Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis revealed how he feels about “term limits” for lawmakers and elected public officials at an event in his state earlier this week.
At the event, in which he signed a measure putting progress monitoring assessments into state law, the GOP governor said he is in favor of term limits for politicians and school board members.
When asked about House Bill 1467, which establishes a 12-year term limit for school board members, DeSantis went a step further.
“The term limits for school board — I’m a big believer in term limits. I think it should be eight years, two terms,” he said.
“They did three terms, which, you know, I mean, that’s — that’s — that’s fine, and I wouldn’t veto the bill just over that, but if it were a standalone measure I would have insisted on — on just two terms for school board members because I think that that’s enough time for you to go, serve, get stuff done,” DeSantis began.
“I mean honestly, you know, you mentioned losing some of these legislators, I’m a huge believer in term limits. I think what term limits do is, you know, it tells these legislators your time is limited, you come in — leave a legacy. Instead, in Washington, where they don’t have term limits, what is the incentive to do?” he asked.
“The incentive for them is to get elected and stay there as long as they can and to stay there for decades, create these little fiefdoms, and it’s all about just going back in. And I think, like someone like [indecipherable] knew he was going to be the speaker for two years, he built up a legislative portfolio leading into that and he knew he had to get the big things he wanted to accomplish done,” DeSantis continued.
“He wasn’t going to have — he wasn’t going to be able to be the speaker for 10 years or 15 years. I think that’s good because what it does is it — it puts more of a focus on substantive achievements rather than posturing for the next election. So I’m a big believer in term limits. I think the eight years in the House is good, the eight years in the Senate in Florida is good,” the governor said.
“I would like to have seen that in school board as well. Look, is the twelve the worst thing in the world?” he asked. “Maybe it could be good.”
Because we do have some in this state that has been really entrenched for a long time. I think you go in, achieve some things and then — and then go,” he explained.
“And so that’s really the model that I’d like to do. And I could tell you, people sometimes ask me, like, you know, Florida’s run so much better than D.C., what — what could D.C. do? And — and one of the things I said that if I could wave a magic wand there’s a number of things I would do, but one of them is term limits for members of Congress,” DeSantis continued.
“If we could term limit members of Congress you would be able to bring in blood, you’d be able to bring in new ideas, people would have an incentive to go and say I may only have three terms in the U.S. House, I want to get something done, instead of kind of doing what they’ve really gone into a — a big morass just in terms of how they do business,” he said.
“And so — so that provision is something that you know, I think, would have been better with, I know — I think Chris wanted it today. I think the Senate wanted to, but they have the compromise, but nevertheless, that’s — that’s that,” he concluded.
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