Term limits controversy about rights

Term limits advocates argued on Friday that there is no fundamental right under the Idaho Constitution to be a candidate for office.

Deputy Attorney General Jim Carlson and a lawyer for Citizens for Term Limits urged the Idaho Supreme Court to reverse an earlier ruling that voided term limits. Sixth District Judge Randy Smith voided the term limits initiative approved by voters in 1994.

"Judge Smith found a new right ... he found a fundamental right to be a politician," Carlson told the Idaho Supreme Court. Carlson described the lower-court judge's reasoning as "tortured."

"I implore the court in this instance to let democracy work," Carlson said.

But attorneys for legislative leaders and local elected officials said that would violate voters' right to cast ballots for the candidates of their choice, and would deny veteran officeholders their constitutional suffrage rights.

"It's scary for me to hear somebody say that we have to throw out the constitution in order to have democracy survive," said University of Idaho law professor Dennis Colson, representing House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, Senate President Pro Tem Robert Geddes and their supporters in Burley and Soda Springs.

The Supreme Court's justices sat quietly through most of the term limits supporters' arguments, but repeatedly interrupted the other side with probing questions and comments.

"I don't take anything out of the fact that the questions were only to one side," said Coeur d'Alene attorney Scott Reed, who argued on behalf of local officials. "I think both sides have presented to the court the entire issue."

Both sides hope the five-member Supreme Court will rule on the question before the March 25 start of candidate filing for the 2002 election. Justice Daniel Eismann sat with his colleagues to hear the arguments and participated in the questioning, despite the fact that term limits advocates spent more than $52,000 helping get him elected last year.

Those supporters had mounted an independent campaign, and Eismann has said he doesn't think the expenditure should keep him from hearing the case.

If the law is upheld, many local officials across the state including Kootenai County Commissioner Ron Rankin and Kootenai County Clerk Dan English - couldn't run for re-election in this spring's primary election. Half of Idaho's lawmakers would appear on the ballot for the last time.

"This decision will have as much impact on the future of government in Idaho as any that has ever occurred in our history," said state Controller J.D. Williams. Williams, who sat in the overflow crowd watching the arguments Friday, intervened in the case along with state Treasurer Ron Crane, asking that any decision in the case apply to statewide elected officials along with legislators and local officials.

Don Morgan, head of Hayden Lake-based Citizens for Term Limits, said, "I thought our counsel did a brilliant job. ... This is a big case, this is a very important case. It will decide whether we're going to let judges invent new rights and change our constitution."

The initiative, approved by 59 percent of voters in 1994, limits the service of county commissioners and school trustees to six years in any 11-year period. All other state, county and city officers are limited to eight years of service in any 15-year period. A bid to limit federal service in Congress was thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1995.

The Legislature has repeatedly considered modifying or repealing the term limits law, but hasn't done so, stopped in part by a veto threat from Gov. Dirk Kempthorne. Ultimately, a lawsuit filed on behalf of 21 city, county and school district officeholders led to Smith's decision striking it down.

The former state GOP chairman wrote that suffrage rights guaranteed by the Idaho Constitution include "the right to vote, the right to hold office and the right to access the ballot in order to hold office."

Smith found that the initiative infringes on those rights by preventing candidates' names from appearing on the ballot after they have held the office for a set number of terms.

On Friday, Carlson said the Idaho Constitution authorizes the Legislature to place "qualifications, limitations, and conditions" on suffrage rights. "Why do the voters, by initiative, not have that same opportunity?"

But Reed argued that the law imposes an absolute prohibition on ballot access that goes well beyond setting age and residency requirements for candidates.

"It has nothing to do with whether you're qualified. It's simply saying, `No, you can't go there anymore,'" Reed said.

He said the provision allowing additional qualifications for suffrage is archaic language that was intended by framers of the Idaho Constitution to keep Mormon settlers from voting in Idaho.

Colson said his clients and other veteran officeholders should not sacrifice their right to seek office because of their electoral success and popularity with voters.

But Carlson said that was overstating the impact of term limits. Longtime officeholders still can run as write-ins, he noted.

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