Term Limits Come to a Small Southern City: Twenty or 30 years ago, when voters in more than a dozen states approved term limits for legislators, they not only liked the idea of kicking out long-serving politicians but often had particular targets in mind. In California, for example, voters approved term limits in 1990 in part to get rid of Democrat Willie Brown, who served more than 14 years as speaker of the state Assembly. “I’d still be a speaker without term limits,” Brown said last year, shortly before he turned 90.
In Bossier City, La., long-serving mayors and City Council members provided a target-rich environment. There’s been scarcely any turnover on the council for most of this century, with some members having served for more than 30 years and a longtime mayor seeking re-election at the age of 87. All this prompted a local term limits movement.
Bossier City, which has about 63,000 residents, sits across the Red River from Shreveport. Recently, it had the highest per-capita debt load of any city in Louisiana and one of the highest in the nation. Critics questioned everything from rising water fees and sanitation rates to the decision to spend $300,000 on a statue to decorate a roundabout.
The Bossier Term Limits Coalition collected enough signatures to put a question on the ballot. Their petition was thrown out on a technicality, so they started over again. They collected enough valid signatures to put the issue before voters last December, but a majority on the council refused to let this happen because it might have blocked some of them from running again this year. “They made several frivolous arguments to delay,” says David Crockett, a founder of the coalition.
Finally, an appellate court not only ruled against the council but said its members might be guilty of malfeasance. That paved the way for a vote last Saturday to enact lifetime limits of three terms for the mayor and council members. The twin measures passed with more than 80 percent of the vote. “It was really a great success story for the people of Bossier City to enact change when they’re fighting the headwinds of entrenched politicians,” Crockett says.
At the state level, term limits have served to weaken legislatures to the benefit of governors and lobbyists, with several states convincing voters over the years to ease up on them. Perhaps at the local level, however, legal limits can still serve their original purpose of getting rid of incumbents who would otherwise overstay their welcome. Already, one Louisiana state senator is proposing local limits for two parishes, as counties in the state are known.
“The new council [in Bossier City] that will be seated in July will have six or seven, quote, reformers, and the mayor’s a reformer now,” says Jeffrey Sadow, a political scientist at LSU Shreveport and a Bossier City resident. “Really, it all came about because of the term limits issue and the tremendous resistance that the old guard put up against it.”
(Steve Schaefer/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution/TNS)
State Parties Play Musical Chairs: There was a time when some state party chairs stuck around for many years. These days, most are lucky to last a cycle or two. It can be a burnout job, with unending meetings and events and fundraising appeals. Lately, state chairs often find themselves unable to satisfy enough activists to last until the next election, as both major parties undergo shifts due to their changing constituencies.
Democrats are having internal disputes about just how oppositional to be against President Donald Trump following his victory last fall. The party has concentrated on little else than opposing him for the past decade, but some Democrats want to push harder. In Georgia, Congresswoman Nikema Williams was replaced this past Saturday as state party chair by Charlie Bailey, who said Democrats “have not been fighting enough.”
In Oregon, both parties have had multiple chairs already this decade, with both picking new leaders within the past couple of months. Some of this has to do with the personalities involved but it also reflects differences of opinion about party stances and direction. In 2022, Dallas Heard stepped down as chair of the Oregon GOP, blaming “wickedness” within the party. “They have broken my spirit,” Heard wrote. “I can face the Democrats with courage and conviction, but I can’t fight my own people.”
You might expect turnover right after an election, but several state party chairs either quit or were kicked out last year just as the campaign was heating up. This year, the roll call of new party leaders gets longer all the time.
In Wisconsin, Republican state party leaders have gotten tired of dissent within their ranks. Last month, the Wisconsin GOP’s executive committee approved a rule to make it easier to remove county party chairs or the committee’s own members if they harass or defame state party leaders or elected Republican officials. State leaders said they’re just trying to lower the temperature on intraparty disputes and restore some civility. Local leaders say it’s an effort to tamp down on dissension.
Some local officials have called for Brian Schimming, the state party chair, to resign. One of them responded to the rule change by posting a spreadsheet that included the names, phone numbers and email addresses of all the executive committee members, encouraging rank-and-file to push back.
As with politics as a whole, the party apparatus itself finds that it can’t make all its members go along quietly.
