Research
Articles
Seth E. Masket, University
of Denver
Jeffrey B. Lewis, University of California, Los Angeles
A Return to Normalcy? Revisiting the Effects of
Term Limits on Competitiveness and Spending in
California Assembly Elections
Term limits advocates argued that their reform would make state legislative campaigns
more competitive and less expensive, and limited early studies suggested that
it may have achieved those goals. But now, with evidence from more than a decade
of experience with reform, we re-examine the effects of terms limits on electoral
competitiveness and campaign spending in California Assembly elections. We find
that while term limits initially suppressed campaign spending, they did not check its
growth for long. Today, California's state legislative elections are as expensive in real
dollars as they have ever been. In terms of electoral competitiveness, state legislative
incumbents are in no more danger of losing their seats today than they were in the
pre-term limits days of the late 1980s. Furthermore, open-seat races are not any more
competitive under term limits than before them; however, we do find a modest, but
significant, decline in incumbents' average winning margin since the imposition of
term limits. But since term limits have made fewer incumbents eligible to run for
office, this incumbency advantage helps fewer people than it once did. Yet, for the
most part, rather than being supplanted by citizen-legislators, career politicians have
simply adapted to the constraints imposed by term limits.
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