North Dakota voters say yes to age limits for Congressional candidates

CATHY WURZER: I know the show is Minnesota Now, but we talk about stuff all over the region. Right now we're going to talk about election results for the North Dakota primary.

Voters in North Dakota passed a ballot measure yesterday that puts a limit on how old its members of Congress can be. This means there will be a constitutional amendment that bars North Dakotans from being elected or appointed to Congress if they would reach their 81st birthday before the end of their term. This measure is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation. With more, we're joined by Jared Hendrix. Jared's been leading the charge to get this issue on the ballot with the group Retire Congress North Dakota. He's on the line. Jared, thanks for taking the time.

JARED HENDRIX: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

CATHY WURZER: So when you saw the results last night, what did you think?

JARED HENDRIX: Well, I was not surprised. I mean, we always felt like we were in a strong position. But of course, it's good to see a win. And I think it just says that a large majority of North Dakotans made it clear that they think members of Congress should retire like everybody else does.

And I think if you look at it as, in some sense, a continuation of the success we had with our term limits measure just a couple of years ago, it's just another statement by North Dakota voters that they're tired of career politicians at all levels who stay in office forever and lose touch with their constituencies to some extent. And so this is a unique, as you said, a very unique effort. And we hope that more states will emulate it and that it will force a broader discussion across the country.

CATHY WURZER: It passed by a large margin, more than 60% of the vote. And did that come as a surprise to you or no given polling?

JARED HENDRIX: No, the polling nationally has shown very widespread support. And even in the state, we had polling just less than a month ago that was about 78% favorability. So we ended up with 60%. And I think that's due to the fact that it's a primary. And I think it's very difficult to get a good gauge on necessarily who's going to vote in the primary sometimes. And I think had this been on the general election ballot, it probably would have passed by an even wider margin. That would be just my guess. But no, a win is a win. So we're happy.

CATHY WURZER: I've got to ask you about that, the threshold of 81 years. Gosh, I can think of a number of people in my life who are 81 or actually 85, 86, 87, and they are really vital people. How did you land on the age of turning 81 in office as the limit?

JARED HENDRIX: Sure, yeah. Well, yeah, we can always think of exceptions. I mean, I know a few myself. But in general, we know that everybody faces a decline of some kind. And it's just a fact of biology and life. The reason we picked 80 is a couple of reasons.

One, we looked at the, again, the polling level nationally, which shows pretty widespread support. And a number of the polls actually asked voters questions at 75 or 70 or some are even as low as 65. And I also know when I went around talking to people to put the sponsoring committee together of supporters, I had a lot of people tell me it should have been a lot lower. But once you get to the age of 80, the support is just so overwhelming. So we wanted to pick a number where the support was overwhelming, number one.

And then number two, we do believe that you have a lot of valuable life experience and knowledge later in life. And there's probably an emotional temperament that tends to be stronger with people that are in their 60s and 70s. And you might do a career and finish your career, retire at 65 or whatever, and then you might want to run for Congress. And so we do allow for a little bit of time there to do that. But at 80, you have to retire from Congress.

CATHY WURZER: I'm wondering, are you dancing on the head of a pin here kind of on the edge when we start thinking about age discrimination?

JARED HENDRIX: I don't believe so. I would say that this isn't like, let's say, a quote unquote "discrimination" like you would say on race or sexual orientation or something like that. Because this characteristic applies to everybody equally. Unless we die younger, we're all going to make it to 81 at some point, hopefully, just like we were all 18 or 19 or 20. And we also already have many laws that limit ourselves on age. So you have drinking, driving, being a commercial airline pilot, a lot of laws and regulations that already affect people at different age levels.

So I would say that if somebody is going to say it's age discrimination, we already have age discrimination all over the place. And I would also say that it's in our federal Constitution. You can't run for Congress if you're not 25. You can't run for Senate if you're not 30. And you can't, of course, run for president if you're not 35. And so I don't know that it's age discrimination necessarily to say that a 19-year-old can't run for president. I think most people look at that and say, just being reasonable, that we want people to have a certain amount of life experience, because in general, we can prescribe certain characteristics to people at a younger age. And I don't think it's irrational to say in general, we can prescribe certain characteristics to people at an advanced stage.

CATHY WURZER: Say, I want to touch on something that you brought up a couple of minutes ago, that when you get to a certain point in your life, sometimes things can start to decline. And I'm wondering, instead of using age, might a cognitive test be more appropriate since some people decline over a wide range of ages?

JARED HENDRIX: Yeah, and that's a very fair question. But the problem with the cognitive test is that, first of all, once you have a problem, it's already too late if there was to be a test. But at the same time, it's very arbitrary. How do you administer it? What doctors look at that and make a decision? It gets into some very complex territory. And when you're dealing with especially a constitutional amendment, you don't want any ambiguity in law.

And so the only thing that's just clear, clean, easy, whether you agree with it or not, is just a flat 80 year age limit, because we all know when we're born. We have our birth certificates. That information is on file. And so getting into a cognitive test is just way too much ambiguity.

CATHY WURZER: You touched on this, too, a little bit at the beginning of our conversation. So implementing age restrictions on politicians of a certain age, what ultimately do you think that will accomplish?

JARED HENDRIX: Well, I think that on the extreme end, you will have situations that we hope to not have in North Dakota, like, for example, with Senator Dianne Feinstein. excuse me, in California last year, who passed away in office over the age of 90. And there were some very high profile instances where she was caught on a hot mic, seemingly clueless about what she was even voting on and seemed like staffers and other colleagues were having influence on that.

And a lot of times that happens. People in power, especially somebody who's been in office that long, it's the staffers and the bureaucracy that wants to maintain that person's position of power for their own self-interest. And so we don't want to have those types of situations in North Dakota. When Senator Quentin Burdick was in North Dakota, and this was many years ago, but he was reelected many times. He was obviously popular. But he died in office at the age of 84. By all accounts, he was very ill in office, and his wife was appointed to fill the remainder of his term, which more or less denied the people a vote. So we don't want those kinds of problems.

And then secondly, there's just a huge disconnect sometimes. So it's not even just about the age and health and well-being of the individual. It's about how representative they are of the people. The median age in the United States is 39, about, well, 38.9, approximately 39. And the median age in Congress, the average of both chambers is 61. So how is Congress being reflective of the interests and concerns of growing families? And that's a big concern of mine and our supporters. And so we think it should be much more representative.

CATHY WURZER: Say, before you go, as you know, the Supreme Court set a precedent back in, gosh, what was it, 1995 that states can't impose restrictions on candidates for Congress like term limits. And experts are thinking that this constitutional amendment in North Dakota will likely face a court challenge. What do you think about that? Are you worried about it?

JARED HENDRIX: I don't know if I'd say worried is the right word, but I would expect that it happens, because it's an uncharted territory. And just like when states were pushing some of the term limits efforts in the early '90s that led to that decision, it was uncharted territory. I do think it's worth noting that Supreme Court ruling was 5 to 4 decision. It was close. The Supreme court, of course, looks different today than it did then.

But I would say that we affirm our 10th Amendment rights. We don't believe that what we're doing is outside of our bounds. What we're doing is not specifically prohibited otherwise by the federal Constitution. Therefore, we believe it falls under our states rights powers. And so if there is a challenge, we would hope that the courts would side with us and side with what the people voted for.

CATHY WURZER: All right. Enjoyed the conversation, Jared. Thank you for taking the time.