Sid Salter
- Columnist Sid Salter says there’s a reliable way to limit the terms of every politician whose name appears on the ballot. Use that high-tech thing called the vote.
The issue of term limits – be they congressional term limits or state legislative term limits – is a movement that Mississippi voters have consistently rejected at the ballot box despite claims from term limits supporters waving popularity polls that wide majorities support the concept.
My experience has been that while popularity poll respondents may like term limits, Mississippi voters do not.
Now in Mississippi, a respected, retired U.S. Army combat medic and current physician assistant named Ron Eller is leading the advocacy for U.S. Term Limits in our state. Eller ran as the Republican nominee against longtime Mississippi Second District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Bolton, in the 2024 election after unsuccessfully seeking the GOP nomination in 2022. Thompson was re-elected in 2024 with 62% of the vote.
To be specific, U.S. Term Limits is seeking the adoption of a resolution by the Mississippi Legislature to call a constitutional convention for the states to propose a congressional term limits amendment. To be successful, 34 states must pass a specific resolution that addresses congressional term limits.
People have been trying to implement term limits on members of Congress and in multiple state legislatures across the country for decades. Republicans were the last to attempt it nationally during the “Contract with America” push in the early 1990s, but the effort failed.
The elections after the CWA push saw 23 states limit service in their state’s congressional delegation. But in 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned congressional term limits in the landmark case U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, ruling that state governments can’t limit the terms of members of Congress. Specifically, the majority opinion written by the late Justice John Paul Stevens argued against “a patchwork of state qualifications” for U.S. representatives and called that consequence inconsistent with “the uniformity and national character that the framers sought to ensure.”
Term limits are a tired political concept whose time has come and gone and come again. Donald Trump has been all over the place on the issue of term limits, first opposing them, then advocating for them in the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign. In 2024, he threatened to support them again.
During the Democratic primary in the 2020 presidential campaign, California hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer’s failed fringe presidential campaign. Steyer still poured large sums of his own money into supporting the term limits push to no apparent avail.
State voters have consistently rejected term limits. In 1995 and again in 1999, Mississippi voters rejected two separate term limits initiatives, each by a margin of about 55 percent to 45 percent. Why? Mississippi voters weren’t willing to give up their right to return competent, familiar public servants to office, from their local supervisor and justice court judge to their congressman and U.S. senators. Mississippi has not enacted state legislative term limits.
The problem with Steyer’s position, and those of other Democrats who support reforms including term limits and elimination of the electoral college, is that those positions empower large urban states like California to the detriment of smaller rural states like Mississippi.
At the heart of the term limits battle is the notion that voters don’t have enough sense to choose their legislative representation and that, because of that perceived inability to make the right decision, we need the political baby food of term limits to restrict our choices.
What term limits accomplish is putting wealthy special interest groups who can afford to bankroll campaigns for unknown candidates in charge of choosing who our lawmakers will be.
It’s clear to me that the very manner in which the term limits fight is being waged – in which U.S. Term Limits will swamp candidates who sign their pledge first with campaign cash – indicates everything that’s wrong with the notion of term limits in the first place.
Term limits guarantee that frequent turnover will place unknown candidates before the voters who need campaign cash. Where will they get it? By agreeing to tote the water of the single-interest and special interest lobbyists who control that cash. Politics becomes even more a contest of fundraising, not of innovative policy ideas and ideals.
There’s a reliable way to limit the terms of every politician whose name appears on the ballot. Use that high-tech thing called the vote.
Sid Salter
