Pat Brown Institute Public Policy Lecture Series (2004, No. 5)
September 15, 2004
Power Lines: Assessing the Impact of Term Limits on UrbanLegislative Influence in California
2:00-3:00 p.m.
Los Angeles Public Library, Central Branch
Meeting Room A
630 W. 5th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90071
Tom Hogen-Esch
Department of Political Science
California State University, Northridge
Lawrence Becker
Department of Political Science
California State University, Northridge
Term limits for state legislators in California were enacted by initiative in 1990 by citizens seeking to return power to “citizen legislators.” The consequences of the change in the legislature have been far-reaching though remarkably little has been done to assess the impact of the changes on the political power of urban and rural communities in California. The literature on legislative politics would suggest that, in the wake of term limits, urban communities, characterized by less partisan competition, would lose some of the advantage they enjoyed as a result of seniority. Additionally, there is the potential for term limits to have an effect on minority representation in the legislature. We argue that one of the important consequences of term limits is their potential to enhance the political power of suburbs and rural communities at the expense of urban areas and to enhance the political power of whites at the expense of minorities. We examine the consequences of term limits and the extent to which these consequences were unintended by examining voting behavior on the term limits question in the 1990 vote.