In a recent interview, Darin LaHood, the establishment Republican choice to replace the disgraced Aaron Schock in the special election for Illinois’ 18th district, seemed to contradict his own pledges on term limits.
LaHood also claimed that he got the endorsement of a national term limit group, even though the group has a firm “no endorsements” policy.
LaHood appeared on Peoria Public Radio on June 8 to discuss his candidacy for Congress, his efforts as a state senator, and his policy ideas for the nation. Speaking to WCBU’s Charlie Schlenker, LaHood noted his adamant support for term limits, both in the Illinois legislature as well as on the federal level in Congress.
Toward the end of the interview the host asked LaHood how many terms he had in mind for federal term limits. LaHood answered, “I think serving somewhere between six terms and eight terms would be something that would be appropriate.”
But this contradicts LaHood’s own signed pledge with a national group whose goal is to initiate a Constitutional amendment to place term limits on members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. In May of this year, LaHood signed a pledge with a group called US Term Limits saying that he would cosponsor the group’s policy to limit Senators to two terms and Congressmen to three terms.
Yet, even after signing that three-term promise, now he’s saying he’d serve up to eight terms.
This elasticity of his definition of what term limits to impose is far less troubling than his claim that the US Term Limits group actually endorsed him for Congress.
Earlier in the same June 8 interview, LaHood said, “On the federal level, I’m a big believer that we need term limits at the federal and the state level. US Term Limits which is the national organization has endorsed me in my race, I’ve signed their pledge to advocate for term limits at the federal level.”
Breitbart contacted US Term Limits to see just when that endorsement was issued. But the group’s Executive Director, Nick Tomboulides, denied the endorsement, saying that the group has a strict “no endorsement” policy.
In an email to Breitbart, Tomboulides said, “U.S. Term Limits does not endorse candidates for public office. We do ask all candidates to sign the U.S. Term Limits pledge, which resonates with the 75 percent of Americans who support term limits on Congress.”
He concluded his email from his Washington office saying, “Both Darin LaHood and Mike Flynn have signed the pledge, and we applaud their commitments to restoring a citizen legislature.”
No response was received from the LaHood campaign on these contradictions.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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