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- <text id=92TT0610>
- <title>
- Mar. 23, 1992: American Notes:Term Limit
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Mar. 23, 1992 Clinton vs. Tsongas
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 31
- American Notes
- TERM LIMIT
- Nothing Is Forever
- </hdr><body>
- <p> "It's over," growled California assembly speaker Willie Brown.
- He was referring to his career: the U.S. Supreme Court had just
- rejected his yearlong campaign to stave off California's
- term-limit law, and the flamboyant Brown, the state's most
- powerful Democrat, has been in the legislature for 27 years--more than four times longer than the new law permits. He even
- compared term limits to the infamous poll taxes that long kept
- blacks from voting in the old South. "Poll taxes were designed
- to limit choices. Term limits were designed to limit choices,"
- fumed Brown. "One wore a sheet and the other didn't."
- </p>
- <p> The California voters' initiative will force the entire
- 80-member assembly out of office in 1996. Narrowly passed in
- 1990, it imposes maximum terms of six years for assembly members
- and eight for state senators. Now that it has been upheld by
- the highest court, at least 12 other states from Oregon to
- Florida may put similar initiatives on their ballots.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-