Incumbents Ribble, Mulvaney join term limits team

Over the past year, the mailbox at the U.S. Term Limits offices in Fairfax, Va., has been filling up with signed pledges (over 188 so far) from Congressional candidates that promise to cosponsor and vote for 3/2 term limits bills like those introduced by Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Rep. David Schweichert of Arizona.

But over the last week or so we've been pleased -- maybe a bit surprised -- to find written commitments from a couple of incumbents.

The first arrived from Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina's 5th Congressional District, a signed U.S. Term Limits pledge. Interestingly, Rep. Mulvaney didn't support term limits until he was elected, an unusual phenomenon. As the second-term Congressman notes on his website, "Before I got into government I opposed term limits ... Having seen government up close, I have learned my lesson. I support term limits."


Welcome aboard!

Then we received a letter from Wisconsin's Rep. Reid Ribble, 8th District, in which he pledges support for 3/2 term limits legislation and offers an idea for getting it done.

"As you are aware, I am a firm believer in term limits for Congress. I believe many of the systemic problems that our government faces would be reduced or eliminated if politicians did not make their time in Congress a career."

Rep. Ribble notes that the big hurdle is getting Congress members to term limit themselves, so he suggests that a grandfather clause be added to get it through Congress. If this is enacted, he writes, "Over time, serving in Congress will again be a privilege, not  a career, similar to the way the Founding Fathers originally intended."

Mulvaney and Ribble join a growing minority of incumbents on the Hill taking action on this issue. After November, as our stack of pledges indicate, there will be a lot more.

 (Top left, Rep. Reid Ribble's term limits letter; Right, Rep. Mick Mulvaney)

Term limits ad propels veterinarian past veteran Florida Congressman

Yet another political newcomer has left a professional politician in the dust -- and he used a hilarious term limits ad to do it.

Rep. Cliff Stearns of North Central Florida's 3rd District, which includes Gainesville, was a big spending Republican with a social conservative bent. His 24-year spending record proved to be his weak spot after large animal doctor Ted Yoho highlighted it in the best TV ad so far in the 2012 election season.



The ad features WWE wrestler Dustin (Rhodes) Runnels and shows professional politicians in suits eating from a pigs' trough and throwing mud at one another. At the end, Yoho pledges to serve eight years and come home.

Stearns had been endorsed by Republican bigwigs including Rep. Paul Ryan. Yet Yoho, who raised very little money, unexpectedly won the election by about 800 votes.

Yoho will face Democrat J.R. Gaillot in the general election, but the seat is considered safely Republican. It looks like another term limits supporter is going to Washington.

Cruz win in Texas another leap ahead for Congressional term limits

By the end of the campaign, it appeared Congressional term limits would be the winner regardless of whether Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst or Ted Cruz won the GOP nomination for Texas' U.S. Senate seat last night.

After all, after Ted Cruz signed the U.S. Term Limits pledge to cosponsor and vote for 3/2 term limits legislation if elected, Dewhurst did the same. They are two of the 187 Congressional candidates to do so in the 2012 election cycle.

But since then, Cruz has been broadcasting his support for term limits and even mentioning the U.S. Term Limits pledge on national television. Dewhurst, on the other hand, started distancing himself from his pledge -- and victory. Less than three weeks later Dewhurst was proposing a package of election reforms that directly contradicted the pledge he had signed.

It is easy to support term limits as a challenger and difficult as an incumbent, with both party leadership and your own personal self-interest pressuring you to chuck your promise. Under these circumstances, the enthusiasm for Congressional term limits demonstrated by Cruz suggests that Sens. Jim DeMint, Rand Paul, Tom Coburn and the other term limits stalwarts in the U.S. Senate have won another important new ally and cosponsor.

Sen. DeMint's term limits amendment bill, SJR 11, would require a two-thirds majority vote in the House and Senate, and ratification by 38 states in order to become part of the Constitution. For more information on the pledge, including a list of signers, see here.

Michigan House veteran losing ground to term limits crusader Jack Hoogendyk

Wow. Yet another term limits supporter is closing in on a establishment veteran in a GOP primary. In Michigan's 6th House district, Jack Hoogendyk is seen as a contender against 25-year incumbent Fred Upton.

As in the other matchups -- Massie in Kentucky, Mourdock in Indiana -- the challenger comes armed with a signed U.S. Term Limits Congressional pledge and the incumbent awkwardly tries to defend his long tenure during which government spending and debt ballooned.

Upton is a classic foil. As illustrated in a famous Cato Institute study, Republicans tend to arrive in Washington and more or less live up to their fiscal conservative rhetoric -- for a while. But after 6, 7, 8 years their spending ramps up and soon they are no longer distinguishable from the veteran spenders.

Indeed, Upton received all As and Bs from the National Taxpayers Union during his first decade in Washington. But over his second decade he received mostly Cs, even a C-.  Like so many Republican candidates before him Fred came to Washington to cut government and eventually decided that the federal government should be in charge of everything from the weather, to Iraqi road maintenance, to kids video games. He has become part of the problem.

Like all longtime incumbents, he announces his reelection campaign and his coffers fill up automatically, as nearly all PAC contributions go to incumbents who have proven themselves as reliable spenders. In the first quarter, Upton raised nearly $1 million with big checks from the very firms he oversees as chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce: Entergy, Southern Company, Murray Energy, Duke Energy, Nuclear Energy Institute, etc. Of course, what would you expect? That's how the system works.

In the other corner we have Jack Hoogendyk. A tea partier and a member of the Campaign for Liberty, Hoogendyk focuses on spending and debt and has pointed to Rand Paul's proposed budget as an outline to follow to get spending under control. As a USTL pledge signer, he has committed himself to, if elected, cosponsor and vote for a 3/2 Congressional term limits amendment such as that introduced by Rep. David Schweikert of Arizona.

The Schweikert bill -- the house companion of Jim Demint's Senate bill -- is the first serious bill since the 1990s with co-sponsorship in both houses of the Congress. So far, there are about 10 cosponsors each in both the House and the Senate.

Rep. Fred Upton is not one of them. But Indiana Republicans have the opportunity to nominate someone who will be.

(Pictures: At top left , Rep. Fred Upton and challenger Jack Hoogendyk debate; At bottom right, GOP leadership enforcers keep Upton on track: Spend, spend, spend...)

Texas U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz on the U.S. Term Limits Pledge

"I have no interest in being in office for decades. I strongly support term limits. And in fact I have committed to cosponsor a constitutional amendment to limit every member of the U.S. Senate to two terms, every member of the House to three terms. That fight being led right now by Jim Demint ... Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Pat Toomey and Tom Coburn ... they need reinforcements." -- Texas U.S. Senate Candidate Ted Cruz on the U.S. Term Limits Congressional Pledge during a Fox News interview on May 31. Cruz is one of 176 Congressional candidates to sign the pledge so far.

In Kentucky, another primary win for term limits

Don't look now, but term limits have scored another win in this primary cycle. Following the historic upset in Indiana, Kentucky also has nominated a term limits warrior for a Congressional seat. On Tuesday, political newcomer Thomas Massie beat out a group of establishment Republicans to win his party's nomination for the open 4th District House seat.

Massie is a signatory of the U.S. Term Limits Congressional Pledge, in which he has committed to cosponsor and vote for a Congressional term limits amendment along the lines of that proposed in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and the House by Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ).

Massie ran as a libertarian reformer in the mold of Kentucky's junior senator, Rand Paul, who endorsed him. The party establishment, still unable to fathom Sen. Paul's success, is missing the ascent of Massie as well. Massie's chief opponent, Alecia Webb-Edgington, told a Kentucky Lincoln Day Dinner in 2010 that "We don't need any more socialists, communists or libertarians in the Republican Party." The party hacks at that meeting clapped, but Republican voters ignored them and nominated Massie anyway.

Massie is one of 173 Congressional candidates -- so far -- who have signed the USTL pledge. The media hasn't picked up on this story yet, but term limits are back on the national stage.

(Pictured: Congressional candidate Thomas Massie with Sen. Rand Paul)

Indiana Senate upset a big victory for term limits

USTL President Philip Blumel with Richard Mourdock in IN

The May 8 victory of Richard Mourdock in the Indiana Republican primary for U.S. Senate is being cast as a victory of the tea party over the establishment. Indeed it was.

But it was something else too: another step down the path to achieving Congressional term limits.

Mourdock, it turns out, is one of the 167 Congressional candidates -- so far -- who have signed the U.S. Term Limits pledge to, if elected, cosponsor and vote for a Congressional term limits amendment. He is an explicit supporter of Sen. Jim DeMint's Congressional term limits amendment bill, SJR 11, which Mourdock said he plans to cosponsor.

Sen. Richard Lugar

For this reason, I spent a couple of days on the road with Mourdock in the final week of the primary campaign. In joint appearances across the state, I told the term limits story and announced the endorsement Mourdock received from the Term Limits America PAC.

In dissecting Mourdock's victory, pundits are pointing to a gaggle of issues directly related to term limits as the decisive factor in the last minute surge of support for Mourdock.

Mourdock's opponent, the 36-year incumbent Senator Richard Lugar, is 80 years old, has not lived in Indiana for years and has not faced an opponent in 12 years -- or a meaningful one for much longer. He was a respected figure in the bipartisan spending and foreign policy consensus of the last generation and was seen as out of touch with the new energetic breed of activist-candidates fueled by what they see as a looming debt crisis. In a February "Sense of the Senate" vote on Congressional term limits, Sen. Lugar voted 'no.'

Mourdock, on the other hand, is 60 years old and as Indiana's state treasurer had sued the Obama administration over its bailout and extra-legal reorganization of Chrysler. He had self-limited his terms as a county commissioner earlier in his career and has done so again for the U.S. Senate, promising to serve just two terms. Mourdock also had a 30-year career as a geologist and businessman and can claim to offer some real world experience to the Senate.

There is a changing of the guard in the U.S. Senate. The newcomers -- Sens. Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, JimDemint, Tom Coburn and others -- are on board with term limits, while the dinosaurs they are replacing are the ones who stood in term limits way.

Hopefully after November we can add Richard Mourdock to that list.