Term Limit: Nothing Is Forever

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"It's over," growled California assembly speaker Willie Brown. He was referring to his career: the U.S. Supreme Court had just rejected his yearlong campaign to stave off California's term-limit law, and the flamboyant Brown, the state's most powerful Democrat, has been in the legislature for 27 years -- more than four times longer than the new law permits. He even compared term limits to the infamous poll taxes that long kept blacks from voting in the old South. "Poll taxes were designed to limit choices. Term limits were designed to limit choices," fumed Brown. "One wore a sheet and the other didn't."

The California voters' initiative will force the entire 80-member assembly ^ out of office in 1996. Narrowly passed in 1990, it imposes maximum terms of six years for assembly members and eight for state senators. Now that it has been upheld by the highest court, at least 12 other states from Oregon to Florida may put similar initiatives on their ballots.