Battle over term limits roils Texas governor’s race

By DAVE MONTGOMERY

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has revived the debate over term limits for Texas governors.

AUSTIN – At the end of his first term as president of the Texas Republic, Sam Houston had to leave office before seeking another term three years later. Under the republic’s constitution, the storied Texas hero was barred from serving two consecutive terms.

Nearly 170 years later, the on-again, off-again question of term limits for Texas chief executives is now emerging as an ingredient in the roiling Republican primary battle between incumbent Gov. Rick Perry and U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

In seeking to retire the state’s longest-serving governor, Hutchison wants to limit Texas governors to eight years in office, asserting that Perry would be in power far too long if he won an unprecedented third four-year term.

In response, the Perry camp is accusing Hutchison of being disingenuous, saying she backtracked on early pledges to seek term limits for members of Congress and broke a campaign promise by winning re-election to a third six-year term in 2006.

Consequently, political longevity and tenure are becoming widening themes in a race that has already divided the two senior office-holders on a host of other issues. Whenever Hutchison reminds voters that Perry would be in office for a total of 14 years if he wins re-election, Perry’s campaign points to Hutchison’s 16 years in the Senate to depict her as a classic Washington insider out of touch with Texas.

Hutchison’s proposal

Hutchison’s high-profile call for gubernatorial term limits is also resurrecting a topic that has largely been off the table in Texas politics for more than a decade. The last serious push for term limits on Texas office-holders was in the mid-1990s when then-Gov. George W. Bush threw his support behind ultimately unsuccessful legislation to limit state officeholders, including the governor and lieutenant governor, to 12 years in office.

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