CALIFORNIA COMMENTARY : These Survivors Won’t Go Quietly : Prop. 140--term limits-- is upheld. But without voter vigilance, the same faces will keep popping up in new places.

The California Supreme Court has upheld Proposition 140, the initiative adopted last November that imposes limits on the number of terms individuals may serve in the state Senate and Assembly and as statewide officeholders.

The court rejected the argument by the Legislature, which filed the challenge, that the initiative constitutes a “revision” of the state Constitution--that is, that Proposition 140 is so extensive that it changes the “substantial entirety” of the Constitution or accomplishes such far-reaching changes that the nature of our basic governmental plan is altered--which cannot be undertaken through the initiative process.

The court also ruled that this is a lifetime ban: Once a person has served the specified number of terms, that is that.

I have never been a fan of term limits. To me, they are undemocratic and the political equivalent of the cement diet, in which the jaws are glued shut; by enacting term limits, voters in essence said, “Stop me, or I will do something terrible, like vote for my state senator over and over.” Voters have always had the ability to impose an informal form of term limits by voting people out of office after they had outlived their usefulness, but they rarely paid enough attention and simply voted for whoever had the most familiar name based on incumbency or direct mail.

Term limits, however, are now in place, and although they may not constitute a revision of the state Constitution, they at least contain the potential to radically change the way government functions in California. The key word is potential.

There is a sense of remarkable arrogance in the Legislature that can best be explained by the perception of many lawmakers that they will hold their seats forever. Consider the most recent redistricting fiasco. Assembly Speaker Willie Brown is far from the only offender. But he openly admitted that his primary goal in redrawing district lines was to protect incumbents, as though a position in Sacramento was their birthright. When discussing why some district lines were drawn the way they were, Brown quipped that otherwise Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles) would have had to change her name to “Moorenstein” because Jews will not vote for blacks.

After Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed the proposed maps, Brown cut off the computers that the Republicans were using to draft possible compromise plans in order to punctuate that negotiations were over.

These are not the statements and acts of a man who feels a keen sense of being watched and judged by voters. To the extent that Brown’s actions stem from the fact that he has been in this office too long, perhaps this kind of behavior will begin to dissipate.

Term limits might also encourage new faces to run and bring new blood into office. California is notoriously logjammed. It has become nearly impossible for newcomers to break in, given the lock people have in many districts. New people might bring fresh ideas to Sacramento. That can only be a positive.

But before angry voters start gleefully envisioning Willie Brown selling designer suits at Wilkes-Bashford or Acuras for a living, or joking that the crime rate will go down in Sacramento but up across the state now that these scoundrels are on the loose, they must consider the fact that the verdict is still out on whether the change will be all that radical.

Our elected officials are survivors. They will not go quietly into the dark. Their ambition knows few bounds. We know they move into districts to run for office and are constantly on the look-out to move up to another office. It is yet to be seen if they will simply find and occupy other offices that don’t have term limits--congressional or city council seats, for example--or jump from the Assembly to the Senate and to statewide office with dizzying speed, thereby still managing to spend a lifetime in political office.

The key remains with voters. If voters feel that with term limits they have made the only necessary change, that they have cured all problems and that it is now business as usual in terms of how much attention needs to be paid to the political process, perhaps little will change. The same faces might just move laterally. If voters continue to vote for people based on direct-mail campaigns and the familiarity of the candidates’ names, the Supreme Court certainly will have been correct that this initiative was far from a revision.

But if voters begin to take real responsibility for the electoral process, Californians may just enjoy a far-reaching change altering the nature of government after all.