Chenoweth Considers 2002 Run Backers Say Skipping A Term Would Fulfill Term Limits Pledge

Helen Chenoweth is considering a run for her congressional seat in 2002, after sitting out one term.

That doesn’t violate her term limits pledge, her staff and supporters say. Even term limits backers agree.

“She is maintaining a very real option,” to run in 2002, said Chenoweth campaign director Graham Paterson. “How serious is she about exercising that option? That is a decision to be made following her successful completion of this term.”

Chenoweth, whose third term in the House of Representatives ends next year, promised “she will serve no more than three consecutive terms for the same seat,” Paterson said.

Chenoweth could sit out every sixth year and never violate that pledge, he said.

Donna Weaver, founder of Citizens for Term Limits in Hayden Lake, agrees Chenoweth would be keeping her word.

“She said she’d serve for six years,” and step out,” Weaver said.

“That’s rotation in office.”

Weaver was with Chenoweth in September 1994 when the congressman took the term limits pledge as part of the Republican Contract with America. And Weaver and her husband were the first to donate to Chenoweth’s first run for the office.

They are still strong supporters. Weaver doesn’t believe Chenoweth will take that 2002 run.

“Is she going to run against the Republican who wins in 2000?” Weaver asked. “We’re going to have the million candidate march in the next primary; it’s going to be a hardfought contest. I’d be shocked if she would do that.”

Fred Glienna, president of the Kootenai County Democratic Club, agrees Chenoweth can make a run for office in 2002 and technically not break her pledge. Taking two years off means she would not be using the power of incumbency to retain her office.

“I’m opposed to term limits, period,” Glienna said. Still, “I like the idea of a politician adhering not only to the letter of what they promise, but the spirit.

“This certainly violates the spirit of what she said.”

Chenoweth raised speculation of breaking her term limits promise in November when she filed paperwork to form a campaign committee for the year 2000. Her campaign staff said then it was simply a formality required to raise money to retire campaign debt.

Even so, her staff now drops hints of another way around term limits.

“I suppose you could draft a scenario where there’s a write-in campaign (in 2000) and she won,” Paterson said.

Waffling on term-limits pledges is proliferating as the deadline for making good on the promise draws near.

“If we break this contract, throw us out,” U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Spokane, said in 1994 of the term-limiting Contract with America. Now Nethercutt refuses to say whether he will adhere to that promise.

In late February, Nethercutt spokesman Ken Lisaius said the Congressman would decide whether to run for a fourth consecutive term after “consultation and conversations with the people of Washington state.

Reps. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., Tillie Fowler, R-Fla., and Marty Meehan, D-Mass., also have yet to announce whether they will keep their word.