Skip to main contentOn Saturday, the Nose woke up and gave thanks for Ted Piccolo.
It's not my normal morning routine, to be sure, but if anyone deserved a bleary-eyed blessing last week, it was the North Portland anti-government activist.
The Proboscis last rapped with Ted in 2000, when he was applying for the job of city commissioner. He wanted to run for the City Council in the worst way--and, as goes the punchline, he succeeded. Aside from his Sizemore Lite© rhetoric, he had no platform. He had no new ideas. He had no clue. His main qualification seemed to be that he wasn't Charlie Hales--a characteristic shared by 531,599 other residents of our fair city. Charlie sent Ted scurrying back to St. Johns, where, to be honest, we forgot all about him.
Until Saturday.
You see, on Friday the Oregon Supreme Court nuked the state's term-limits law. In 1992, voters overwhelmingly passed an initiative that not only limited the terms of state legislators but also would have forced early retirement on members of Oregon's congressional club. That shot at Congress turned out to be a big mistake.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court has since squelched congressional term limits, the state Supremes last week ruled that the 1992 initiative should have been split up into at least two questions, as it changed more than one part of the state constitution.
Now, the Nose happens to think that limiting the terms of state lawmakers makes as much sense as banning pretzels from the White House. It's an $830 solution to a 90-cent problem.
But the Schnoz also thinks that despite what other term-limit critics will tell you, voters in 1992 knew exactly what they were doing. The fact that Congress was mixed in with the Legislature didn't bother them a bit. So they've got every right to be mad as Shaq that those black robes in Salem are poking them in the eye on the basis of some legal technicality.
Which brings us, finally, to Ted, who proved to be both smarter and luckier than we thought.
Ted saw this mess coming. That's why, in mid-December, he filed a proposed new initiative to restore legislative term limits. Then, through a bizarre stroke of good fortune, he sat back and watched the Jan. 8 deadline for comments come and go.
Despite the glut of savvy political operators in this state who detest term limits, none of them bothered to file a comment on the proposed ballot title. That means no one has the standing to challenge it, a common tactic used to delay the signature-gathering process. As a result, Ted should be able to get his measure onto the ballot with little difficulty.
Through an odd set of circumstances, Ted Piccolo and the Supremes have teamed up to provide a referendum on term limits in Oregon. In fact, the debate has already started. The pro-limit side has trotted out its clichés about the evils of "career politicians," while the anti crowd makes the unconvincing argument that short-time legislators are more beholden to lobbyists.
The crux of the term-limit question, however, comes down to experience. Next month's special session will give voters a front-row seat to high-stakes political theater. And when it comes time to crunch the numbers and make tough choices, the folks providing the leadership won't be the tax-and-spend liberals from Portland. Instead, it will be graybeards such as Sens. Len Hannon and Gene Derfler, a pair of downstate Republicans who had already spent a combined 14 years in office when voters passed term limits in '92 and who, if Piccolo has his way, will be unceremoniously bounced out of Salem later this year.
It's a safe bet that the Schnoz will be voting against Ted's measure, but he's glad that he'll have the chance to do so.
WWeek 2015