due to our outstanding pledge team and the support for our issue. Our team has been working diligently to gather and get every state legislative candidate on board for supporting congressional term limits. In congressional primaries held on May 21st, 15 Congressional Term Limits pledge signers won their primaries outright or advanced to the runoff in Georgia, Kentucky, and Oregon. Over the past two weeks, we saw an additional 12 Congressional candidates sign our US term limits pledge. Currently, we have over 130 members of Congress who have signed the US term limits pledge. This means after the November elections, we know we’ll have even more term limits supporters than we ever have before in Congress.
Philip Blumel: Thanks Holly. By the way, the state legislative pledges, she refers to are a commitment by legislators, state legislators to co-sponsor vote for and defend the Term Limits convention resolution to enact congressional term limits. When we get enough of these pledges signed in a state, we are in excellent position to get the resolution passed. This is where all these victories in these states are coming from. Remember, 34 states approving the resolution will trigger an Article five convention on the subject of congressional Term Limits. Unless Congress preempts the convention with their own Term Limits amendment, history suggests that would be the case.
Philip Blumel: Next, we mentioned that Tennessee approved the Term convention in April. Later that month, governor Bill Lee signed the bill. Such a signature isn’t required under Article five convention resolution. The governor simply wanted to sign it. This is called Momentum. The Governor wanted to be associated with the Term limits Convention bill. Nothing wrong with that. Lastly, it is worth noting that the Libertarian Party, the third largest party in the United States, held its national convention in Washington DC at the end of May and nominated Chase Oliver as its presidential candidate. According to a Ballotpedia survey, Oliver says yes to term limits. His quote, one problem with our overreaching government is the power of entrenched special interests. Thanks, chase. We couldn’t have said it any better. We hope to hear you talk about term limits on the stump.
Stacey Selleck: Liked the show you can help by subscribing and leaving a five-star review on both Apple and Spotify. It’s free.
Philip Blumel: Thanks for joining us for another episode of No Uncertain Terms. The Term Limits Convention bills are moving through the state legislatures. This could be a breakthrough year for the Term Limits movement. To check on the status of the Term Limits convention resolution in your state, go to turn limits.com/takeaction. There, you’ll see if it has been introduced and where it stands in the committee process on its way to the floor vote. If there’s action to take, you’ll see a take action button by your state. Click it. This will give you the opportunity to send a message to the most relevant legislators, urging them to support the legislation. They have to know you are watching. That’s termlimits.com/take action. If your state has already passed the Term Limits convention resolution or the bill’s not been introduced in your state, you can still help. Please consider making a contribution to US Term Limits. It’s our aim to hit the reset button on the US Congress and you can help. Go to termlimits.com/donate, termlimits.com/donate. Thanks. We’ll be back next week.
Stacey Selleck: Find us on most social media at US Term limits like us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and now LinkedIn.
Philip Blumel: USTL.