Here’s a light article on Wisconsin senate president Fred Risser. Risser has been in the Wisconsin legislature since 1957. Yes, that’s 50 years. I really think it’s a shame that so many states have adopted term limits. Guys with the kind of institutional memory and parliamentary savvy that Risser has just don’t exist in those states. Term limits haven’t met any of their original goals about changing the embedded powers, making seats competitive, etc. In many states, as soon as one term-limited Democrat or Republican leaves, they’re replaced by another one who often ran uncontested. In my mind, in some of those states some very real power has devolved into the hands of unelected staff members who may serve the same district through several different same party legislators.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 8:26 am and is filed under blog, electoral politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.