As the Denver Post reports:
A proposed initiative to term-limit Colorado judges hit a wall Friday when proponents were unable to gather enough petition signatures to put the measure on the ballot.
Former state Senate President John Andrews said his committee, Limit the Power, lacked enough money to pay signature-gatherers, making it impossible for the group to meet a May 14 deadline.
“Court reform will have to wait another year,” Andrews said.
The initiative proposed doing something no other state has done – limit state judges to three four-year terms.
A similar ballot issue sponsored by Andrews in 2006 was shot down by voters.
Former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Kourlis, who is now executive director of the Denver- based Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, has been a vocal opponent of term limits. She said there are better ways to make judges accountable, such as through performance evaluations.
“Most Coloradans view term limits as not having anything to do with solving problems in the court,” she said Friday. “The decision not to proceed with this is really in my opinion a tacit acknowledgment that the people of Colorado believe the judicial system is fundamentally sound.”
At least in ’06 he got this quixotic amendment on the ballot, where it tanked by a wide margin as most of you remember. We remarked in the aftermath of that fiasco that “Andrews was once a conservative Republican leader, but now he’s little more than a silly nuisance along the lines of Doug Bruce.”
As it happened, maybe not quite as embarrassing as Bruce turned out to be, but of course nobody could have known at the time. A poll follows.
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exactly why Andrews is still on the anti-judiciary jihad?
He’s Colorado’s Harold Stassen – he’ll still be around on the edges for another 20 years, but no one will pay much attention or even remember why he gets any press.
Unlike the situation in Iraq, he and Bruce are a couple of true dead enders and the Colorado extreme right is actually in it’s last throws.
why not a single one of the 50 states has ever had term limits for judges. And why the Founding Fathers didn’t include such a requirement.
But hey, John Andrews should keep knocking himself out on this: it keeps him out of trouble! 😉
had no term limits for anyone
For what it’s worth… I recently took a class with Andrews as the instructor. He is actually a very pleasant, nice man. After reading his columns in the Post, I expected an angry, intolerant, republican.
We cannot arrive soon enough on the day when the residents of this state can call bullsh$t on the Bruces and Andrewses on the first day they reveal themselves to be the obfuscators that they really are. The amount of damage they have been complicit in causing surpasses by dozens of “Friedman Units” the assinine deference and unearned respect they continue to be allowed. Among others, please reference Wadhams, Allard, Tancredo, Musgrave, Brody, Benson, etc., etc., and etc. Laydown Democrats along the line of Ken Salazar & Joe Lieberman are giving them cover and running a close second