Mike Ramone’s Term Limits Bill Is A Bleeping Joke

Filed in Delaware, Featured by on January 5, 2019

Folks, you just gotta read this bill. Introduced yesterday, along with another Ramone bill that is a bleeping joke, HB 33 purports to be a constitutional amendment creating term limits, but it’s utterly pathetic and ineffectual.  Oh, and unnecessary (more on that in a few sentences).

Here’s the substance of the the bill in its entirety:

Beginning with the Representatives and Senators elected to office in the general election of 2022, no Representative or Senator who will have served 20 or more consecutive years in the same chamber of the General Assembly as of the conclusion of the expiring term of office shall be eligible to be elected for a seat in that chamber of the General Assembly in the following general election. Any year of service that was served prior to the beginning of the term of office following the general election of 2022 shall not be included in determining a candidate’s eligibility for election as a Representative or Senator under this section.

Forget that the language is so confusing that I don’t even think it does what the sponsor says he wants it to do.  The bill’s intent, apparently, is to prevent someone from serving for more than 20 consecutive years in the same chamber. Oh, and the clock doesn’t even start ticking until 2022, meaning that the first legislators to be subject to this bill would be those holding office in 20(bleeping)42! To provide some Year 2042 context, if you look at someone like Bruce Ennis circa that year, he served a long career in the House before being elected to the Senate somewhere around 2008, when Jim Vaughn died. Under this bill, he could theoretically serve in the Senate for another 10 years if he was reelected. Meaning, the bill distinguishes between those who moved from one chamber to the other and those who served in the same body.  If, say, the theory is that someone becomes more corrupt the longer they stay, then why should it matter which chamber they served in? Just what, exactly, is magic about that? Do they revert to being simon-pure when they presumably ascend from representative to senator? Oh, and if they were to reach the 20-year threshold and not seek election to the other chamber, they would simply have to take a 2-year ‘timeout’ before they could run again for the same office.

I see no purpose for this bill other than to enable Rethugs who, remember, kids, don’t give two shits about governing, an issue they can try to wave around during campaign season. I will also point out that the bill was introduced after the longest-serving representative, Deborah Hudson, was knocked off in November. No way that Ramone or the Rethugs introduce the bill otherwise. It would have made her look bad. Or, at least, even worse.

Even if you believe that the bill is well-intentioned, the voters are pretty much taking care of the term limits issue right here in 2018. Hudson was knocked off, Lavelle was knocked off, Mulrooney retired instead of getting knocked off, Bob Marshall retired instead of getting knocked off, Bushweller retired rather than face the voters again.  Local legislative elections are not like elections for national office, where incumbents can use big money to bury challengers. Campaign teams grow older and then dissipate when incumbents go unchallenged for several cycles. Progressive Democrats, at least, have recognized that lazy incumbents make for juicy targets.

The irony, of course, is that Mike Ramone, of all people, introduced this bill. Allow me to quote from this News-Journal article:

“I think many voters feel the longer people are in Dover, the more corrupt or tainted they become,” said Ramone, who first was elected in 2008. “I don’t agree that happens with everyone, but I do think it’s easy for some people to forget why they are there.”

That would be this Mike Ramone and also the Mike Ramone who used his office to get his opponent fired. The Mike Ramone who should be subject to a House Ethics investigation.  When you’re an ethical sewer like Mike Ramone, you don’t need anything approaching 20 years to revel in your own corruption. For some, like Nicole Poore, the ethical ooze starts on Day One. This bill is going nowhere. Hopefully, in 2020, Mike Ramone goes somewhere–into enforced retirement courtesy of the voters.

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  1. jason330 says:

    20-year term limits? why not 100 years?

    I have a term limit bill for Ramone. It is called the next election.

  2. Well, it’s actually 40 years–if, after 20, you move from the House to the Senate.

    A term limit of 40 bleeping years. In the form of a constitutional amendment.