Sunday, November 7, 2010

Campaign update #22

TERM LIMITS WIN FROM COAST TO COAST ON NOV. 2

Citizens in West Palm Beach are not alone in their support of mayoral term limits. Across the nation, voters enacted new municipal term limits or reiterated or strengthened their existing ones. By my current count, there were about 30 local term limits measures on the ballot and all but one passed.

One of these was in Florida, as we saw Cape Canaveral voters impose 8-year term limits on their mayor and council members by a 70-30% margin. Also worth noting is New York City voters voted (for the third time!) to impose 8-year term limits on their mayor and city council. As noted in an earlier post on this blog, New York Mayor Bloomberg overturned the voter-approved term limits law in his city via nefarious means. His effort was soundly repudiated on Nov. 2.

Interestingly, this landslide for term limits isn't solely a function of the Republican (or, more accurately, anti-Democrat) wave of 2010. We saw a similar outcome when the Democrats were ascendant in 2008.