LITTLE ROCK— More than two decades ago, Arkansas was among the first states to embrace the term limits movement by restricting how long lawmakers could serve in its Legislature. No one championed the movement more loudly than the state's Republicans, who saw it as a way to loosen the Democratic Party's generations-old grip on Arkansas' elected offices.
But now that Republicans have turned the state red, things have gotten complicated. GOP leaders have decided that legislators should be able to stay longer after all. Term-limits purists insist on holding the line.
"People want government to be more representative," said Tim Jacob, spokesman for a group gathering signatures to put tougher term limits before the voters again in November. "People don't want power bases built in our Legislature."
The leaders of both legislative chambers, Senate President Jonathan Dismang and House Speaker Jeremy Gillam, are backing the longer incumbent-friendly terms, which were approved in a referendum in 2014.
Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson so far has stayed out of the fray.
Fifteen states have adopted term limits for their lawmakers. Arkansas decided in 1992 to limit state senators to two four-year terms and House members to three two-year terms.
Making statehouse offices temporary would "ultimately bring new faces and new ideas to state government," Hutchinson said at the time, when he was chairman of the state Republican Party and Democrats held 90 percent of the Legislature's seats.
But three years ago, with Republicans in control of both the House and Senate, legislative leaders included a provision in a campaign reform referendum that allowed lawmakers to spend up to 16 years in one chamber. Voters approved the measure the following year. Republicans now control 88 of the 135 seats in the House and Senate.
Gillam, a five-year House member who would have been booted next year without the extension, said he has learned the value of experience in getting meaningful legislation done.
"I know I hear from people all the time they're tired of us being at the bottom of the country in education and economic development and health care and the list goes on and on. They list this as a factor," he said, referring to rapid legislator turnover.
State Republican Party Chairman Doyle Webb said his party only disagrees on the length of the terms, not on limiting them.
But Jacob's group, Restore Term Limits, scorns the loosened limits as deceptive, and has been bringing a mock wooden Trojan Horse to events around to the state to underscore the point.