State Gop Leader Backs Away From Term Limits Bruneel Says State Law Was Aimed At Congress, Not Local Offices

Still another leading Idaho Republican is hinting at a change of heart on the state’s term limits law.

State House GOP floor leader Frank Bruneel, who circulated petitions to impose the service limitation all the way down to school boards and declared his support publicly five years ago, now says members of Congress - not state and local officials - were the real target of the policy’s advocates.

“Idaho is the cow that got gunshot when the term limits advocates were aiming at the D.C. elk,” Bruneel is quoted as saying in this summer’s Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry newsletter.

The Lewiston businessman is only the latest to argue - unsuccessfully to date - that voter support for the sweeping term limits initiative in 1994 was a response to what many saw as congressional intransigence to public opinion and not dissatisfaction with state and local officeholders.

And when the U.S. Supreme Court voided the limits on Congress, term limits skeptics contended there was little reason to retain the service restrictions for the other offices - eight years in 15 for state, city and countywide officers and six years in 11 for county commissioners and school board members.

This spring, then-state Republican Chairman Ron McMurray withdrew the support for term limits he voiced during his first unsuccessful run for Congress in 1994.

And even Republican Rep. Helen Chenoweth, who is abiding by her self-imposed three-term limit and retiring from Congress next year, has had second thoughts about the concept.

Bruneel supported legislation last winter to exempt school board members and county officials from the restrictions. And his latest comment was ballyhooed by the business association, which labeled failure to completely repeal term limits last winter as a major legislative disappointment.

A complete repeal was poised to pass both houses last winter until GOP Gov. Dirk Kempthorne made clear he would veto such a bill - not necessarily because he agreed with term limits but because in the three previous elections voters had endorsed them.

But the support has been eroding.

Term limits originally passed with 59 percent of the vote, failing in just nine of the 44 counties. Two years later, another term limits question got 56 percent and failed in 13 counties. And last year a nonbinding referendum on term limits passed with just 53 percent of the vote, failing in 18 of the 44 counties. In 11 more, it passed by less than 200 votes in a campaign almost exclusively financed by out-of-state interests and the chief proponent, Donna Weaver of Hayden.

TERM LIMIT LAW NOT YET AFFECTING LAWMAKERS Idaho lawmakers won’t feel the pinch of term limits until 2004. Statewide officeholders will be affected in 2002, and some county commissioners could be kept off the re-election ballot as soon as next year. The initiative took effect on Jan. 1, 1995, but legislators had already taken office on Dec. 1, 1994. That meant their first two-year term, starting with the 1994 election, didn’t count. So the term-limits clock started ticking for them with the 1996 election, according to the Idaho Secretary of State’s office. Statewide officeholders took office Jan. 1, and their limits started right away. Under the term limits law, office-holders who are prevented from appearing on the ballot still could be elected as write-ins.