In giving a decisive thumbs up to a proposal to ease term limits for City Council members, Los Angeles voters this week reversed course on recent history and scrambled the deck of local politics.
By a 59% to 41% margin, voters approved a measure on Tuesday's ballot that allows council members to serve three four-year terms, easing the two-term restriction that voters imposed in 1993.
The League of California Cities said this week's balloting appears to mark the first time a major city in the state has softened term limits, which have been increasingly popular with voters in California and around the country over the past decade.
The city's big political winners include Council President Eric Garcetti and Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, both of whom shepherded the ballot measure through the campaign season. Now they have the opportunity to seek additional terms while awaiting possible runs for mayor.
"The incumbents on the council now have options that they didn't have prior to yesterday," Councilman Herb Wesson said Wednesday. "And options are good."
Wesson is newly eligible to remain in office until 2019, and nearly all of his colleagues now could remain in office until at least 2013.
But the resounding passage of the term-limits matter, Measure R, was not so good news for others. It introduced formidable roadblocks to termed-out state legislators who may wish to move back to Los Angeles and run for city office -- an increasingly popular trend and one followed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
The problem for those legislators -- such as Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, who will be termed out in 2008 -- is that the number of vacancies in City Hall will probably fall as incumbents serve more time in office.
And emerging unscathed -- and at the center of the maelstrom, as usual -- is Villaraigosa, whose office was excluded from the limits-relaxing ballot measure at his request. He didn't want another term and privately thought term limits presented a needless political battle.
With newly reelected Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger subject to term limits as well, it is all but certain the governor's office will be vacant in 2010, opening the door for a Villaraigosa run.
Election day held some other twists. The other major measure on the ballot -- a $1-billion bond to build affordable housing and help workers buy their first homes -- narrowly lost.
