Steny Hoyer believes in term limits. He just doesn’t define them the way you or I might.
“The public believes when they see a guy like Steny Hoyer, they say, ‘Well, at the end the Congress doesn’t turn over,’” the Maryland Democrat said. “But in fact, we have an infusion of new blood every two years, and that is a good thing.”
Up to 20% of Congress leaves every term. That’s one way of looking at it.
There are proposals, again, to cap terms in office for U.S. representatives and senators. Hoyer, who announced last week he would retire after 23 terms in the House, said the popularity of the idea is based on a misunderstanding.
“We do have term limits,” he told me by phone Friday, “but we don’t have one on the number of terms that the people can make a choice.”
Those limits just rely on voters to boot the rascals out, rather than cap how often we can vote for them again.
Hoyer is a survivor of this process, a silver-haired champion of 45 years of federal elections and legislative sessions, and 14 more in the state Senate before that.
Now that he’s leaving, quoting Shakespeare’s admonition “to thine own self be true” as he heads for the door, it’s worth asking — how much time is enough for one person?
Is the 86-year-old from St. Mary’s County a case for term limits? Or is he the reason to keep it the way it is?
“It’s not a question of whether Steny Hoyer was a nice person or not,” said Harry Jarin, one of five Democrats who’d lined up to face Hoyer in the coming May primary. “My point is about institutional renewal, that is the challenge before us.”
The answer to both questions is yes.
Jarin made a national media splash in June by making Hoyer’s age the focus of his campaign, saying “Marylanders don’t even realize he’s still in office” and “younger voters don’t even recognize his name.”
For a guy who moved from Pennsylvania to Edgewater five years ago, it rings a bit like wishful thinking.
But his larger point is not wrong.
As Hoyer was elected over and over to leadership roles in the House, Congress became increasingly unequal to America’s problems, surrendering power to the succession of presidents until the inevitable happened — a demagogue in the form of Donald Trump took advantage of the imbalance.
What’s not clear is how capping the number of terms would have changed that.
The framers created the House as a fever break, to absorb populist sentiments.
Only passions that survive the two-year churn go on to influence the four-year terms of a president. Only those that endure make it into the Senate, where staggered six-year terms create a reservoir of stability.
“I don’t want this to sound like a cop-out, but ultimately, the voters are responsible,” Hoyer said. “Unfortunately, we now have a lot of members of the Congress who believe the voters want them to do exactly what Trump wants them to do.”
Hoyer is on his eighth presidency, though none like this one. He helped pass the Americans with Disabilities Act and the still-controversial Affordable Care Act.
When there are 435 legislators in the House and another 100 in the Senate, a forest of special interests and untold hidden agendas, time is the only measure of meaning in something so vast and complex.
“My observation is, the more time an individual is a member of Congress, the more they can help their district and their country,” Hoyer said.
Challengers have long painted Hoyer as the beneficiary of a calcified system. Money flows by seemingly limitless bucketsful from corporations and PACs to incumbents, and gerrymandering makes most untouchable.
He’s shifted with his party as progressives replaced liberals, conservatives became moderates, and Republicans twisted themselves into MAGA.
“I was elected majority leader how many times, five, six?” Hoyer said. “I didn’t have opposition on most of those elections. So, if you asked me, did I think the party was leaving me? No.”
Yet change, merciless as ever, never stops. Consider the word “genocide.”
AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, is one of Hoyer’s largest donors. An advocate for a nation created as a refuge for victims of the Holocaust, it has given him $1.8 million as a friend of Israel.
Some young Democrats might see that as buying silence on the horrific cost for Palestinians of the war in Gaza started by Hamas.
No matter what changes have taken place around Hoyer, the voters’ verdict on him remained decisive. Hoyer won 72% of the vote in the 2024 Democratic primary in the 5th District and 68% in the general.
Politically, then, term limits are better for thee than me.
After a Baltimore County state senator won a House seat in 2010, one of his early moves was to reintroduce a limit on terms, six in the House and two in the Senate.
“Limiting congressional terms is a common-sense way to change Washington and make sure our elected leaders work for the people instead of the special interests,” Rep. Andy Harris wrote.
Harris, the state’s lone Republican in Congress, is in his eighth term today.
“You always say, ‘Oh, well, Congress is terrible, but it’s not my congressman,” Jarin said. “It’s the other 434 assholes that are the problem.”
Maybe the end of Hoyer’s 23 terms is a moment of change, at least for Democrats in Maryland.
Maybe not.
Jarin and others running in the 5th District will face big names attracted by an open seat, though Steuart Pittman, the Anne Arundel exec and chair of the Maryland Democratic Party, bowed out last week.
Other big names will get in. If history rhymes, one will win.
If Jarin pulls off an upset, he won’t commit to a specific term limit, though he signed a pledge to vote for three in the House and two in the Senate.
He’ll only promise not to be there past 2071.
“I won’t serve any longer in Congress than Steny Hoyer has.”
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