NC state senators propose longer terms

A bill to double the length of North Carolina legislators’ terms would allow lawmakers to spend less time and money fundraising for re-elections.

Republican state Sens. Jeff Tarte, Warren Daniel and Ronald Rabin introduced a bill last month to change the length of all legislators’ terms from two to four years.

The majority of states in the U.S. have representatives serving two-year terms and senators serving four-year terms.

The bill also proposes to limit the number of terms a legislator can serve to four, and it is scheduled for a vote during the legislature’s short session in November.

Tarte said increasing the length of a member’s term not only allows him or her to focus on legislation but also cuts the overall cost of fundraising.

“Hearing from the public, everybody is pretty tired of the tremendous amount of money that a campaign costs and the amount of time we take raising funds,” Tarte said.

Tarte said N.C. politicians spend their second year in office campaigning and fundraising. Lengthening politicians’ terms would reduce the number of elections the state holds and thus save taxpayer dollars.

“This would, in a sense, cut the fundraising need in half. We could spend three years legislating and one year fundraising,” Tarte said. “It would greatly reduce the cost to the taxpayers and to all the contributors.”

Tarte said the bill has conversational support from General Assembly members, and although there has been no formal poll, no preliminary opposition has emerged.

But Virginia Gray, a UNC political science professor, said she finds it unusual that legislators are looking to change both chambers’ legislative terms to four years, as most other states do not operate their governments that way.

“If you have all the members elected at exactly the same time, you can have a sweep or fad of opinion, and that blows everybody out and blows a whole new set of people in,” Gray said. “And everybody is new at the same time, and they don’t know what’s going on.”

She said she does not think that legislators’ need to fundraise for elections every other year has been a huge burden for the state.

Rob Schofield, director of research at N.C. Policy Watch, a progressive public policy organization, said he does not think legislators’ term length is an issue on many people’s radar.

“There’s lots of good government reforms out there that would make the General Assembly a more honest and effective place, and my sense is that this one is not on a lot of people’s lists,” he said.

Tarte said the bill would create an environment easier for average citizens to run for office.

“It would eventually create an opportunity so more people could serve and reduce the overall long-term cost of campaigns because we’ll have fewer of them occurring,” he said.

Contact the desk editor at state@dailytarheel.com.