Blog For Arizona

CD 6 tag team

Matt Salmon, failed GOP candidate for Governor and former Congressman for CD 6 is once again running for that Congressional seat in 2006. Jeff Flake, formerly head of the Goldwater Institute, currently holds the CD6 Congressional seat and made the same 6 year term limit promise as did Salmon when he was elected in 1994. Thus it looks like Salmon is calling on Flake to keep his promise or face a primary challenge.

This raises the interesting possibility of two Conservative politicians having their cake and eating it too. This tag team approach to term limits by swapping back and forth a safe seat on a 6 year schedule allows these two to use the seat as a high-profile launch platform on the way to challenging for higher offices, as Salmon did in 2000. This is not the purpose of a term limits pledge. The purpose is to ensure that political offices do not become dynasties, but are made a short-term public service of talented citizens, or the launching point of new political careers, not a time-share for professional politicians.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 10/15/2004 07:21:00 PM