The witty English writer Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) once casually remarked to James Boswell, his future biographer, “Depend on it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” The same is true in politics. Whenever the political class – career politicians and their special interest financers – feel hemmed in by the voters, whether it’s through term limits or fair re-districting, they fight back like a man going to the gallows.

I’ve closely observed this attitude for almost three decades. In November 1990, California voters had finally had enough with a Legislature corruptly and cynically run by Speaker Willie Brown – the self-described “Ayatollah of the Assembly.” They wanted to clean house after several legislators had been convicted and gone to jail for taking bribes in exchange for votes in the FBI’s sting operation called “Shrimp-Scam.” The voters, despite the urgent pleas from the political establishment that the sky would fall and millions of dollars in negative advertising, enacted Proposition 140, which restricts an Assembly member to 6 years of service and each Senator to 8 years of service. The efforts by high-priced lawyers representing incumbent legislators to overturn the will of the voters failed. Soon after the term limit law went into effect and record numbers of minorities and women were elected to the California Legislature.

Ten years after the enactment of Proposition 140, the political class continued their efforts to subvert our representative democracy by shifting more power from voters to themselves. Republican and Democrat legislators and Governor Gray Davis cynically teamed up to re-draw district boundaries to guarantee that all incumbent legislators would be re-elected. Then incumbent legislators and special interest groups also teamed up to place Proposition 45 on the March 2001 ballot. This initiative would have allowed incumbent legislators extend their terms if they gathered signatures from 20% of the voters in their districts. This would not have been hard to do because special interest money would have paid for the signature gathering effort. The voters saw through the ruse. Despite a 10-1 spending advantage for proponents, Proposition 45 was defeated 58% to 42%.

The political class is once again chafing under the term limits law. Assembly Speaker Nunez and Senator Pro Tem Perata knew that their terms of office in the Legislature would be over in November 2008. So in late 2006, they collaborated with Governor Schwarzenegger to move the presidential primary election from June 2008 to February 5, 2008. In the ultimate cynical move, they created the special February election not to give Californians more influence in the selection of the Democrat and Republican nominees for President (21 other states vote the same day so our vote is diluted), but to place an initiative on the ballot that would, if passed, allow them to extend their terms and run for re-election in their gerrymandered districts in November 2008. Influential political donors paid to put Proposition 93 on the February 5 ballot.

In an attempt to fool the voters, Attorney General Jerry Brown, the ultimate career politician, wrote the summary for Proposition 93 in the Official Voter Information Guide and described it as “limiting” the amount of time that legislators may serve from 14 years to 12 years. He doesn’t mention the reality that most Assembly members don’t run for the State Senate seats, so permitting a legislator to serve 12 years in one house increases the amount of time a legislator may serve. Most importantly, he doesn’t mention that Proposition 93 would dramatically increase the terms for 80% of incumbent legislators, including Speaker Nunez and Senator Perata. Tens of millions of dollars from special interest groups are pouring in to pass Proposition 93. Legislators, who can’t balance the state budget, pass real health care reform, keep criminals in prison, and assure the reliability of power and water supplies shouldn’t be rewarded with more time in office. Legislators who travel the world on junkets paid for directly and indirectly by special interests want to extend the good life rather than concentrating on making often difficult public policy decisions.

The English writer Oscar Wilde (1854-900) once asked, “What is a cynic?” He answered, “A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” On February 5, voters should tell the political class in a loud and clear voice that we value our representative democracy and don’t accept their cynical attempt manipulate us into giving them even more power to serve the special interests and campaign contributors rather than the public interest.

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