Philip Blumel: It’s official. He’s running again. Indicted for embezzlement, Representative Duncan Hunter of California won reelection in November, 2018. With his trial looming, Representative Hunter is back on the campaign trail. US Term Limits Executive Director, Nick Tomboulides joins me to discuss the boy wonder’s latest excellent adventure. Hey Nick.
Nick Tomboulides: Good day sir.
Philip Blumel: Okay, so the top news this week is that a federal judge pushed Congressman Hunter’s corruption trial to a date later in January, and that sort of complicates things because guess what, Representative Duncan Hunter is running again to reclaim his seat in the US Congress.
Nick Tomboulides: Does that mean he could theoretically get reelected and then go to prison and serve his term from inside of a prison cell? Is that a possibility?
Philip Blumel: Oh sure it is. Yeah. First he has to get through the election. Of course, he already has been reelected as an indicted member of Congress for the same charges, so I guess it’s absolutely a possibility he would get reelected again. If he does, you know, he faces up to five years in prison for this, both him and his wife, because remember that the charge was that they embezzled some $250,000 from their contributors, which they spent on themselves and their lavish lifestyle.
Philip Blumel: Well this is a serious crime. And yeah, if he gets elected again and convicted and actually sent to prison, there’s nothing in the US Constitution, there’s nothing even in the house rules that says that they have to give up their seat in the US Congress. So sure, you could be a sitting member of Congress in prison.
Nick Tomboulides: Well what if just to save tax payers a couple of bucks, instead of relocating these guys, we just put some metal bars on his Congressional office.
Philip Blumel: That would work too.
Nick Tomboulides: I mean, look, when you reach the point where we are asking lawyers whether a member of Congress can vote from prison, what does that say about your democracy? It’s like, what does that say about the power of incumbency? The guy spent his campaign money on five different extramarital affairs. He was accused of sexual harassment. Is there nothing other than term limits that can pry these girly bastards out of office? If I have to give this guy an award, I would say he is the term limits advocate of the decade. I’m literally worried. I’m worried personally that Duncan Hunter is going to make my job obsolete. He’s going to make the entire US term limits organization obsolete, because his existence, his mere existence and his record is the only case for term limits that anyone will ever need. There it is. Exhibit A, poster child.
Philip Blumel: Well, you recall that US term limits did give him an award. He was a runner-up for the most corrupt politician in the Scammy Awards that we featured on the podcast back in August. So we’ve already definitely recognized him for his contributions to the effort to passing term limits. It was probably helpful that the embarrassing things he got in trouble spending the money on, that he embezzled, was things like you know a $14,000 trip to Italy for him and his wife, and the classic one that keeps coming up in the news articles is that he spent $600 for a first class plane ticket to bring his rabbit from DC back to his district in California.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah, he’s a poster child. He really is the poster child for term limits. And by the way, I just want to give a plug, because this reminds me something I don’t think we’ve talked about on the podcast before. It’s your father George Blumel, has a blog. It’s called posterchildrenfortermlimits.com. Your dad is one of the most steadfast and tenacious term limits activists that I know, and he’s always covering stories like this. So if you really want to get into the nitty gritty a little bit more, go to posterchildrenfortermlimits.com and check it out. It’s a great website.
Philip Blumel: Yep. Let’s go back to your question about what will happen to him if he wins, because I think this is important for us to understand the way the system works. If he’s convicted, the leader of the majority party, which would be Nancy Pelosi, can put pressure on him to step aside, but he wouldn’t have to do it. And that’s the key thing.
Philip Blumel: So the only way to get rid of him would be by expelling him from Congress itself. And that’s only happened a few times. The last time was in 2002 when representatives, James Traficant from Ohio, he was convicted of racketeering and other felonies, and he was refusing to leave. And so they had to boot him out of the Congress. Chris Collins, who pled guilty and is now convicted of insider trading. He was a New York Congressman. When he was convicted, resigned, and said, none of this is an issue. But we have reason to think that Duncan Hunter might be more of a problem, because when he was indicted and representative Ryan tried to pressure him to give up his committee seats, he resisted.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah, he’s already got a track record of getting reelected well under indictment, so do you really think a conviction is going to stop the guy? I’m not so sure. And yet there are tools in the toolbox for Congress. They could do the censuring thing, but that’s sort of like the note home to mommy, you know, little Dunky wasn’t behaving well today in his preschool class, so you know, make sure you set him straight.
Nick Tomboulides: What I’d like to see is expulsion. What I’d really like to see is term limits, something that would make sure that this can’t happen all the time. You know, we just had a member of Congress resign last week because he was convicted of insider trading. Charlie Rangel, I remember, longterm Congressman from New York was censured in 2010 I believe, and he served in Congress for another seven years. So that’s really just a slap on the wrist. We need to see something with a lot more teeth if Duncan Hunter’s going to get held accountable.
Speaker 3: This is a public service announcement.
Philip Blumel: Randall G Holcombe is DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics at Florida State University, a past President of the Public Choice Society, and the author of over a dozen books. We ran into some recent commentary from him on the blog of the Independent Institute where he is a research fellow, and asked to read it for our podcast. It was titled Incumbent Advantage.
Randall Holcombe: A story in my local newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat, discusses the priorities of the next speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Chris Sprowls. One interesting thing about this story is that Representative Sprowls will not become Speaker of the House until after the 2020 election, more than a year away, after he has been reelected to his house seat. The article confidently refers to him as the next speaker, even though first, he has to win reelection, and second enough Republicans must win reelection in the 2020 election for the party to retain its majority in the house. I repeat, the election is more than a year away. How can Representatives Sprowls be so confident that he will be reelected? How can fellow house Republicans be so confident that they will retain a majority of the seats in the house? How can the newspaper be so confident that these two things will happen?
Randall Holcombe: The answer is incumbents almost always win. The notion that somehow voters have the ability to replace elected officials by voting them out of office is a sham, when incumbents win almost all the time. Could it really be the case that incumbents are almost always a better choice than the challengers they face? One response to this incumbent advantage is to have term limits for legislators. I’ve heard critics of term limits say that first, if we don’t like our elected officials, we can vote them out, and second, that term limits require that well-qualified and capable legislators will be replaced by those with little experience, who are ineffective because they don’t understand how legislative institutions work.
Randall Holcombe: The answer to that first point is that it is wrong because of the strong advantage of incumbency. And the answer to the second point is that the job isn’t really that difficult to learn. The President of the United States is term-limited and 36 States have term limits for their governors. Does it really require more experience to be a legislator than a governor? The advantage of incumbency is so great that in the case of Representative Sprowls, the Republicans in the Florida legislature and my hometown newspaper do not even question that he will be the next speaker, even though he must win reelection more than a year from now for that to happen.
Philip Blumel: More news. On Saturday, Louisiana held their state legislature primary elections, and naturally this will greatly affect the likelihood of being able to pass a term limits convention bill in Louisiana during the next session. So let’s check in with Scott Tillman for the details.
Scott Tillman: Hi, this is Scott Tillman, the National Field Director with US Term Limits. Most of us vote for our state house and state Senate members and even your elections, but there are a few states with odd year elections. Louisiana has odd year elections. They voted Saturday, October 12th in a jungle primary. There were many wins for candidates to sign the US term limits pledge, four in the state senate, 18 in the state house, and three state senate pledge signers will proceed to run-off elections, as well as 19 house pledge signers proceeding to run-off elections. If you have access to a candidate, please ask them to sign our pledge. Pledges are available at termlimits.com.
Philip Blumel: Okay, well we’ll parse those results and provide some commentary in next week’s episode of the podcast. We took some action in Louisiana, didn’t we, Nick?
Nick Tomboulides: We did, absolutely. Yeah. We were very active in any district where we had a candidate who had signed the pledge running against someone who had refused to sign. We were doing mailers to educate the voters on that. We were doing digital ads, we were doing some radio. I think we’re doing a little bit of TV as well. We got a very positive reaction from the voters who are fired up, encouraged about term limits. We got a very hostile reaction from the candidates who hate term limits. Some of them, you know, threatening lawsuits against us, accusing us of being part of some vast conspiracy to destroy the very foundation of this Republic, and all sorts of other zany responses based on that.
Nick Tomboulides: But my favorite one came from District One. This guy named Danny McCormick, he’s about as sharp as a bowling ball. He refused our term limits pledge. And look, when that happens, a candidate should really prepare for political pain to be inflicted. That’s just the way it is for 80% of people like this issue. So we ran mail in his district saying that he was against term limits, which was just a fact. And just a few days ago he put up this absolutely crazy Facebook video accusing us of being a …
Philip Blumel: Well, let’s here it.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah, let’s listen to it.
Danny McCormick: Hey guys, I’m Danny McCormick, candidate for Louisiana State Representative. District One. I’m being attacked by George Soros supported group called US term limits. Their name would lead you to believe they are for term limits. They’re not. What they really want is your second amendment rights.
Philip Blumel: Okay.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah. So, we’re accused of being a conspiracy by George Soros to attack the second amendment. I don’t know where …
Philip Blumel: That is insane, that US term limits does not really support term limits? What have I been doing for the last 20 years, 25 years working on this issue? I mean, that’s crazy.
Nick Tomboulides: And we’re all still waiting for our George Soros paychecks to come in. Believe me. I mean, I stand by mail call every day and I haven’t seen a single cent from Georgie boy yet, but who knows. Maybe it’s just in the mail. Yeah, this is really unhinged. It’s crazy that a person like this can rise to the level of running for state representative in a place like Louisiana.
Philip Blumel: The question that brings to my mind, and it’s actually a serious one, is that those points he makes are really, really crazy. So is he really paranoid and delusional, or is he a really cynical liar that has no respect for his audience? Because he made this stuff up, but clearly it’s all geared towards people of a particular political philosophy to be outraged about. And so he made this stuff up to preach to these people. He has no respect for them, that he’s going to lie to their faces like this to get them jumping up and down and hopping mad. So is he crazy or is he a liar?
Nick Tomboulides: I think it’s the latter. I spoke with some friends from Louisiana who have met with this guy before and you know, they’re in favor of a convention, they’re in favor of term limits. And they said when they met with them, he reassured them that he was on their side. And yet, you know, when he talks to these conspiracy kook groups, he tells them the opposite. So you know, he’s not even in office yet and he’s already acting like a typical politician, telling whatever audience exactly what he thinks they want here. And he was getting away with it until we really shine the spotlight on this type of deception. Is that a caller that I hear? Do we have a caller?
Philip Blumel: A caller? It’s not a call-in show.
Nick Tomboulides: It’s not a call in show, but I do hear a phone ringing, so who’s on line one?
Speaker 7: Hello guys, this is George Soros. You may have heard from a political candidate in Louisiana that I am secretly behind the attacks on him because I’m supposedly, you know, such a big fan of term limits. These allegations are true. Danny McCormick, congratulations, you have figured out my evil plan. Once I term limit Congress, I plan on running for all 535 seats myself, so all seats will be held by George Soros. Then I was going to pass a law, changing the name of the United States to the United Soros, changing the bald eagle to the bald Soros, and Mount Rushmore would of course become Mount Soros. Then I would have made all four of the heads on the mountain into my head, and I will appear in photographs taken by tourists and so forth. And I will have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you meddling kids.
Stacey Selleck: Calling all West Virginians. Calling all West Virginians. US term limits is building a grassroots team of volunteers in your state, a key piece in helping pass the term limits on Congress resolution in Charleston in 2020. This volunteer opportunity will be focused and targeted beginning in October and culminating in your attendance at our Capitol Day on January 17th, 2020 at the State House in Charleston, West Virginia. If you live in West Virginia and want to see term limits on Congress, please visit termlimits.com/wv as in West Virginia. Sign up to be part of the grassroots team in West Virginia at termlimits.com/wv.
Nick Tomboulides: We have a little bit of news from the term limits vault that came to our attention this week. We know, we’ve covered at length how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is just ragingly out of touch with the people he supposed to be representing. When President Trump called for term limits, Mitch was the first person to stand up and say, “Under no circumstances will there be any votes on term limits under my watch.” So McConnell is ragingly out of touch. And apparently he’s been that way for 25 years, because what we dug up in the US term limits archive, Mitch McConnell filed a bill in 1995 to repeal the 22nd Amendment, to repeal term limits on the President of the United States. Now nearly every member of Congress, except those who signed the US term limits pledge opposes term limits, but very few of them are ever willing to go out on a limb and say, I am so defiant about this issue that I also think the President’s term limits should be repealed.
Nick Tomboulides: You know, that amendment is so popular. It’s been in place for so long. It’s really like a third rail of politics because people associate repealing the President’s term limits with total corruption, and yet that wasn’t a bridge too far for Mitch McConnell. He was willing to touch that rail. He was willing to stick his neck out there and say, “Presidents should be able to serve for life.” That’s how much Mitch McConnell hates term limits.
Philip Blumel: Think about how defiant against the people that is when you’ve considered the time, 1995. You remember in the early 1990s, the American people in 23 states voted overwhelmingly for congressional term limits. This was the time when term limits activism had reached its pinnacle and its success, and this is even before the 1995 Supreme Court case, US term limits versus Thornton that voided all of those successful referenda.
Philip Blumel: I mean, America was calling for term limits, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, it was winning at the polls, and he turns around and opposes it in the Senate. And at the same time, just to double down on this measure, just to throw it in the voters faces, he comes out with legislation to repeal the term limits on the US president.
Nick Tomboulides: Wow. You know what might’ve happened, I know back then a lot of folks who were working, volunteering for US term limits were asking if term limits are good enough for the President, why isn’t it good enough for Congress? What’s so special about these people that they should be able to serve for life? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Maybe McConnell wanted to avoid that question, so he said, let’s kill the goose. Right?
Philip Blumel: Right.
Nick Tomboulides: That could have been his motive. But thankfully it didn’t go anywhere, but it really does kind of give you insight into Mitch McConnell’s mentality that he is constantly thinking from a pro-Washington perspective. He is thumbing his nose at the people, doesn’t care what we think. As far as he’s concerned, term limits is a settled issue. It has to be opposed because the swamp opposes it and that’s who he works for. He doesn’t work for the citizens of this country.
Philip Blumel: Right. Presidential term limits are proven to be effective. They have been good for the country. That’s why so many other countries in the world have adopted it on their heads of state, and it gives us a lot of confidence that we are right about what we want to do for the US Congress too, along with our experience in the states. So sorry, Senator McConnell, we’re keeping our term limits.
Nick Tomboulides: I wonder if he has the guts to file that bill again. I would bet he does not.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us for another episode of No Uncertain Terms. We’ll be back next week with more color on Louisiana state legislator primary elections. You know, educating voters about legislator’s stances on the term limit’s convention bill is very important, but it’s also a very costly endeavor. Can you please assist with a financial contribution to US Term Limits? You can do so at termlimits.com/donate. We’re out to make Congress work again and make a little history in the meantime. Thank you for being part of the team. We’ll be back next week.
Speaker 9: The revolution isn’t being televised. Fortunately you have the No Uncertain Terms podcast.
Speaker 10: US Term Limits.
Nick Tomboulides: It’s weird because he said … I don’t know if you want to include this or not, but he said, well, you know this Republican disagrees with it. It’s not a settled issue with this Republican. You know, every crazy belief in the world has at least one inherent out there. Right? Like there are people who believe lizard people are ruling the world. There are people who believe birds are …
Philip Blumel: Well I believe that.
Nick Tomboulides: I do too. There are people who believe birds aren’t real. They believe ketchup is a vegetable. There are all kinds of crazy things that people believe. Just because one person believes it, that’s not a justification to ignore the will of the American people.
Philip Blumel: People will believe anything. I mean, anybody that believed that birds are real is just, you know, kidding themselves.
Nick Tomboulides: A lunatic.
Philip Blumel: Okay.