Voters’ decision on term limits deserves respect

“My peeps are begging me to stay in legislature for life.”

No, this isn’t a line from embattled Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. It’s what Nevada state Sen. Tick Segerblom tweeted out recently when asked why he’s trying to abolish term limits — the ones that Nevadans twice voted to enact.

The first-term state senator from Las Vegas announced in early July that he intends to start up the four-year process to erase term limits from the state constitution. It would require the Assembly to pass his bill in 2015 and 2017, before pushing the measure to voters in November 2018.

Like most politicians looking for excuses to stay in power, Segerblom leans heavily on the myth that term limits help lobbyists. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Whenever lobbyists and special interests are involved in term-limits questions, they always spend their money on defeating them.

If Segerblom’s argument about lobbyists and term limits were true, these influence-peddlers have been spending money to destroy their own careers — a very insane premise. Lobbyists don’t like term limits, and they never have. Term limits sever the ties that lobbyists build up with incumbent legislators, forcing them to work harder to establish bonds with newcomers.

Convicted felon and former megalobbyist Jack Abramoff confirmed this analysis recently while on the book circuit, atoning for his past crimes.

“”When I was a lobbyist, frankly, I was against [term limits], because once you purchase an office, you don’t want to have to repurchase that same office down the line,” Abramoff said. “A representative who stayed in office for decades, and was a friend, was worth his weight in gold.”

Just as Abramoff describes, Segerblom has been worth his weight in gold to the lobbyists of Nevada. According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, no group has given more to Segerblom’s campaigns than lawyers and lobbyists. Not even the casino industry has matched the $89,000 that top attorneys and lobbying associations have pumped into Segerblom’s war chest.

The term-limits movement is still waiting for the first lobbyist to walk through the door and embrace our platform. We are a network of grassroots activists, like the ones who went door-to-door collecting signatures to put term limits on Nevada’s ballot in 1994 and 1996.

Those referenda, like nearly all term-limits efforts across the country, needed to be initiated by citizens because politicians refuse to take actions that won’t personally benefit them.

In representative democracy, ideas are supposed to originate with the people before legislators move to enact them. Segerblom has done the opposite here, originating an idea himself and forcing constituents to tag along.

A referendum will serve no purpose but to force the people to spend money, time and effort to defeat a proposal that only politicians have asked for. The idea of abolishing term limits is a radical one, especially considering that Nevada’s 12-year limits are among the weakest in the nation.

Of the 15 states with legislative term limits, 11 have limits of eight years or shorter. This is the same term limit imposed on the president of the United States. Nevadans will have great difficulty believing that Segerblom needs more time in office than the leader of the free world.

To cement his case against term limits, Segerblom said, “We need all the brainpower and institutional knowledge we can get, and term limits deprives us of that.”

But the problem with government isn’t a shortage of elected officials who know how to work the system; it’s the surplus. Voters are clamoring for less corruption, less gamesmanship, less backroom deal-making — not more. Many legislative bodies around America — including Congress — desperately lack the citizen leadership that term limits deliver.

It’s ironic that Segerblom’s anti-term limits bill appeared the week of Independence Day, because America’s revolution was fought over a politician who refused to give up power. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, favored term limits because without them, elected office would “degenerate into an inheritance.”

Segerblom brags about being the fourth generation of his family to serve in the Legislature, indicating that Jefferson’s inheritance comment isn’t too far off. He also supports moves to have legislative sessions every year, rather than every other year. This “all politics, all the time” mentality surely wasn’t the founders’ vision, and Nevada hasn’t asked for it either.

Segerblom’s “peeps” might be begging him to stay, but Nevada’s voters have spoken clearly and definitively in favor of term limits. Segerblom should respect the voters’ wishes.

Nick Tomboulides is executive director of U.S. Term Limits, a national group advocating for term limits at all levels of government since 1991.