The Impact of State Legislative Term Limits on Races for Local Office.

This paper seeks to explore the indirect effect of state legislative term limits on races for local office. Specifically, the research question of interest is: Are members of the State House of Representatives more likely to run for local office after the passage of term limits? Researchers have demonstrated that most term-limited legislators are still interested in remaining in public life. However, ambitious legislators in a state with limited opportunities for upward mobility such as Michigan may choose to return to local office rather than the traditional progression up the ?political ladder.? In order to address the question of interest, data were collected on the activities of legislators immediately after their last year in office in the Michigan House of Representatives between the years of 1982-2000. In all, 212 legislators were included in the analysis. The activities of a pre-term limit set of legislators (1982-1992) were compared to that of a post-term limit group of legislators (1993-2000). Overall, a multivariate probit model demonstrates that term limits do have a significant impact on a legislator’s decision to run for local office. Overall, legislators are 14.3% more likely to run for local government in the post term limit period. Other variables such as the presence of a senate election year, the Senate incumbent’s percent of the previous vote, and county population were also found to be significant at at least the .10 level with varying degrees of influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]