Ballot Initiatives and Legislative Constraint

So why, to quote from an Idaho State Journal editorial, did the legislature “thumb their noses at the popular vote” (“What are We to Think” 3 February, 2002). Was this landmark legislative reversal of a ballot initiative really about lawmakers arrogating power to themselves? Did the legislative supermajorities in both chambers reflect, as Rumenap (2002) put it, the selfish ambitions of the “paid political class in Boise… bent on keeping their own power”? Or was there a parallel logic at play in the reversal of term limits in Idaho?

The legislature's controversial and apparently self-serving coup d'etat confounds the conventional wisdom that lawmakers—despite their obvious selfinterest to stay in office (Mayhew 1974)—will resist the urge to deter the implementation of highly visible and popular ballot measures. Even scholars largely critical of the initiative concede that the plebiscitary process may foster legislative responsibility and responsiveness. Legislators, it is commonly thought, are “politically unlikely” to tamper with successful initiatives (Magleby 1984, 186). Gerber, et al. (2001, 58–59) reason in their study of the implementation of a variety of initiatives in California that, “although most legislators were strongly opposed to term limits, the threat of severe sanctions forced them to comply.” Given the persistent and strong public support in Idaho for term limitations, this logic of compliance would seem especially applicable in this case.³

Most state legislators, in Idaho as in other states, are not fans of “un-American… ballot access limitations,” as House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, the chief sponsor of the bill, referred to term limits during the legislative debate (Fick 2002). Leaving aside the important question of who benefits from term limits (Moncrief and Thompson 2001; Cain and Levin 1999; Carey, Niemi, and Powell 2000), it is important to consider an array of possible micro-level determinants for the anti-term limits legislative vote in Idaho. Beside obvious self-interest, are there other explanations why 76 of 104 legislators decided to overturn the 1994 popular vote?⁴

Expectations of a Legislator's Vote to Overturn the 1994 Term Limits Initiative

Modeling legislator support for House Bill 425 allows us to test several alternative hypotheses which may help to explain why a majority of legislators in Idaho voted to scrap the 1994 term limits ballot measure. First, there was considerable talk in Boise leading up to the veto override that legislators from safe districts would be more likely to support House Bill 425 than legislators from competitive districts. Legislators representing competitive districts surely realized that voting against the statewide electorate might prove counterproductive to their reelection bids. Even relatively safe incumbents, such as Representative Mike Moyle, a second-term Republican, admitted they expected to be challenged in either the primary or general elections in 2002 due to their support of the bill (Warbis 2002). But nearly half of Idaho's legislative seats went uncontested in 2000; many legislators were apparently unconcerned about facing future electoral competition.⁵

As such, legislators facing no opposition in the primary and general elections in 2000 are expected to support House Bill 425.

Second, there was speculation well before the override vote that several well-entrenched members were behind the legislative power grab. Nine-term member of the House, Republican Doug Jones, defended his vote against term limits, saying, “We have to look at the total system, what's right for the state of Idaho. If people don't like the way I vote, they should get rid of me” (Hoffman 2002a). Indeed, long-serving legislators might be more inclined than junior members to vote for the antiterm limits bill as they become subject to term limitations sooner than their colleagues. Legislators with more seniority are expected to support the veto override.

Third, the palaver over term limits in Idaho had a strong partisan flavor. Reversing its initial support for term limits in 1994, the Republican leadership solidly backed the counter-majoritarian bill, in large part to insure the party's continued dominance of the legislature. Working behind closed doors, Republican party leaders were able to convince many of its members of the merits of overturning the ban (“GOP uses secret means” 2002). Not surprisingly, state Democratic party leaders viewed the GOP's desire to overturn the popular vote as a golden opportunity to score political points; party officials quickly announced they planned to use the veto override as a campaign issue against Republican incumbents in the 2002 election (Popkey 2002b). All else being equal, however, Republican legislators are expected to toe the party line and support the revocation of term limits.⁶

Fourth, since state policy preferences are geographically heterogeneous (Erikson, Wright, and McIver 1993; Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson 1995), it may be rational for some legislators to vote in favor of a counter-majoritarian bill if citizens in their districts voted counter to the statewide electorate (Smith 2001). An initiative may win a statewide majority, but lose in a member's legislative district, or vice-versa; hence, it is unlikely that a legislator will rely on statewide election returns to inform his or her vote on pending legislation.⁷

As Republican Representative Horrace “Hod” Pomeroy of Boise, one of the handful of Republicans who opposed House Bill 425, commented, “I just can't in good conscience defy my constituents” (Popkey 2002b).⁸ Legislators representing districts that did not show great support for the 1994 initiative are expected to support revoking term limits. While the expectation is that a legislator's support for overturning term limits will reflect the 1994 popular vote of his or her legislative district, this effect may be mitigated somewhat by the fact that the popular vote occurred nearly eight years earlier.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is good reason to believe that legislators representing (sub)urban and rural districts may view the impact of term limits differently. According to several accounts, Republican party officials in 2000 began to call for a repeal of the 1994 initiative, “saying that local officials were never supposed to be the target and that term limits were depriving communities of experienced politicians, especially in sparsely populated rural areas that struggle to fill local offices” (Fick 2002). Indeed, prior to the legislative reversal, an estimated 60% of local officials were scheduled to be term-limited out of office in 2002, including 30 sheriffs, 44 county commissioners, 29 county clerks, 24 county treasurers, 34 coroners, and 27 assessors (“Lawmakers Can't Solve Mess” December 19, 2001). Local officials and their supporters (including the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry) lobbied legislators (especially rural ones) to overturn the ban on terms. As freshman Republican legislator Eulalie Langford stated, “This is not a vote about term limits. It's a vote about rural Idaho” (2002a). It is expected, then, that legislators representing rural districts will strongly support the repeal of term limits.

Estimations of Empirical Model

I use a logistic regression to estimate the impact of these five factors—the impact of the percentage of vote for the 1994 ballot initiative in a member's own district, the political party affiliation and number of terms in office of each legislator, the electoral competitiveness of the member's district, and the spatial-demographic nature of the member's district ((sub)urban or rural)—had on the probability an individual legislator supported overriding the governor's veto of House Bill 425. The dichotomous dependent variable is coded zero if the member voted “no” on the counter-majoritarian bill, one if he or she voted “yes” to overturn term limits.

Table 1 displays the findings of the multivariate model. As expected, the results suggest that Republican legislators and members representing rural districts were significantly more likely to support House Bill 425 than Democrats and those representing urban and suburban districts. However, contrary to expectations, members with lengthier tenures in office and those with safe seats were not any more likely to support the veto override than members with less seniority or those winning competitive elections.⁹

Also confounding expectations, members representing districts that had less popular support for the 1994 term limit initiative were statistically no more likely to vote to overturn House Bill 425 than those representing districts with high popular support for term limits.¹⁰

To aid in the interpretation of these findings, I have converted the logistic regression coefficients as reported in Table 2 into expected values (probabilities) of legislative support for the veto override. In Table 2, I estimate the likelihood of Republican and Democratic legislators voting to overturn the 1994 initiative under several specifications. A clear pattern is evident in Table 2: the (sub)urban/rural division among both Republicans and Democrats was much more apparent in the anti-term limits vote than whether or not a member faced serious opposition in the 2000 elections. For example, Republican legislators representing urban districts, regardless of whether they faced serious or no competition in the 2000 primary or general elections, were significantly less likely (57.3% and 59.8%, respectively) to support overturning the term limits ban than Republican members representing rural districts who faced either stiff (83.8%) or no opposition (85.1%) in 2000. Similarly, Democratic legislators, irrespective of the closeness of their 2000 elections, representing rural districts were significantly more likely to support the override of the governor's veto.

To observers who follow Idaho politics closely, the significant results reported here—that Republican legislators and those representing rural districts were likely to vote for the countermajoritarian bill—should not come as a huge surprise. The state GOP, which had adopted a plank in its party platform calling for the repeal of term limits, put strong pressure on its legislative members to support reversing the term limits ban. But Republican support for the veto override was not universal. Legislative opposition to term limitations clearly emanated from Idaho's hinterland. The intense lobbying from local officials, their minions, and their business allies perhaps swayed rural members otherwise reluctant to overturn the will of the people. It seems plausible that rural legislators were especially influenced by reports that the parties were having difficultly recruiting qualified candidates to replace the more than 150 local officials in many of Idaho's 44 counties who were restricted from running for reelection in 2002.

Conclusion and Postscript

Certainly one needs not be a cynic to read the repeal of term limits in Idaho as a self-serving, last ditch effort by legislators to stay in office and retain power. (It bears noting, though, that term limits for state legislators were not to go into effect until the 2004 election.) An element of self-preservation certainly drives much legislative action on governance issues. During the months leading up to the veto override, however, it became evident that local elected officials were equally concerned about the consequences of the 1994 initiative. Local officials—from county clerks to sheriffs to tax assessors to mayors—along with their powerful lobbying associations, applied tremendous pressure on the legislature to gut the statutory term limits measure. The argument advanced by local officials and their supporters was not solely that of self-preservation, but that of functional need. With a sweeping overhaul of local officeholders on the horizon, a supermajority of lawmakers, led by those representing rural areas, agreed, deeming the 1994 term limits measure too draconian.

The political repercussions from the Idaho legislature's February decision to overturn term limits were immediate but not nearly as monumental as the advocates of limited terms had hoped. In late May 2002, 10 House and Senate members were defeated in their primary elections (Popkey 2002c). Redistricting and unpopular budget cuts for public education, though, may have contributed to the defeat of the incumbents as much as any opposition to term limits (Ahrens 2002). More ominously, term limits backers in early May had collected the requisite 43,685 valid signatures to place a statewide popular referendum on the November 2002 ballot (Hoffman 2002d). The popular referendum asked voters if the legislature's repeal of the 1994 term limits initiative should be upheld. Local backers of the popular referendum brimmed with confidence that Idaho citizens would once again demonstrate their commitment to term limitations and “Repeal the Repeal,” as they dubbed their campaign.¹¹

On November 5, however, term limit advocates were dealt a major blow. While seven more incumbent legislators were defeated at the polls, Proposition Two was narrowly approved by Idahoans with 50.2% of the vote.¹²

The popular referendum ballot outcome sustained HB 425, thereby reaffirming the legislature's elimination of term limits for all state and most local elected officials in Idaho. The closeness of the popular vote on Proposition Two led proponents of the measure to claim that voters were confused due to the inverted “yes-means-no” wording of the popular referendum (Hoffman 2002c).¹³ Yet, the statewide vote revealed that there was widespread geographical support for the legislature's decision to abolish term limits. A majority of voters living in 35 of Idaho's 44 counties approved the popular referendum. More significantly, a majority of voters in only four of the state's 19 counties with less than 20,000 residents cast ballots against the referendum to endorse the re-imposition of term limits. The logic advanced by legislators and local officials that term limits would harm rural jurisdictions evidently convinced a slim, but geographically dispersed, majority of Idahoans to sustain the legislature's bold reversal of term limits.

Legislators in the other 18 states with term limits on the books continue to watch the political fallout in Idaho. Local activists in Idaho have already announced plans to place another statewide term limit initiative on the statewide ballot in 2004. Their effort likely will receive financial support once again from national term limitation interest groups that want to see power-hungry Idaho legislators ousted from office. But what many advocates fail to comprehend is that the brouhaha over term limits in Idaho is as much a reflection of the socio-demographic and spatial divisions existing in Idaho as it is of elected officials refusing to accede to the popular will. In Idaho, as in other states, the “metropolitan-outstate cleavage” identified by Key (1956, 227–37) still plays a major role in defining state politics, as “[t]he strand of rural and small-town politics contributes special color and tone to the American political system.” Political observers should continue to heed the historic urban-rural split in state legislatures, especially as rural areas continue to have their political clout diminished by term limits, reapportionment, and other governance issues.