Spokesman says change in Wyo law supersedes 12-year pledge
NOELLE STRAUB Star-Tribune Washington bureau | Posted: Saturday, April 1, 2006 12:00 am
WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., pledged in 2000 that she would not serve more than six terms in Congress, but she will run for her seventh term if she seeks re-election this fall, as expected.
"I will not serve more than 12 years," she said during her 2000 re-election campaign, according to the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. First elected in 1994, Cubin is serving her 12th year now.
Cubin's chief of staff on Friday said the congresswoman had agreed at the time only to abide by state Legislature term limits, which no longer are in effect. The law establishing those term limits was ruled unconstitutional because it passed as a ballot initiative and not as a constitutional amendment.
Cubin first pledged to limit herself to six terms in April 1999, when she was just four months into her third term. At the time, some Democrats were questioning whether Cubin had pledged to limit herself to three terms.
"I didn't promise that I would not run for more than three terms," Cubin said in 1999, according to The Associated Press. "What I said I would do is abide by the state term laws even though I am not required to do that legally. So that would be six terms, not three, because that is currently the law in Wyoming."
A year later, in April 2000, Cubin made the additional comment that she "will not serve more than 12 years."
Cubin's staff declined this week to make her available for an interview about the term limit issue. But Cubin Chief of Staff Tom Wiblemo responded in a written statement.
"Mrs. Cubin has stated in the past, and the record shows, that she would abide by the term limit laws set forth for the Wyoming State Legislature, even though she was not legally bound by those laws," Wiblemo said. "However, those laws were later declared unconstitutional, and therefore there are no term limits for the Wyoming State Legislature."
"It is important to note that if term limits are not applied to all 435 members of the U.S. House, they put small states like Wyoming at a frightening disadvantage," Wiblemo added. "As long as Congress rewards seniority, imposing term limits only on Wyoming's congressional delegation would be unilateral disarmament for our state's interests in Washington."
Asked about the specific 12-year comment in 2000, Wiblemo declined to add to his statement.
While Cubin hasn't held a formal 2006 campaign announcement, she announced her intention to run for re-election to the Wyoming Republican Central Committee, state GOP Chairman Drake Hill said. She has a "Cubin for Congress" office in Casper headed by Bill Maiers, who ran her last campaign.
Cubin's Democratic opponent, Gary Trauner, noted that if Cubin formally announces her re-election bid, Wyoming voters will have a choice to make "whether they think their representatives should be held to their word."
"One of the reasons I'm running is to bring integrity and responsibility and honesty back to our national government," he said. "There's a culture up there where those qualities are lacking in general. I guess it's up to the people of Wyoming to make a decision whether they want to hold their representatives and elected officials to those qualities."
Trauner declined on Friday to make a term-limit pledge himself but he said he thinks the founding fathers wanted a "citizen legislature."
"I clearly believe public service is about quality, not quantity," he said. "It's not about the numbers of years. Institutional memory is important and having experience, but it's probably healthier to have regular turnover, because that's what the founding fathers wanted."
When Cubin first ran for Congress in 1994, Wyoming law limited members of the U.S. House and Wyoming Legislature to three terms in office. State voters had passed the measure as a ballot initiative in 1992 with 77 percent voting in favor.
But in 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down term limits for members of Congress. That year, the Legislature changed state law to allow state House members to serve six terms, or 12 years, in office.
In 1999, Democrats criticized Cubin for deciding to run for a fourth term, saying she had pledged to abide by the original three-term state term limits. But by that time the state law had been changed to a 12-year limit, and Cubin said she would follow that limit instead.
In 2004 the Wyoming Supreme Court found that the law that term-limited state lawmakers was unconstitutional because it passed by ballot initiative, and would only be legal if passed by constitutional amendment.
Cubin has said she supported the term limits proposed in the Republican "Contract with America" in 1994 because state voters had showed strong support for the idea.
While in the House, Cubin voted several times in favor of term limits, including for a constitutional amendment in 1995. But Cubin said at the time that she did not personally favor term limits. She argued that unless all members of Congress are term-limited, those who leave put their states at a disadvantage because they lose seniority.
Paul Jacob, spokesman for the group U.S. Term Limits which advocates mandatory term limits, said he hoped Cubin would "follow her commitment" and decide to retire.
"She was well aware of what Congress was all about when she made her pledge," Jacob said. "And it's the kind of thing where people should keep their word."
Jacob said no one who has broken a term-limit pledge has lost re-election, but said it adds to the general distrust of Congress.
Star-Tribune capital bureau reporter Joan Barron contributed to this report.