Enacting term limits could stifle growing congressional tenures, especially in Kansas  

The U.S. Capitol building stands in Washington, D.C., amid fog on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

Last week, my column aimed to answer, “How unusual is it that one party would dominate the US Senate on behalf of a state?” 

(Here’s the upshot: the Republican streak in electing US senators in Kansas has been nearly unbelievable.) 

While wading through the data needed to answer that question, I grew curious about term limits. 

Right now, the Kansas Senate could take up a bill from the House that would push for a nationwide convention with the sole aim of enshrining term limits in the US Constitution. The February vote on House Continuing Resolution 5022 passed 78-42 with backing from a nationwide group, U.S. Term Limits. 

I wondered whether term limits would boost Democrats or Republicans more. Do U.S. senators from Kansas serve longer than those from other states? How might term limits shape representation in Kansas?

 

The numbers

To investigate this, I made a dataset listing every U.S. Senator in the nation’s history, including their party affiliation, start of tenure, end of tenure, length of tenure and state. The data relied on the historical databases on Ballotpedia. In the case of senators elected to nonconsecutive terms, I considered those as two different tenures.

The data does not include U.S. representatives because they would have complicated matters: Some lawmakers serve in both the House and Senate. 

The completed dataset allowed me to compare parties, state and even political eras against one another. 

So, what do the historical numbers say? 

 

The longest terms

• The longest-serving senator in U.S. history: 51 years
• The longest-serving senator in Kansas: 30 years

Despite the longtime dominance by the Republican Party in Kansas, the state’s voters don’t keep individual senators around for an unusually long time. Republican Arthur Capper served for Kansas for the longest in the state’s history: 30 years from 1919-1949. 

Senator Pat Roberts would have achieved that 30-year span by serving one more term if he had been re-elected in 2020. 

As for current Kansas senators, Jerry Moran has served since 2011, so he could match Capper’s 30-year stint. However, that would mean continuing until 2041, when he would be 87. 

(It’s very unlikely that he serves the all-time record of 51 years, which would push him until 2062 and age 108.) 

In the context of U.S. senators, 30 years isn’t all that extreme. Nine other states, besides Kansas, have elected senators to 30 years, the equivalent of five six-year terms. Feel free to use this to buttress your argument for term limits. It’s bananas.

Other states kept going long past 30 years. In fact, more than half of the states have a longer-termed senator than Capper. The senator with the longest tenure was the ignominious Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, with 51 years. 

Serving an ulta-marathon stint as a senator was marginally more common decades ago. The average start of a term for a senator who went on to serve 30 years? The year 1925.

Nevertheless, four 30-plus-year senators are still serving: Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, Washington’s Patty Murray and Oregon’s Ron Wyden. Grassley turned 92 in September.

Colorado, New Jersey and Texas sit at the opposite extreme. Those states have never elected a senator to more than 24 years in office, the least of any state.

 

On the average

• Kansas average of a senator’s tenure: 9.4 years
• Nationwide average of a senator’s tenure: 8.36 years nationwide

With more than 2,000 senate tenures considered, finding the average tenures of senators over time, by party and by state, revealed interesting comparisons. 

Kansas senators enjoy a slightly above-average tenure compared to other states at 9.4 years compared with 8.36 years nationwide over the history of the country. 

I expected even longer Kansas spans, especially with the long-term Republican Senate dominance. (Indeed, that’s what drew me to pull the numbers.) Perhaps this cycling of senators, while not strategic, has served Republican electoral strength by not relying on candidates who are as aged, fatigued or out of touch.

The Kansas average tenure is deflated a bit, as in most states, by a handful of short-term Senate appointments or other stints in office, many of them less than three years.

However, the Kansas average is nothing compared to other states, almost all of them out west and more recently founded. Hawaii leads the way with an average senate tenure of 19 years. Senators for Alaska, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico all average two terms or more for each elected.

Kentucky is at the other extreme. Due to a rash of short-term senators during the 19th century, the Bluegrass state has an average tenure historically of less than six years — that’s less than a full term. 

 

A changing timeline

• Since 1959, Kansas average for a U.S. senator: 15.12 years
• After 1959, nationwide average for a U.S. senator: 12.6 years

The landmark year of 1959, when all states had been admitted and elected senators, provides a chance to compare term limits during the last seven decades with those of America’s early history.

From the time that the United States swore in its first senators in 1789 until 1959, the average tenure of a senator was paltry compared to modern times. In Kansas, the average span was 7.7 years, while the nationwide average was 7.2 years.

Eric Thomas for Kansas Reflector

During the years after 1959, the average tenure for a Kansas senator has grown to 15.12 years. That growth of more than six years per average tenure — more than an additional term — places the state solidly in the top half of states, regardless of how you calculate the average as a mean or median (19th state in mean term, 14th in median term). 

The nationwide average tenure shifted upward to 12.6 years after that year, up more than 5 years. A jump that large — played out over hundreds of primaries and general elections — can only be the result of huge social, political and party forces. 

 

Party performance

• Democratic average Senate tenure: 9.17 years
• Republican average Senate tenure: 9.39 years

When the Pew Charitable Trust asked voters their opinions of term limits, 87 percent favored the restriction. Of the six policy questions they asked three years ago, term limits were the most popular by far, buoyed by the bipartisan support. 

Find me another subject that both parties could agree about in 2023, with more than 85 percent of both parties wanting the change. 

Perhaps the consensus is because term limits don’t appear to have a partisan advantage. In fact, the data is startlingly level. 

If you consider the full sweep of Senate history, there have been 76 political parties, according to Ballotpedia. What is a Nullifier, anyway? If you sort that spreadsheet of political parties by the average length of Senate tenure, you find Democrats and Republicans snuggled right next to each other. 

Only .22 years per tenure separates Democrats at 9.17 average years per tenure and Republicans at 9.39. That’s less than 3% different.

Eric Thomas for Kansas Reflector

The parity is astonishing given hundreds of Senators and innumerable candidate circumstances.

However, if you sense that things have gotten more extreme for both Democrats and Republicans in the length of their tenures, the numbers bear that out. Again, the year of 1959 is useful here. 

Since then, Democrats tenure has grown to 13.29 years while Republicans stay in office about 11.95 years. Whether or not you see a partisan advantage in that 1.36 years likely says more about your politico-mania than about the data. 

 

Frustrations plus numbers

All of this data probably leads you, like me, to nod my head and say, “Yes! That is why I want term limits in the first place!” 

Most voters sense that their pet peeve with stale politicians is only getting worse as elections tick by: “I can’t believe he is running again!” 

Other voters might be motivated by a political argument: “Too much power is collected in the hands of the same entrenched career politicians.”

Even Kansas candidates and elected representatives in Kansas have signed a pledge to enact term limits.

Add this data to those rhetorical arguments. The problem not only persists, but it tilts more each year, while not favoring one of the two main parties.

Creating term limits on Congress can be a unanimous decision of the politicians, the data and the people.

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.