Philip Blumel: In a shot fired across the bow of the gerontocracy, North Dakota is the first state to pass a congressional age limit. Hi, Philip Blumel. Welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast with the term limits movement. This is episode number 240, published on June 17th, 2024.
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Philip Blumel: Some politician once promised his supporters that by following him, they would win so much that they’d get tired of winning. Well, with yet another tournament’s victory under our belt in 2024, I have to wonder when this fatigue is supposed to set in. This is fun. I’m referring to the June 11th election in North Dakota when 61% of voters there approved a measure to put an age limit on politicians running for the US Congress. Specifically, the new law prohibits an individual from being elected or appointed to serve in the US Senate or US House of Representatives, if the individual would become 81 years old by December 31st of the year preceding the end of their term. In doing this, North Dakota is the first state in the nation to pass age limits on their congressional delegation. As the New York Times noted, there’s been a lot of talk about gerontocracy in our aged presidential candidates, but this is the first time the issue of age has actually been placed before the voters as a pure play. And before the vote, I was reading and listening to pundits who profess to have no idea if this measure would pass.
Philip Blumel: I can’t imagine that. Politicians and political scientists and political journalists who live in this echo chamber are sometimes completely clueless about what voters and people want and think and feel. At US term limits, on the other hand, we had a contest, including our staffers and board members to see who could most closely guess the vote totals for the North Dakota age limit vote. All of us predicted a victory. The question was how much it would win by. Anyway, North Dakota, I have to say is on a roll. To a great extent due to the effort of Jared Hendricks and his retire Congress committee. Hendricks is a friend of US term limits who led the successful initiative campaign to impose eight-year term limits on the North Dakota legislature and governor. The voters approved that initiative at the ballot box in 2022. Jared recently announced his candidacy for a North Dakota State House seat representing Fargo District Number 10.
Philip Blumel: I guess he isn’t tired of winning either. Of course, he’s already signed the US term limits pledge to cosponsor, vote for and defend a resolution calling for an amendment proposing convention limited to the issue of Congressional term limits. Some pundits have noted that part of the impetus for the campaign to turn limit the North Dakota legislature sprung from the refusal of that body to pass the term limits convention resolution. Hendricks said, serving in Congress has become a lifelong occupation for many members. Sadly, Congress has gone from the world’s greatest deliberative body to one of the nation’s best assisted living facilities. [chuckle] But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Let’s go back to the new age limit that just passed. All the stories about the law seem to assume that the new law will be challenged in court. Surely, some 80-year-old politician in the future will sue to stay in office longer, or maybe an 80-year-old will run just to be denied ballot access in order to challenge the law.
Philip Blumel: We’ll see. The term limits movement would welcome such a challenge, believe it or not. You see, in 1995, the US Supreme Court ruled in US Term Limits versus Thornton that states cannot impose qualifications for prospective members of Congress in addition to those specified in the US Constitution. Now, this was the controversial 5-4 decision that invalidated the term limits referendum passed by voters in 23 states in the early ’90s that term limited their congressional delegations. Surely, US Term Limits versus Thornton would be the basis of a challenge to this age limit and therefore would provide an opportunity for the US Supreme Court to revisit the issue. And this is not the same court that existed in 1995. Justice Neil Gorsuch is new to the court, and he authored a law article back then that defended the constitutionality of the Congressional term limits Referenda. Oh, yes. Clarence Thomas is still on the court, and he wrote the brilliant dissent that deserves to be reconsidered by the new court.
Philip Blumel: Thomas argued that while the Constitution specifies a few minimum qualifications for Congress, there’s no suggestion that this list prohibits any other qualifications that the states might provide. He argued that the states have such a power under the Tenth Amendment. Also, we at US term limits would add that term limits are not a qualification, they are a ballot access requirement. Under term limits laws, Congress members can still run and hold the office past the number of years specified in their term limit if they run as a write-in. Running as a write-in may not seem realistic, and it’s true in most cases. However, it’s not necessarily true in the case of incumbents running for their own seat. In fact, there’s many cases where incumbents for one reason or another, have not made it to the ballot, and so they’ve decided to run as a write-in and won. Senator Strom Thurmond in 1954, Representative Daniel Inouye in 1959, Representative Joe Skeen in 1980, and Senator Lisa Murkowski in 2010.
Philip Blumel: You might remember that last one. In 2010, Lisa Murkowski lost the Republican primary to a Tea Party candidate, Joe Miller. Murkowski then ran as a write-in candidate in the general election and won. A review of US Term Limits versus Thornton is not just my wishful thinking. David Schultz is a professor of political science at Hamline University and a law professor at the University of Minnesota specializing in election and constitutional law. Schultz told the Associated Press that federal court is the likely path for any lawsuit emerging from this age limits case. A judge in court of appeals would probably feel bound by the 1995 term limits ruling, US Term Limits versus Thornton. So then it would be a question of whether the US Supreme Court wants to take it up, he said. A federal lawsuit like this could take years, but sometimes the court expedites election-related cases. An example recently is the case about Trump’s eligibility to run for president under the Constitution’s insurrection clause. This podcast will continue to follow this story. Stay tuned.
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Philip Blumel: The term limits movement lost a great ally on June 7th with the death of David Boaz. Boaz was a senior fellow and executive vice president of the Cato Institute in Washington, who has written and spoken about the need for Congressional term limits. Here are some excerpts of David making his case on Meet the Press in 2014.
David Boaz: The most common reelection rate for members of the House of Representatives over the past 30 years is 98%. It’s a 98% reelection rate. That’s like something you’d expect to see in Russia, not in a democracy. People say we’re gonna lose all the experience of the experienced legislators. Well, every eight years, we lose the experience of the president. That’s absolutely right. But we made a judgment that on the whole, the experience is not as good as the risks of having individual people gain too much power over the years. One of the advantages of term limits is that we would get a different kind of people running for office. Instead of people who wanna make Congress their career, we’d get people who had been successful in some aspect of private life and who feel that it’s a service to the community to come in and serve two years or four years or six years, maybe even 12 years in the US Senate, but not people who just want that to be their lifelong career. 80% of lobbyists tell interviewers, pollsters, that they don’t like the idea of term limits. So they would probably know what’s good for them better than pundits and political scientists do.
Philip Blumel: Next. This item is from the We Already Have Term Limits. They’re called Elections Department. Ballotpedia notes that in the May elections across the country, at all levels of government, 70% of races were uncontested. That’s right. Of nearly 6000 races covered by Ballotpedia, only 30% of them were challenged. There were no elections in 70% of races. And this doesn’t tell the whole story. Of those contested races, most were under-contested. That is, in most of them, an incumbent was running against a woefully underfunded challenger who lost in a nominal lopsided vote. Keep in mind that term limits result in more elections and importantly, more competitive elections. It empowers voters by limiting entrenched politicians. In light of this, consider we already have term limits, they’re called elections. Well, tell that to the voters of Georgia, where 74% of elections were cancelled in May.
Philip Blumel: Let’s go back to David Boaz again. He is hardly a household name, but it’s hard to overestimate his influence on the movement to limit government as a means to expanding human choice, freedom, and a better electoral process. Upon David’s death, US term limits executive director Nick Tomboulides reminded me of a classic commentary Boaz wrote in 2006 that is quite appropriate to the subject of this podcast. It’s called The Man Who Would Not Be King. Let’s finish this episode with these words from David Boaz. George Washington was the man who established the American Republic. He led the Revolutionary Army against the British Empire. He served as its first president, and most importantly, he stepped down from power. In an era of brilliant men, Washington was not the deepest thinker. He never wrote a book or even a long essay, unlike George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams. But Washington made the ideas of the American founding real.
Philip Blumel: He incarnated liberal and Republican ideas in his own person, and he gave them effect through the revolution, the Constitution, his successful presidency, and his departure from office. What’s so great about leaving office? Surely it matters more what a president does in office. But think about other great military commanders and revolutionary leaders before and after Washington. Caesar, Cromwell, Napoleon, Lenin. They all seized the power they had won and held it until death or military defeat. Most notably, Washington held what you call Republican values. That is, he believed in a republic of free citizens with a government based on consent and established to protect the rights of life, liberty, and property.
Philip Blumel: From his Republican values, Washington derived his abhorrence of kingship, even for himself. The writer Gary Wills called him “a virtuoso of resignations.” He gave up power not only once, but twice, at the end of the Revolutionary War when he resigned his military commission and returned to Mount Vernon, and again at the end of his second term as president, when he refused entreaties to seek a third term. In doing so, he set a standard for American presidents that lasted until the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose taste for power was stronger than the 150 years of precedent set by Washington. Give the last word to Washington’s great adversary, King George III. The King asked his American portrait painter, Benjamin West, what Washington would do after winning independence. West replied, they say he will return to his farm. If he does that, the incredulous monarch said, he will be the greatest man in the world.
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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 termlimits.com/takeaction. There, you will 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’re watching. That’s termlimits.com/takeaction. If your state has already passed the term limits convention resolution, or the bill has not been introduced in your state, you can still help. Please consider making a contribution to U. S. Term Limits. It is our aim to hit the reset button on the U. S. Congress, and you can help. Go to termlimits.com/donate. Thanks. We’ll be back next week.
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Speaker 3: USTL.