Broken Term-Limit Pledge
Promised Two Terms Only
Kay first won her Senate seat in a 1993 special election, when Lloyd Bentsen was tapped to serve as Secretary of the Treasury. And she was promising to limit herself to two terms from the start.
The Dallas Morning News, May 22, 1993:
Ms. Hutchison said senators should be restricted to two six-year terms...
"I believe our founding fathers were right in maintaining that we should have citizen legislators, people who work for a living, who live with the taxes, who live with the mandates, who go to Washington and do service and come back to live with the laws that they passed."
When running for re-election in 1994, term limits were still a key issue for her. From The Austin-American Statesman on November 9 of that year (emphasis added):
Hutchison said her re-election was a mandate for her to return to Washington to fight for a balanced budget amendment, tax breaks for homemakers, fewer regulations for small business owners, a strong national defense, and term limitations.
"I've always said that I would serve no more than two full terms. This may be my last term or I could run for one more. But no more after that. I firmly believe in term limitations and I plan to adhere to that," Hutchison said.
Co-Sponsored Term Limit Legislation
And when she got to the Senate, she kept up the term-limit fervor of the 1994 Republican "Revolutionaries". She didn't just talk about term-limits, she supported constitutional amendments that would make them the law.
In 1995, she co-sponsored Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN)'s S. J. Res. 21,, "Proposing a constitutional amendment to limit congressional terms."
And in 1997, she co-sponsored another try by Sen. John Ashcroft (R-MO): S. J. Res. 16, also titled "Proposing a constitutional amendment to limit congressional terms."
Neither of those made it very far. But she sure sounded like she meant it, didn't she?
Running for a 3rd Term
Fast-forward ten years, to the end of Sen. Hutchison's second full Senate term. Rumors swirled that she might run for Governor of Texas. That doesn't sound much like a "citizen legislator" who "come[s] back to live with the laws they passed" to me, but it's a different enough office from U.S. Senator that one could give her the benefit of the doubt.
One could, that is, if she had actually stepped down from her Senate seat to make the run, but of course she didn't. Too much of an uphill battle against sitting Republican Governor Rick "Goodhair" Perry, perhaps. Regardless, here we are witnessing Kay doing just what she promised she wouldn't do: run for a third Senate term.Bottom Line
Sen. Hutchison clearly believed Senators shouldn't serve more than two terms. She actively supported amending the U.S. Constitution to require such limits of all Senators. She seemed to feel that term-limits were so important, she pledged to voluntarily limit her own Senate career to two terms. But now, she has broken that pledge.
What other promises will she make on the campaign trail, only to discard them when they're no longer convenient? What other legislation will she support to limit political power, so long as it doesn't limit her own?
