Each election season, Arizona’s legislative hopefuls are asked to sign a pledge vowing to support term limits in Congress.
Many candidates do – the idea polls well. Plus, the group behind the pledge, U.S. Term Limits (USTL), promises to promote supporters to its “expansive network of term limits advocates.”
But signing the pledge also means signing up for consequences if lawmakers later fall out of line.
And after years of browbeating candidates, the USTL is closer than ever to securing its long-lobbied prize: a legislative call for a constitutional convention on term limits.
Some of the Facebook ads that U.S. Terms Limits has paid for since 2020, per the Meta Ad Library.
Arizona’s Legislature takes up a resolution calling for a constitutional convention nearly every year.
Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, Congress must call a convention if 34 state legislatures submit applications to amend the Constitution — something that has never happened, despite decades of attempts.
The latest Article V effort, championed by the USTL group, asks state legislatures to pass resolutions to force federal action on imposing Congressional term limits.
But some of the lawmakers pushing for congressional term limits don't seem too concerned with upholding the spirit of Arizona's term limit laws.
Republican Rep. Gail Griffin, for example, has signed the pledge to support term limits for members of Congress. She has already hit her term limits at the Arizona Capitol twice after serving eight consecutive years in the Senate, then another eight consecutive years in the House. (That’s not counting the two terms Griffin served in the state House in the 1990s.)
She has already filed a statement of interest to run for the Senate again next year.
That's allowed under Arizona's relatively lax concept of term limits, which bars lawmakers from serving more than four consecutive terms per chamber — but lets them hop back and forth from the House and Senate indefinitely.
However, it's probably not what voters wanted when they first approved term limits in the Arizona Constitution back in 1992.
From “shame on you” to “thank you”
The latest attempt to fire up an Article V convention to impose congressional term limits, HCR2043, passed the House in a 33-24 vote last week, and it’s set for a Senate hearing in the coming weeks.
A similar push failed last year, but not because lawmakers want members of Congress to serve indefinitely.
The unease comes from the prospect of a runaway convention. Article V doesn’t have any clear guardrails on how a convention would work, so some fear the entire constitutional framework could be up for negotiation once delegates convene.
But after several rounds of USTL-funded attack ads against its pledge defectors in the past few election years, more lawmakers have fallen in line.
Campaign finance reports show USTL has funded campaign ads since the 2020 primary elections, boosting Arizona legislative candidates who honored their term limits pledges and shaming those who broke them.
On the left: A Facebook ad U.S. Term Limits ran against Rep. Alma Hernandez in March 2020. On the right: The same group’s Facebook post thanking Hernandez for her support, from Jan. 28 this year.
Constantin Querard is USTL’s regional director — the perfect role for a prominent conservative political consultant, known for successfully electing conservative Republicans to the state Legislature (mostly by helping them run against moderate Republicans in the primary).
Querard told us USTL doesn’t engage in pressure campaigns. He argues that voters want Congressional term limits, and communicating to voters when their lawmakers break their promise amounts to “the people making sure that they're heard.”
“There are a lot of groups out there that do spend, whether it's realtors, home builders, chambers —every group's got their issue,” he said. “Obviously, they want to make voters aware of the fact that people are good or bad on their issues.”
After a 2024 spending effort aimed almost entirely at GOP defectors, a lot of the Republican opposition has dwindled. The remaining resistance comes mostly from Democrats.
“There is no real way to limit a convention, and it is because of that and the very dangerous time that we are in, I think enacting this would be extremely, extremely bad for our communities,” Democratic Rep. Nancy Gutierrez warned her colleagues during the final vote last week.
The con of the con con
In practice, the resolution is more symbolic than consequential. It would add Arizona to a list of a dozen other states already calling for a constitutional convention on congressional term limits — still far from the 34 needed to trigger one. And even then, any amendment would still face a long road to ratification.
But the threat of contaminating the U.S. Constitution has also pushed some further-right Republicans to oppose the resolution in past years’ votes. (Republican gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs self-published a book called “The Con of the Con-Con” in 2015, which makes the same case that opening a convention could become a runaway train that term-limit supporters wouldn't like. It has a modest 3.5 stars on Amazon.)
This year, two Freedom Caucus Republicans, Reps. Joseph Chaplik and Rachel Keshel, flipped their votes to support the resolution.
Despite likening the measure to “skimming the top layer of mold and thinking we're going to be good for a while” last year, Chaplik is on this year’s list of pledge signers. He’s also on a crowded list of Republican contenders for Arizona’s Congressional District 1.
“This is a bill that should really be two separate questions. I am a yes for term limits, but I do not want a Constitutional Convention,” Chaplik said in an emailed statement. “I think it's truly the job of Congress to enact term limits, which is why I just signed a separate, single issue term limits pledge for my Congressional run. I will work on accomplishing this goal without holding a risky Con Con."
Still, Chaplik voted for Arizona to join the call for “a risky Con Con” last week.
The Arizona Term Limits Facebook page — U.S. Term Limits’ Arizona-specific group — celebrated Rep. Joseph Chaplik’s change of heart in this Feb. 3 Facebook post.
On politicians and diapers
While voting against the same measure in 2023 (yes, this really does come up every year), Keshel said the term limits group threatened her with a primary challenge and opposition spending against her campaign in LD17 — one of Arizona's few competitive legislative districts.
After her no vote, USTL, the term limits group, poured more than $8,000 into opposition ads against Keshel’s 2024 reelection bid, while a pledge-signing Republican challenger jumped into the LD17 House race.
After all, Keshel did sign the same pledge in 2021, and USTL keeps records.
But this year, Keshel said former Republican Rep. Cory McGarr, who remained loyal to his term limits pledge, persuaded her to flip to a yes vote.
“I will die on many hills in this chamber,” Keshel said during her vote explanation. “I will die to save babies, I will die for election integrity. But I'm not dying on this hill anymore.”
McGarr was rewarded for supporting the term limits resolution in 2023 — USTL reported spending more than $33,000 on mailers and text messages boosting his campaign.
The group spent another $33,000 on Republican Sen. Vince Leach, who successfully challenged former Republican Sen. Justine Wadsack for the LD17 Senate seat in 2024, after UTSL spent another $8,000 against Wadsack.
One of the attack ad mailers told voters that Keshel and Wadsack “worked with Democrats in order to kill the term limits resolution,” and compared them to dirty diapers.
Republican Sen. Vince Leach posted several U.S. Term Limits mailers on his Twitter account during the 2024 primary.
USTL has also funded attack ads against Republican Rep. Teresa Martinez and Sen. Wendy Rogers, who fall on nearly opposite ends of the conservative spectrum, but committed the same sin of voting against the term limits resolution in 2023.
Martinez has since fallen in line and started supporting the measure last year, but Rogers hasn’t been phased by years of USTL’s campaign attacks.
Still, USTL’s political muscle doesn’t always translate to victory at the ballot box. In LD17, for example, McGarr lost reelection despite staying loyal to his pledge, and Keshel won despite her betrayal.
But no one likes having their face printed on a diaper mailer and sent to their constituents.
Democrat Rep. Kevin Volk, who replaced McGarr last year, flipped his vote to yes last week. While he signed the pledge in 2024, Volk voted against the term limits measure last year and said he would work on legislation to prevent a runaway convention.
He told us he supports this year’s bill, from Republican Rep. Alex Kolodin, to require the Legislature and the Governor to approve any change to the U.S. Constitution. Any “faithless delegate” — that is, someone who breaks their oath to only handle the constitutional subject delegates convened for — would be guilty of a class 2 felony and subject to a $5,000 fine.
But Volk said he’s not too worried about USTL’s spending campaign against defectors.
“Outside groups are always going to do what outside groups are going to do,” he said.
No more vouchers (for the rich): The Arizona Education Association, the main teachers’ union, announced it is pushing an initiative in November to limit school vouchers to families that earn $150,000 or less, as well as install accountability measures in Arizona’s ballooning universal voucher system, like requiring private schools that take public dollars through vouchers to follow the same academic standards as public schools. The group will need about 256,000 valid signatures from registered Arizona voters to qualify for the ballot.
Kyrsten continues to inspire: Though she’s long gone from the U.S. Senate, Kyrsten Sinema’s questionable campaign spending continues, NOTUS reports. That questionable spending includes $9,000 in payments to Matthew J. Ammel, her former security guard whose marriage she’s now accused of destroying, last October, nine months after she left office and a month after the lawsuit from his wife was first filed.
Him?: Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (of all people) sent a terse letter and long list of questions to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem over the planned conversion of a warehouse in Surprise into an immigration detention facility, Alysa Horton (our former intern!) writes for Cronkite News. Gosar, whose district includes Surprise, noted that he supports ICE and President Donald Trump, but he wants more transparency about the proposal.
“Concerns regarding infrastructure capacity, traffic, emergency services, environmental impacts, and public safety deserve serious consideration. These are not anti-illegal immigration concerns; they are common-sense expectations of transparency, planning, and accountability,” he wrote.
Dark and confused: The apparent kidnapping of Tucsonan Nancy Guthrie, the mother of NBC’s “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie, has the Republic asking the obvious question — “How could a possible kidnapper escape unseen when everything from home surveillance cameras to license-plate reading technology to biometric facial recognition seem to be everywhere in America?” The answer, they found, is that her neighborhood is very rural and dark. Meanwhile, the spotlight is on Democratic Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, whose bumbling press conferences about the high-profile case has caught the attention of the New York Times, which perfectly encapsulated his vibe in these two paragraphs.1
Sheriff Nanos stepped to the lectern: “I want to begin by offering our condolences,” he said, pausing as the room collectively tensed.
But, no, he was not breaking grim news in the case of Ms. Guthrie. A separate tragedy had occurred the night before, some 200 miles north, where an Arizona Department of Public Safety helicopter had crashed, killing two state troopers who were responding to a gunfight.
This isn’t Gilbert: Parents, teachers and community members are passing around a petition to demand the resignation of Phoenix Union High School District board member Jeremiah Cota after he attended a Turning Point USA event alongside neo-Nazis and White supremacists, the Republic’s Erick Travino reports. Cota was appointed to the progressive school board last year by Maricopa County Superintendent of Schools Shelli Boggs, who is on a mission to fill vacant school board seats with fellow MAGA Republicans. He skipped last week’s board meeting, where angry people turned out to criticize him.
Over 80% of Arizonans rely on Colorado River water delivered by the Central Arizona Project. That water supports our homes, businesses, environment, and future.
Protecting it isn’t just about water; it’s about people, communities, and opportunity. That’s why mayors and business leaders from Maricopa, Pima, and Pinal Counties have united through the Coalition for Protecting Arizona’s Lifeline, committing to safeguard the Colorado River and the critical infrastructure that delivers it.
Across the state, our communities are innovating, investing, and working together to protect this shared lifeline.
Learn more at protectingarizonaslifeline.com
After licking her wounds for more than a year following her electoral loss, former Vice President Kamala Harris is getting back in the game — and exactly no one is impressed by her latest venture.
Harris announced last week that she is recycling her campaign social media accounts and rebranding them as “Headquarters,” a “new Gen-Z led progressive content hub.”
The Online Left is already ripping her to shreds over the big announcement, especially for using “67” in the account’s new username. (67 is a internet inside joke popular among Gen Alpha that has no actual meaning.) In fact, headquarters changed the “67” in the username to “68” within 24 hours.
Here’s perhaps our favorite tweet lampooning Harris’ poorly received initiative.
1 Kudos to the Times for comparing Nanos’ present-day press conference to his 2011 press conference about the Gabby Giffords’ shooting, which is still among the most bizarre and confusing press conferences we’ve ever had the displeasure of attending.