Kevin McCrea has been calling for term limits for years. It has been on his website since the day he entered the race. It is part of the changes in his first 100 days that he has promised to make. The promise can be seen on his website, www.KevinMcCrea.com, and is on all of his printed literature.
Today, Sam Yoon has come out and pledged to serve two terms only if elected and to install term limits for the Mayor of Boston. When did Sam come to this conclusion? It certainly wasn’t four years ago when he was wearing a “Labor for Menino” sticker on his lapel while Menino was running for his fourth term. It certainly has not been in the last 3.5 years while he has been on the City Council and he could have introduced legislation to make term limits the law in Boston. He didn’t talk about this while he was negotiating back room deals with Mayor Menino over the future of the Winthrop Square Garage.
Once again we have a politician promising something when it is convenient for their election bid. Remember, Tom Menino also promised to serve only two terms, but conveniently didn’t change the law to make it a requirement.
This is similar to the candidates position on the BRA. Kevin McCrea has been calling for the elimination of the BRA since he ran for City Council in 2005, and is an important part of his platform. Yoon was silent on the future of the BRA during his years on the council, but now that he wants the top job in the City he is following McCrea’s lead on eliminating this independent, quasi-government agency and installing planning and development agencies which have citizen oversight.
McCrea says, “I’m glad that Sam is following my lead on these issues, I wish he would be honest and give me credit for introducing them first to the campaign. I’m happy to give credit and share credit, example Sam should be lauded for introducing the Zipcar concept to city vehicle usage. However, we already have a Mayor who steals ideas and doesn’t share the credit, which leads to people not wanting to get involved and participate, which is what we need to help reform City government.”
Sorry, I’m against term limits on principle.
Many argue that they open up the political process.
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p>Anyway, the constitution is a democratically created document insofar as it can be amended by elected representatives.
Want to keep the mayor? You can. Want to throw him/her out after only one term? You can.
Term limits take options away from the citizens and imply that the voters are too stupid or lazy to vote for an alternative. It’s anti-democratic.
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p>Furthermore, pledges to only serve n terms are practically worthless, since most politicians who make such pledges go back on them once they are in office. How about this as a compromise: binding term limit pledges. Someone running for office could make a binding declaration that they would only serve a specified number of terms. If elected then they would be legally bound by their pledge and would be disqualified from running again once their limit expired.
That’s what happened to President Zelaya in Honduras when he (allegedly) tried to arrange to beat the term limit.
My dad is thinking of retiring there.
Your press release contains some logical flaws. You criticize Yoon for pledging to serve two terms, as if a pledge to serve a limited number of terms is the same thing as a call for mandatory term limits. Those are two very different things and it is disappointing to see you conflate the two.
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p>It is also disappointing to see you caught up in petty arguments of who had what position first. It really doesn’t matter.
Nothing is conflated. Yoon expressly calls for a mandatory term limit in his press release:
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p>And it is VERY important who advocated for what positions first: It’s about leadership, boldness, vision and courage. Kevin McCrea took the political (and personal) risk of demanding the abolition of the BRA back in 2005, when he ran for City Council. At that time, I asked Sam Yoon if he’d support Councilor Felix Arroyo’s Home Rule Petition to replace the BRA with a real planning department, and he said absolutely not — because it wouldn’t fly and he didn’t want to waste political capital on it. I realized then that Yoon would be the kind of politician who’d decide what positions to take by seeing what’s politically safe, after someone else took the heat for opening the door for controversial (but right) solutions.
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p>McCrea also would rescind the 2004 ordinance perpetuating the BRA’s urban renewal plans (that’s the vote that was the culmination of a year and a half of secret Council meetings, about which McCrea and I successfully sued the council for Open Meeting Law violations), so that the BRA could be totally and finally eliminated. I asked Yoon, a couple of years ago, to file for that vote rescission, since the BRA has failed to comply with the reporting requirements on which the approval ordinance was conditioned. He told me to go ask Felix Arroyo to do it. But now, since he has filed a Home Rule Petition on the planning department, I’m hoping he’ll follow McCrea’s lead on rescinding the vote, too.
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p>I’ll be happy to see these things done by Yoon (although I’m not holding my breath; he often starts things without following up, like his transparency crusade that began, and ended, last December — and yes, transparency was another McCrea-first promise, and he walked the walk). But in choosing a mayor, it’s crucially important to understand who takes a leadership role and who waits to see which way the wind is blowing.
Go back and read Kevin’s press release. There is no mention of Yoon’s calling for term limits. Thus the logical flaw. To make his point effectively he should have stated explicitly that Yoon was jumping on the term limits band wagon.
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p>Although I have serious doubts about Menino serving another term, I really don’t like term limits at all, and am disappointed that both Yoon and McCrea appear to be calling for them.
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p>My fear with McCrea is the opposite of yours for Yoon. I am afraid that he will push too many politically unfeasible and end up getting nothing done.
Being the first person to state an idea does not necessarily make one a leader. To be a leader, you need to get people to follow you. Has Kevin McCrea done that? It remains to be seen. So far there is not much evidence of that. He has raised very little money from very few people. There is no visible manifestation of widespread support. I have seen exactly one McCrea sign in the parts of Roslindale, JP, West Rox, and Hyde Park I have been to recently. (BTW, Flaherty is currently beating the pants off everyone else in campaign signage where I have been).
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p>When I read Kevin petulantly complaining about Yoon “stealing” his idea for mayoral term limits, it really turns me off. It is not like he invented the concept of term limits or is even the first person to suggest that for Boston. Why can’t he be more diplomatic and just say something like “I am glad that Sam Yoon has decided to join me in my call for term limits” and leave it at that?
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p>Mayors are not inventors. They are executives. If they have good ideas themselves, great, but it is far more important that the recognize and adopt the ideas of others (and yes give credit where credit is due).
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p>And why is McCrea wasting so much energy beating on Yoon when it seems like Menino and Flaherty are the people to beat in this race? It gives the impression that he is more interested in lashing out at all his perceived rivals than in building coalitions to get things done.
Assuming Menino wins and serves out his term (both more likely than not, if you ask me), Boston will have had three mayors from 1967 through 2014. During this time, we have had nine presidents (and it could be ten if Obama doesn’t win re-election).
although it’s usually a Republican issue against Senator Kennedy, etc.
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p>let the people have their say
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p>Note: Governor is not term lmiited either
seems my spelling is tonight
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p>oh, and BTW, Councilor Yoon was recently in Chicago, extolling some of their programs. Guess how many terms Mayor Daley has served? Hint – Ray Flynn was Mayor when Daley was elected.
I dislike term limits, I think they’re anti-democratic. I understand, however, that they’re intended to counterbalance built in incumbency protection which is even more anti-democratic. If we have to have the rest of the system as is, I can grudgingly accept a term limit, but will continue to hate it.
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p>What I’d like to see is much more focus on ending other aspects of the system that overprotect incumbents. Public financing, elections on a holiday or weekend, nonpartisan highly-publicized debates, etc.
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p>One thing I don’t like at all is pledges to term-limit oneself even if there are no enforced term limits. I think that’s a way for a public officeholder to disarm. If there’s no term limit rule in place, their replacement won’t be limited. I can see nothing gained by such a pledge. Much as I support Sam Yoon, I disagree with him on this.
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p>2. Sam Yoon calling for it now? It’s too gimmicky. It suggests that Yoon can’t beat Menino on merit, so call for a rules change. Bah.
Would it still be “anti-democratic”?
It’s always possible for voters to choose a limiting, undemocratic thing, like a gay marriage ban.
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p>If you say “Voters want term limits,” I say “They have them.” People should recognize that limiting terms limits their choices as well as limiting politicians’ careers.
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p>I find — and I’m not saying you’re doing this — that people who advocate term limits just hate politicians. Well, they should redirect that energy rather than limit our choices.
if he could have? Does anyone believe that he wouldn’t have stood a chance against Obama, running on a platform of “finally winning the war on terror” or some such foolishness?
2. How come so few people run for office in Massachusetts? Don’t you think the financial advantages of incumbents are so discouraging as to generally limit average citizens’ political ambitions? Why is money used as the number one gauge of candidate credibility?
but to me, term limits are the cane toad method of solving the problem.
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p>There are plenty of other ways to deal with incumbent power that don’t involve removing choice from voters.
introduced to combat the problem of lots of bugs, the toad is itself a pest. Creating a problem to solve a problem often results in doubling the number of problems.
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p>I see the power of incumbency as a problem.
I see term limits as a problem.
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p>I don’t like the idea of introducing one problem to mitigate another problem. Lets use other ways of reducing the problem of powerful incumbency.
and much more elegant than a toad.
Even for open seats, running is expensive. Why give up your right to vote for someone you like?
especially after they’ve been in power for awhile.
Two points:
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p>I think term limits act to disenfranchise the electorate, because the permanent government of lobbyists, consultants, and political professionals stays in place, and gains power at the expense of the franchised public.
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p>When Menino ran the first time in ’93 he limited himself to two terms.
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p>I think the argument obscures the point that the best insurance of effective government is an informed and organized public, in its absence term limits are meaningless.
This is a good point to consider. Does pol rotation tip the power over to a permanent lobbyist class? Maybe, but maybe lobbyists get more leverage through long-term personal relationships with safely entrenched pols who get to know the games and have more time to work the system. With new, idealistic electeds every few years, lobbyists have to start all over every time, persuading and inveigling. On the other hand…maybe term-limited pols figure they only have a few years to grab up their loot and arrange their golden retirement, so they are more subject to corrupting influences….
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p>In any case, it is true that term limitation is not the complete answer. Campaign finance reform and other anti-corruption measures are needed. But above all, as you say: an informed and organized public is the essential part — and, unfortunately, the most elusive.
With term limits, conscientious incumbents are marginalized (given the time that it takes to get up to speed on both the policy and political implications of issues), to the detriment of both the electorate as a whole and marginalized populations.
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p>The perfect case of such negative – and foreseen – consequences is California, where term limits and structural gerrymandering destroyed competent politics on both the left and right, while giving effective power to nonelected political professionals who were able to game the system, both legislatively, and through the referendum process, on behalf of corporate clients.
I had to keep “6”ing him.
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p>Term limits simply limit my ability as a voter to cast a meaningful ballot for the candidate of my choice if he or she is term limited.
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p>Jim C has it spot on – the voters already have term limiting power.