Philip Blumel: The results are in. No wonder politicians were freaking out in Mississippi as we reported in our last episode.
Philip Blumel: Hi, I’m Philip Blumel. Welcome to No Uncertain Terms. The official podcast of the Term Limits Movement for the week of September 2, 2019.
Stacey Selleck: Your sanctuary from partisan politics.
Philip Blumel: On Tuesday last, runoff elections were held in state legislative primary races in Mississippi. Through mailers, radio and digital media, U.S. Term Limits made sure the public knew which candidates had signed the U.S. Term Limits pledge, in support of the congressional term limits convention in which candidates refused. Nick Tomboulides, Executive Director of U.S. Term Limits has the numbers. Hey Nick.
Nick Tomboulides: Happy Labor Day.
Philip Blumel: Oh, and to you. So what’s the story? We’re active in Mississippi. How’d it work out?
Nick Tomboulides: Big story in Mississippi. Huge, huge story in Mississippi. Mississippi sweep make the politicians weep. It was the shot heard round the bayou. A political earthquake, if you will. As Mississippi law makers are now waking up to a new reality where term limits are front and center in their lives. There was a runoff election. There were 10 candidates who had signed the U.S. Term Limits pledge. All 10 of them won their races and four incumbents were defeated.
Philip Blumel: That is incredible and everyone knows that term limits played a role in this because U.S. Term Limit, and the activists on the ground made sure that everyone knew that in each of these races, one of the candidates had signed the pledge to support the Term Limits Convention And one was opposed.
Nick Tomboulides: U.S. Term limits did 26 mail pieces in total.
Philip Blumel: Wow.
Nick Tomboulides: … among all of these districts. We did digital ads that reached every voter in a vast majority of these districts an average of seven times. That is how voters made the connection, and it’s a test for what’s to come nationally. If guys are losing their seats on this issue, they will get in line very quickly. They will hopefully get behind the Term Limits Convention and we will be able to build some momentum going forward.
Philip Blumel: Right. I don’t think there can be any question that the information about term limits that was shared played a role, because a lot of these races were very close. Some of them just a few votes. None of the political class in Mississippi can doubt what happened last Tuesday.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah. Jeremy England was one candidate who won his race by 30 votes. You happen to think if not for the mailers on term limits, if not for Jeremy making that bold stand by signing the U.S. Term Limits Pledge, he probably wouldn’t have won that election.
Nick Tomboulides: It’s so rare for incumbents to lose. That’s the whole reason we support term limits. They don’t tend to come home from office unless there’s formaldehyde, or term limits involved.
Philip Blumel: That’s right.
Nick Tomboulides: But here in Florida, at least, just speaking from personal experience, nobody can tell me. I’ve asked, “When was the last time any Republican state legislator lost a primary?” It’s been so long. They can’t even remember. It’s been at least 10 years. Right. But last week in Mississippi, four incumbents went down in one night to term limits supporters. That is historic, man. That’s the story. This is going to send a message to all of the other politicians in Mississippi.
Nick Tomboulides: I understand we have 26 signers now that are alive in this election cycle that we should go into the legislature. So this is something that’s going to reverberate around Mississippi. Now it should reverberate around the country.
Philip Blumel: How would it do that?
Nick Tomboulides: Well, if I’m the first of all speaker or the senate president in Mississippi, I have to feel my grip on power loosening as a result of this. If my incumbents, if my loyalists, the people who toe the line of leadership and of the party are going to be getting knocked out left and right over term limits and replaced with these outsiders, then that’s a real threat to the power structure in Mississippi.
Philip Blumel: Sure it is.
Nick Tomboulides: And as you mentioned, I think it’s a threat to the power structure everywhere. There’s going to be an awakening on this throughout the country because U.S. Term Limits isn’t stopping in Mississippi. We’re going to be doing this, we’re gonna be doing more of it in Mississippi this year, but we’re then we’re going to be moving into Louisiana, which has an off year election in 2019. We’re going to do it in Virginia. We’re going to do it in 30 States next year. It’s going to be a nationwide wave. They’re going to have no choice but to pay attention to it.
Philip Blumel: That’s right. Now what I mean by my question is, is how do politicians mechanically, how do they know in say Utah, what just happened in Mississippi? By what mechanism?
Nick Tomboulides: I would say the strongest mechanisms are the little confabs and junkets that they have all over the country, where state legislators from different states like Mississippi, Florida, and Utah come together to share what they say is the latest and greatest policy ideas, but it’s really a vacation for all of them.
Philip Blumel: Right. Of course.
Nick Tomboulides: And there’s a lot of comradery and they talk, and I think now a lot of them are going to get together at the bar, and they’re going to say, “What do we do about these U.S. Term Limits people?”
Nick Tomboulides: If this term limits issue is sweeping the country, we can’t safely ignore these guys. We’re going to have to give them what they want.
Philip Blumel: So it should help us get pledges signed by candidates and by even incumbents in other parts of the country. Now that’s fantastic. Going back to Mississippi, we don’t have a bill in the legislature for the Term Limits Convention yet, but it looks like the way things are going, this is going to have to be a target state going forward. And people on the ground, of course, need to help if this is going to happen, if it’s going to work.
Philip Blumel: And so I would point out to anyone that’s listening from the state of Mississippi to go to termlimits.com/mississippi which is the Mississippi action page. We can get some ideas on how you can help further the Term Limits Convention bill. In that state. Great work. Everyone in Mississippi.
Nick Tomboulides: Hell yeah.
Scott Tillman: Hi. This is Scott Tillman, the National Field Director with U.S. Term Limits. We asked state legislators and candidates for state legislature to sign a pledge to help us put term limit Congress. The pledge reads, “I pledge that as a member of the state legislature, I will co-sponsor, vote for, and defend the resolution applying for an Article V convention for the sole purpose of enacting term limits on Congress.”
Scott Tillman: Most of us vote for our State, House and Senate members in even year elections, but there are a few states with the odd-year elections. Virginia, Mississippi, and Louisiana all have odd-year elections and the election calendars are very different. Virginia had early primaries, June 11th and a general election, November 5th. Mississippi’s primaries were on August 6th. Then there was a runoff on August 27th and the general election will be November 5th.
Scott Tillman: Louisiana has a different system with a very late jungle primary that takes place. On October 12th. A jungle primary is an election where candidates all appear together irrespective of party. If one candidate gets over 50% of the vote, they win. And if nobody gets over 50%, then the top two candidates proceed to a runoff election, Saturday, November 16th.
Scott Tillman: This week, 24 candidates from Louisiana signed our pledge to help them term limit Congress. We now have 67 candidates in Louisiana who have signed the pledge to support the resolution to term limit Congress. Please ask your legislator to sign our pledge. Pledges are available at termlimits.com.
Philip Blumel: Okay. Looking at the presidential race, we have a bit of news this week. Not all good. One is that Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the junior Senator from New York, who is on the record as being for congressional term limits, has dropped out of the race for president. She announced that just the other day, and so that’s too bad. Let’s listen to a clip from her talking at a voter forum about her stance on term limits.
Kirsten Gillibrand: I do support term limits, and the reason I do is the reason you stated. I think there’s so much corruption in Washington. Everyone here knows Washington’s broken. We all know it. Voters know it. It’s why we don’t have as high of a voter turnout as we should. Because people say things like, “My vote doesn’t matter. Everyone’s corrupt anyway. They’re all the same.: It’s true. It’s how people feel.
Philip Blumel: Well that’s a shame, Nick, what do you make of it?
Nick Tomboulides: I think if you’re going to make term limits work as a political candidate, you need a take charge attitude. You can’t just passively support this like she did. She would nod in agreement when someone came to one of her events and asked her about it, but she didn’t really make it a part of her campaign. She had myriad opportunities in all of these debates and forums to really hammer home the point of term limits and become a hero within the democratic primary. Because there was nothing differentiating her from the rest of the pack. But that window of opportunity is now closed. I think other candidates can learn from her experience. Hopefully they don’t make the same mistake.
Philip Blumel: Right. Now one candidate we’ve been following who is definitely pushing the issue of term limits is Tom Steyer, and we were hoping in the last episode in discussing him that was going to qualify for the next democratic presidential debate, and it turns out he has not. It was very close, but he didn’t make it. Tom Steyer is not out of the race. He’s not dropping out. In fact, he says that he will be ready for the next debate in October.
Philip Blumel: Now, he joined the race just about a month or so ago. So he didn’t have much time to prepare or to qualify for the first debate. But with a lot of money in hand, which he is spending, it looks like that he will make it to the next debate.
Nick Tomboulides: He spent 12 million, I believe, in an attempt to make it into this debate, and fell just short. He has claimed that he wants to spend 100 million in total of his own money-
Philip Blumel: Incredible.
Nick Tomboulides: … on this campaign. It’s hard for me to envision a scenario where he doesn’t make it in, in October, but I am disappointed to see he didn’t get in this time. 12 million. That’s a lot of meatballs. You got to feel for the guy.
Philip Blumel: Yeah, no kidding. All right, so a little bit of news from Utah worth mentioning. We talk about polls a lot, and we love to talk about polls, because the Americans love term limits, and we always do well in polls. And once again, there was one from Utah that showed that 75% of Utahans support term limits on their state legislature, and only 7% thought it was a bad idea.
Philip Blumel: So it’s pretty overwhelming. That’s hardly news. Another great poll. This was put out by the utahpolicy.com, and it’s news because the Utah United Party, is launching a referendum campaign to put term limits back on the ballot to term limit the state legislature. Now, you may recall back in the 90’s that Utah did pass term limits. The legislature did in order to co-opt a movement that was growing to put term limits on the ballot at that time by the citizens.
Philip Blumel: And so they put 12 year term limits on the ballot, and it passed overwhelmingly. But, right before they were about to go into effect, the legislature turned around and because it was a statutory change, not a change to the state constitution, by a simple vote, they could repeal the term limits before they went into effect. So they not only co-opted the citizens effort, but then before they went to effect, they repealed it and there was no term limits at all. Very cynical, dastardly, dastardly political deal in Utah.
Nick Tomboulides: You’re not going to believe what I’m going to say about this poll, which shows 75% of Utahans favor term limits.
Philip Blumel: Okay.
Nick Tomboulides: This poll is actually rigged against term limits. The numbers should be much higher. If you look at the way the question is phrased, they ask people whether term limits is a good idea. 75% said, “Yes, no questions asked, term limits is a good idea.”
Nick Tomboulides: 7%, just 7% said it wasn’t a good idea, and then there’s this other weird nebulous group. 16% of people are in this weird category who said, “It depends.” That could mean anything. That could mean it depends on if the sun comes up that day. That could mean it depends on the length of the limit, and we know for sure people prefer shorter limits to longer ones.
Nick Tomboulides: There was a poll in 2016, also a Utah state poll. The real support level was much higher. 88% of Utahans favored term limits in that poll. I think the real number is a lot closer to 88% than to 75%, because those 16 who say, “It depends”, are likely term limits supporters or very close to it.
Speaker 7: Now I’m here for an exclusive interview with our Guam correspondent Congressman Hank Johnson, a 30 year career politician from Georgia. Our Guam correspondent who will tell us more about the Island of Guam. Congressman Johnson, what is Guam?
Hank Johnson: This is a island that at its widest level is what, 12 miles from shore to shore? And at its smallest level, or smallest location, it’s seven miles between one shore and the other. Is that correct?
Speaker 7: Hey, I ask the questions here. Guam is a small island, right?
Hank Johnson: Well, it’s a small island, and about 24 miles, if I recall, long. And about seven miles wide at the least widest place on the island and about 12 miles wide on the widest part of the island. And I don’t know how many square miles that is. Do you happen to know?
Speaker 7: Congressman, you are obviously the world’s foremost expert on Guam among many other things you’ve studied during your 30 year career in politics, tell us what challenges might Guam and the Guamanian people be facing in the near future?
Hank Johnson: Yeah, my fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.
Speaker 7: The island might capsize? Wow, that is a striking development. You heard it here first folks. According to a respected senior member of the United States Congress, the Island of Guam is in imminent danger of capsizing. With insights like these, I might have to rethink my support for term limits.
Philip Blumel: Well that’s fake news. Well that’s fake news. Well that’s fake.
Philip Blumel: The article I read about this poll, struck me as interesting for a couple different reasons. One, is that back when the politicians over through the 12 year term limit that they had put on the ballot themselves, they were making the case that a lot of legislators in Utah don’t serve a full 12 years anyway. So what the heck do you need a term limit for?
Philip Blumel: Well, you and I know how disingenuous that is. For one thing, it suggests that a 12 year term limit is not tight enough, because it wouldn’t have sufficient effect on the legislature, but that’s actually not the main thing wrong with this, because what’s really important is the fact that the leadership and the committee chairs and the people that actually have the power in the Utah Legislature, are long term veterans.
Philip Blumel: You can’t throw in the newcomers in there and average it out and say, “Okay well no one’s working. No one’s staying in there 12 years anyway. It doesn’t matter.” Because where it really counts in leadership and in power, it matters a lot.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah. It’s like if you have a glass of water, even if you’re purifying most of the water and you’re rotating it out, you’re getting fresh water in there. If you still have a murky, disgusting, mucky film at the top of the glass, that’s going to pollute the entire thing. That’s how leadership works in a legislature.
Nick Tomboulides: You could get rid of 95% of Congress right now and hardly anything would change. Why? Because the power is concentrated with the 5% who’ve been there the longest. Term limits absolutely work, no question about it, but for them to work, they have to apply to everyone. You have to get rid of the leadership. You have to throw all of the bums out.
Nick Tomboulides: I’ll give you an example in Utah there’s a state Senator, guy’s name is Lyle Hillyard. he has been a member of the Utah Senate since 1984.
Philip Blumel: Wow. That’s incredible.
Nick Tomboulides: Can you believe that?
Philip Blumel: That is amazing.
Nick Tomboulides: And he’s been a member of the Utah Legislature even longer. He’s been in office 39 years. Imagine how much power and clout he has over the more junior members. That’s the real problem.
Philip Blumel: You know that’s right.
Nick Tomboulides: And so even if the average is 12, the power resides with the outliers like Hilliard. And by the way, just want to say one more thing about state term limits. We throw around all the time that there are 15 states currently that have legislative term limits. Wasn’t always 15 States. It was actually 21 States at one point, but six of them were repealed. But they weren’t repealed by voters.
Nick Tomboulides: In two States, Idaho and Utah, they were appealed by the legislature. And in four other States, they were repealed by the state supreme court doing the bidding of the state legislature and operating as activists.
Nick Tomboulides: So term limits have never lost any support with the American people. They’ve never lost support in any of these States. And in fact, if all 50 States had an initiative process where people could put it directly on the ballot, legally, I’m confident every single state in this country would have term limits on the legislature.
Philip Blumel: Absolutely. One thing that was interesting that utahpolicy.com brought up is that even if the lot of legislatures were not staying for more than 12 years in the Utah Legislature, it’s not the Utah voters that are making that decision, it’s the legislators themselves. Because utahpolicy.com did the math. And they said, “90% of legislators in the Utah legislature leave office via retirement or death.” Not because of elections. Elections aren’t making those decisions. It’s the politicians themselves, so just like in any other non term limited legislature around the country, the politicians rule.
Philip Blumel: Thanks for joining us again this week. The vote last Tuesday in Mississippi is yet another indication that the state focused strategy to impose congressional term limits can work, and in fact is working. On the presidential front, we took a step backward, but let’s not give up. If you haven’t yet done so, please send a message to all the presidential candidates and urge them to support term limits publicly during the primary campaign.
Philip Blumel: To do so, go to, termlimits.com, and under the current actions tab, choose “Contact POTUS 2020 candidates.” If you have already done this, please go back to the page, copy the web address and send it to your social media or email networks. Let’s make term limits part of the national debate.
Philip Blumel: One last thing. No Uncertain Terms is now available on Spotify, as well as all the other major podcast platforms. Thank you. We’ll be back next week.
Stacey Selleck: The revolution isn’t being televised. Fortunately, you have No Uncertain Terms Podcast.
Philip Blumel: USTL.
Philip Blumel: Oh, we want to do the one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four thing anyway. Why don’t you count to four twice. I’ll jump in on the second one.
Nick Tomboulides: One, two, three, four [crosstalk 00:19:52] One, two, three, three, four. One, two, [crosstalk 00:19:56] three, four.
Philip Blumel: You said three twice. You are very bad at this. Why are you so bad at this?
Nick Tomboulides: I don’t know. I think you finally found my Achilles’ heel. Counting to four.