PM in the News: State Senate Considers Ending Term Limits for Senate Presidency

Jennifer Smith, “Key lawmaker proposes ending term limits for Senate president,” CommonWealth, February 7, 2023.

Jonathan Cohn, political director for the left-wing grassroots group Progressive Massachusetts, voiced concern that eliminating term limits for the Senate president would be another step moving the Senate closer to the House in the way it does business. 

The past few years have seen “what I would call a House-ification of the Massachusetts Senate,” said Cohn, “operating with a greater concentration of power that we have, in recent years, more attributed to the Massachusetts House, and now possibly embracing its style of governance.”

Take Action: Tell Your State Senator You Want a *democratic* State Senate

Eight years ago, then House Speaker Bob DeLeo was able to get the MA House to repeal term limits for the Speakership, further concentrating power in the Speaker’s Office.

Now, MA Senate leaders are looking to follow, eliminating the term limits that still exist for the Senate President.

When one tries to diagnose the reasons for inertia in the Massachusetts State Legislature, where a commanding supermajority of Democrats end up passing too few bills and taking too long to pass them, one of the key underlying problems is the over-concentration of power. When too few people are in control of too many things, you get bottlenecks: things don’t get done. When those too few people also have the ability to retaliate against anyone who speaks out (demotion from committee leadership, lower salary, fewer staff, smaller and more remote office), then the quality of debate declines. And our democracy weakens.

Tell your state senator to oppose eliminating term limits for Senate President.

Massachusetts wants a small “d” democratic Senate. Amendment #23 to the Senate Rules package (S17) would take us in the opposite direction.