Is Eight Enough? Sitting and former lawmakers debate term limits in the Legislature

Yahoo

18-05-2025

Former GOP state Sen. Tom Lee, Tampa Bay Democratic Sen. Darryl Rouson, Hillsborough County Property Appraiser Bob Henriquez, and lobbyist Ron Pierce at the Tampa Tiger Bay Club in Ybor City on May 16, 2025. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix)
Florida voters amended the state Constitution subjecting legislators to eight-year term limits more than three decades ago. But as this year's legislative session continues with no end in sight, the issue of whether term-limits are working for all Floridians was the topic of debate at the Tampa Tiger Bay Club on Friday afternoon.
'I've seen a lot happen,' said Tampa Bay area Democratic Sen. Darryl Rouson, the longest-serving member of the Legislature, who was first elected to the House in 2008. 'The downside is the experts become the staff, and to some extent, the lobbyists, and to a larger extent, not so much the legislator … so I think it has its drawbacks.'
'Term limits have completely empowered lobbyists,' agreed Ron Pierce, a lobbyist himself who worked for eight years as a legislative staffer and has headed RSA Consulting Group since 2009.
The term-limit law became an issue earlier this year when Brevard County House Republican Debbie Mayfield filed to run for the Senate seat in which she had served from 2016-2024.
After she was term-limited from running again last fall, she instead ran and won a seat in the Florida House. But after the newly elected senator in District 19, Randy Fine, quit to run for and win a seat in Congress, Mayfield filed to run for that Senate seat again in a special election.
The Florida Division of Elections ruled that she couldn't run again for the seat because of the term limit law. She challenged that ruling, and the Florida Supreme Court ruled for her unanimously in February, stating that her gap in serving in the Senate from November until February allowed her to run again for the Senate seat in a special election (which is slated to take place on June 10).
Concurrent to that drama, Hernando County Republican Blaise Ingoglia filed a resolution during the session (SJR 536) that would have clarified that the law imposes a lifetime limit of 16 years in state legislative office — 8 years max in the House, 8 years max in the Senate — with a caveat for senators who serve reduced two-year terms due to redistricting.
The measure would have gone to the voters as a constitutional amendment in 2026, but stalled after being approved in one committee stop.
'Let's stop the practice of people continually running for the same office and bouncing back and forth between chambers,' Ingoglia said on X. 'Serving the people of Florida should be a privilege, and an honor, not a career.'
The 'Eight is Enough' constitutional amendment in 1992, which passed with 77% of the vote, did not just include eight-year term limits for the state Legislature, but also for members of Congress, former Hillsborough County Republican state Sen. Tom Lee noted on Friday.
'That was the primary motivation behind it, and term limits for Congress was ultimately ruled to be unconstitutional,' he noted.
Former Tampa Democratic Sen. Janet Cruz, who served in the Legislature for more than a decade before losing a bid for re-election to the Senate in 2022, asked the panelists whether term limits even matter anymore because of 'gerrymandered districts.'
Pierce insisted they absolutely do matter, citing the fact that when Rouson does leave the Senate next year because of term limits, his successor will not be nearly as experienced or have the same amount of influence.
'It has been around forever and isn't going away,' Lee said regarding the issue of gerrymandering.
He added that the way that Republicans gained more seats in the Legislature starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s was because they built a coalition with Black and Hispanic Democrats to carve out seats 'to ensure their election in minority-access districts in exchange for the rest of the map looking very Republican. And before you knew it, you had a Republican-dominated Legislature. That's what happened.'
Hillsborough County Property Appraiser Bob Henriquez, a Democrat, served in the Florida House from 1998 until 2006, when he was term-limited from his seat. He said he could make the argument that the state would be better off if term-limits could be extended to 12 or even 16 years, but it would be 'controversial' for any lawmaker to push for that proposal.
'There have been efforts to try increase term limits to a different number. I don't know what that sweet spot is — 12 years, 16 years. None of those have gone very far within the state Legislature,' Henriquez said.
Pierce said he could support getting rid of term limits outright, but added that there's no way that could possibly happen, since it would require getting them repealed via a constitutional amendment.
'You've changed some things in Tallahassee this year, I think, that made it a little more difficult for citizen's initiatives in the future, that's number one,' he said, referring to the legislation signed by Gov. DeSantis that will make the process more difficult to get a measure on the ballot.
The second problem, he said, is that it would look 'self-serving' for lawmakers to push the measure. But he added that the biggest hurdle would be finding anyone to educate the public about why term-limits should be repealed. 'Who in the world is going to try to educate the public on why you're trying to change term-limits?' he asked. 'Who's going to pay for that?'
The discussion took place just days after Gov. Ron DeSantis travelled to Ohio to give his support for a resolution in that state's Legislature to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot calling for a constitutional convention to impose congressional term limits. The Florida Legislature passed a resolution last year calling for a U.S. Term Limits convention.
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