The same people have been in Washington for decades, and they’re not leaving.

The honest situation

The math is the problem.

House incumbents who run almost always win - in 2024, 97 percent of congressional incumbents who sought another term were re-elected¹. And the people who’d have to vote a term-limits amendment through are the exact people it would throw out. An amendment needs two-thirds of both chambers, or 34 states applying for a convention, and then 38 states to ratify.

That doesn’t mean the fight isn’t worth having. It means I’m not going to lie to you about where it gets won. It does not get won with one more bill that dies in committee. It gets won by making term limits something every candidate has to answer for, every cycle, whether they want to or not. That work starts now, in this campaign, in 17 counties. It does not need Congress to go first.

The pledge

The whole point is getting everyone to commit to this.

The reason to go to Congress on term limits is to get every member, and every candidate, to commit to a hard cap - on the record, where voters can see who signs and who refuses. The House and the Senate each get their own term limits, because they’re different jobs answering to different people. This is one of six planks in the pledge, and I’ve signed it myself - I’m not asking anyone to commit to something I won’t.

What I’ll do federally

Use the seat for the messaging fight.

I can’t pass an amendment as one freshman. I can use the seat to make every other member of Congress take a position publicly, every cycle, on the record.

• Cosponsor every federal term limits bill that comes through.
• Sign every discharge petition.
• Vote for every floor resolution.
• Push leadership publicly to bring resolutions for floor votes - and name them when they refuse.
• Connect to the existing Article V infrastructure. Tennessee passed HJR5 in the state House in March 2023 and the state Senate in April 2024² - a resolution applying for an Article V national convention to propose a term-limits amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The campaign to use Article V is partially in motion. A federal candidate engaged in that fight is not starting from zero.

What I’ll do at the state and local level

The political mechanism that doesn’t need Congress.

The Supreme Court’s 1995 decision in U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton ruled that states can’t add qualifications for federal office beyond what’s in the Constitution. A binding state-level congressional term-limit law is not available. The legal door is closed.

The political door isn’t. Organized voter expectation is its own form of enforcement, and it doesn’t need a court.

• The candidate pledge. A written pledge any candidate for federal office in Tennessee can sign, committing to serve no more than 12 years in Congress. No legal force. A statement of personal commitment voters can hold candidates accountable to in the next election. Refusing to sign is the choice that costs candidates politically, because they have to explain to voters why they want the option to stay longer.
• The voter pledge. Voters in TN-5 commit not to vote for any federal candidate who refuses to sign the 12-year pledge. Collected county by county across the 17 counties. Total count published transparently on the campaign website alongside the financial disclosures. Fifty thousand pledges across the district is a political fact every other Tennessee federal candidate has to respond to.
• Advisory referenda on county ballots. Tennessee law on local referenda is more restrictive than many states - ballot questions generally require specific statutory authority. Some Tennessee local governments may be able to pursue nonbinding advisory questions where state law or local authority allows, but this would need county-by-county legal review. Where it’s allowed, the question would read something like: “Do you support a 12-year term limit for members of the United States Congress representing Tennessee?” A 75-percent yes vote in any county becomes a public, county-level number every Tennessee candidate has to answer to.
• Push Tennessee’s Article V resolution forward. Tennessee already passed HJR5 (House March 2023, Senate April 2024). Pressure neighboring states to pass their own. 34 states needed.

And this pressure does not stop at one party. Term limits is something voters want across the board - Republican, Democrat, and independent. A voter pledge big enough in TN-5 puts the same pressure on every candidate of every party, because none of them can afford to be the one who refused.

What I’ll push at the party level

The Tennessee Democratic Party has its own lever.

The party could pursue this through its bylaws, endorsement rules, or internal candidate-support standards, subject to party rules and election law. TNDP could decline to endorse federal candidates who have served more than twelve years in the same seat. Same logic for state legislative endorsements. The mechanism would build a TNDP endorsement into a credibility marker voters can track.

The same lever applies to the candidate pledge. TNDP could require every endorsed federal candidate to sign the twelve-year pledge as a condition of endorsement. None of this requires state or federal legislation. It does require the party to choose to use the lever it already has.

The pushback I’m ready for

“Term limits is too slow. Voters want immediate action.”

I hear this one the most, and it comes from good people. It is also wrong, and I want to be specific about why.

Republicans have been playing a fifty-year game. The Federalist Society, Heritage, the state policy shops, the pipeline that turns law students into judges - they built all of it slowly, on purpose. It delivered the Supreme Court that overturned Roe. It delivered the state legislatures that passed voter suppression. It delivered the map I’m running inside. They had a plan and they ran it and they won.

Democrats spent those same fifty years chasing the win in front of them. The ACA, which Republicans have been chipping at since the day it passed. Climate policy by executive order, which the next Republican president signs away. Big fights, real wins, and most of them sitting on a foundation that the other side can knock out whenever they take power back. What Republicans built lasts. What Democrats built keeps getting repealed.

That is why term limits comes first. Every other fix on this list assumes the people in those seats today will eventually leave. They won’t. Not unless something makes them.

The other pushback

“Term limits strips Congress of institutional knowledge.”

If a member of Congress can’t figure out how to write a bill and get it passed inside twelve years, they’re not good at the job. Twelve years is six full House terms. That is plenty of time to learn a policy area cold, build the relationships it takes to move legislation, and put real wins on the board. Nobody who fails at that for twelve years was held back by the clock.

And there are two kinds of institutional knowledge. One kind is knowing how the place works - how a bill actually moves, which committee kills what. That kind gets passed down through staff and committees and doesn’t leave when one member does. The other kind is being how the place works - the donor list, the lobbyist friendships, the favors owed. That is the kind we want to expire on a schedule. Term limits keep the second kind from piling up. They don’t touch the first.