Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 24, 1994 TAG: 9411250018
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: LITTLE ROCK, ARK. LENGTH: Long
One of the most important cases at the U.S. Supreme Court this year grew out of the crusade of a handful of political outsiders who got mad about Democratic Party dominance in Arkansas - and did something about it.
``I came to believe that Arkansas has the most rigged political system in the entire country because it's so one-sided, so narrow, so lacking in real competition,'' said Skip Cook, a burly 48-year-old contractor.
He said he quit his lucrative job as a stockbroker, depleted his savings and ``lived like a pauper'' so he could campaign for term limits and against career politicians of any party.
``Before I got involved, the most politicking I ever did was to vote,'' recalled Tim Epperson, 34, who develops computer software for industrial use. ``But when I was asked if I was for term limits, I said I was for anything that gets the bums out. The more I got into it, the more I thought it was the answer.''
In the end, Cook, Epperson and their allies - helped enormously by money, research and advice from Washington-based U.S. Term Limits - stunned the establishment. Sixty percent of Arkansas voters backed a 1992 state constitutional amendment that restricted the number of times that politicians may be re-elected to offices in Arkansas and in Congress.
But a fundamental constitutional question, to be argued Tuesday in the Supreme Court, arose from congressional term limits: Do states have the power to restrict the terms of members of the national legislature?
Yes, say U.S. Term Limits, the Arkansas Republican Party, Arkansas and 21 other states with term-limit amendments. No, reply the Clinton administration, the League of Women Voters, the American Civil Liberties Union and many members of Congress from Arkansas.
The court's decision, to be announced in the spring, could have broad repercussions for Congress, national politics and the constitutional relationship between states and the federal government.
The Arkansas amendment proclaims bluntly: ``Elected officials who remain in office too long become preoccupied with re-election and ignore their duties as representatives of the people.''
So the amendment prohibits printed ballots from containing the names of U.S. senators who have served 12 years and House members who have represented Arkansas districts for six years. They could win only by the slim hope of write-in ballots.
But by a 5-2 vote in March, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that the term-limit amendment could not be applied to Congress. The Constitution requires uniform qualifications for Congress, the state court said.
In appealing to the Supreme Court, term-limit advocates noted that Arkansas voters rarely toss incumbents out of Congress.
Indeed, Arkansas Democrats have enjoyed long careers in the Senate. William Fulbright served for 30 years, John McClellan for 35. Sen. Dale Bumpers is in his 20th year, Sen. David Pryor in his 16th.
Voters in the Republican northwestern part of the state kept John Paul Hammerschmidt in the House for 26 years. Wilbur Mills, for years the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was the Little Rock area's representative for nearly four decades.
``Wilbur Mills is probably the best example of why I like this term-limits thing,'' explained Frank Gilbert, 44, who worked for Arkansas term-limits while running a burglar-alarm business in Little Rock.
``The man served the state and the nation beautifully - and he ended his career in the Tidal Basin with [exotic dancer] Fanne Foxe. The man had lingered too long in his job. ... Eventually, power will corrupt.''
But to political insiders like insurance company executive Richard Herget, ``term limits strikes at the heart of representative government by restricting who you can vote for.''
Herget, 55, was a campaign manager or fund-raiser for governors from Orval Faubus to Bill Clinton, for senators from Fulbright to Pryor.
``I am so alarmed that the people I have invested time and money in - and who have done a good job - that I would not even be allowed to vote for them again, that really disturbs me,'' Herget said.
The only way for Arkansas to compete with California, Texas and other big states in Congress ``is by maintaining a presence through the seniority system, by putting good people there and keeping them there,'' he said.
Philip Henderson, associate professor of politics at Catholic University of America, said state-imposed term limits, combined with the seniority system in Congress, would enable large states without term limits to dominate Congress.
In the next Congress, less than half of its members - 182 in the House and 44 in the Senate - represent the 22 states that have imposed term limits on Congress.
But if the term-limits movement continues to grow, representatives from states with term limits will become a majority in Congress and ``tear up the seniority system,'' Henderson said.
That has begun to happen in the Arkansas legislature. Veterans were ousted from committee posts by younger members eager to rise to power before term limits ejected them.
Congress may vote on term limits before the Supreme Court rules. The new Republican leaders promise to bring ``a first-ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians with citizen legislators.''
But GOP enthusiasm for term limits appears to be waning. Some Republican lawmakers oppose the idea; others support weakened versions. The top two Republicans in Congress - Bob Dole of Kansas and Newt Gingrich of Georgia - wouldn't be in Congress if the Arkansas amendment applied to them. Dole has been in the Senate for 26 years, while Gingrich has been in the House for 16 years.
``We'll hold their feet to the fire'' said Paul Jacob, 34, executive director of U.S. Term Limits. ``I don't know of an issue in my lifetime that is as popular as this. Members of Congress have a choice: Either vote for term limits or be sitting ducks in '96 for having voted against it.''
Whatever the Supreme Court decides, the state-by-state method of achieving term limits may have lost its momentum.
Term limits has won popular approval in 22 of the 23 states that allow voters to legislate directly through the initiative process. The 23rd initiative state, Mississippi, plans a vote on term limits next year.
In the remaining 27 states, though, term limits forces have fared badly. Those states do not provide for ballot initiatives, leaving such issues to their state legislatures. Unsurprisingly, state lawmakers have resisted the idea of shortening their political careers.
by CNB