Administration Moves to Enter Court Fight Against Term Limits

WASHINGTON — State-imposed congressional term limits threaten the election system, the Clinton Administration said in its first official word on the volatile campaign issue. Supporters of limits said the opposition “will come back to haunt the President.”

The Administration’s position is stated in an Aug. 31 request filed by Solicitor General Drew S. Days III seeking permission to participate in Supreme Court oral arguments over the validity of an Arkansas term-limits measure.

Days, the Administration’s highest-ranking courtroom lawyer, told the court that the Arkansas law “poses a particular threat to the federal system in that it makes membership in the Congress dependent on regulation by the states.”

The Arkansas measure “contradicts the framers’ design, which was to fix the qualifications for office in the Constitution itself, and to deny the power to add further qualifications to both the Congress and the states,” Days told the court.

Voters in 15 states have adopted such limits since 1990, and more states are considering them in this year’s elections.

Arkansas’ term limits were adopted in 1992, while Clinton was governor. He opposed them then.

Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers said Thursday: “The President has generally said over the course of the last 10 years that he has some real reservations about term limits. . . . He believes the voters should have the opportunity to elect their leaders.”

Advocates of limits said he was making a mistake.

“Mr. Clinton, who has surrounded himself with the consummate Washington insiders, is swimming against the tide on this,” said Cleta Mitchell, director of the Term Limits Legal Institute. “This filing by the solicitor general will come back to haunt the President.”

The Supreme Court’s argument session has not yet been scheduled, but may be held in late November.

The court entered the political storm last June when it agreed to use the Arkansas case to decide the validity of term limits.

The Arkansas Supreme Court struck down a state constitutional amendment that limited how many times a person can run on the ballot for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.