Look at the state Legislature’s cast of characters and you are likely to say, "We have seen this all before."
Although Rep. Joe Souki has been speaker of the House since just 2013, this is his second act. He also was speaker from 1993 to 1999.
The fellow who ran the House in between the Souki years, Rep. Calvin Say, swung the speaker’s gavel for 13 years.
The latest Senate president, Ron Kouchi, has been in the Legislature for only five years, but he served 22 years on the Kauai County Council, including 12 as chairman.
The contradiction in this lineup of grizzled mugs is that most of faces have changed.
A good friend of mine warns that fish and house guests both start to smell after three days. You could probably say similar advice works even better with politicians.
The one law the Legislature did not pass, but still must obey, is the law of natural selection. So those who adapt the best to their changing environment are the ones who thrive the longest.
The last decade shows the survivors in a sea change of new legislative faces.
Between 2005 and 2015, 70 percent of the legislative seats changed.
A total of 15 of the Senate’s 25 seats have someone new, compared with the 2005 cast of characters. In the House, 38 of the 51 faces are new.
To be fair, I have to explain that some of the faces leaving one legislative chamber popped up across the hall or over on the Honolulu City Council. Five of the nine Council members are actually former members of the state Legislature.
One state senator became governor, another became lieutenant governor and some tried for a new office and lost.
"There is always more change over in the House," noted former Senate President Donna Mercado Kim.
In her own political career starting with election to the House in 1982, Kim has served continuously as a representative, Council woman and state senator.
The House changes have been because of election defeats, retirements, deaths and political advancement. Missing today from the class of 2005 are Brian Schatz, who is now in the U.S. Senate, and Kirk Caldwell, who is now Honolulu mayor.
Kim points to an interesting problem with the City Council, which limits members to two four-year terms. Given that Council members will have a total of just eight years of uninterrupted service, they have little political time, Kim warned.
"First with term limits there is a pressure to pass things right away, sometimes without enough time for investigation," Kim said, adding that two terms gives little time to learn a subject.
The big problem, she said, is that once someone wins a seat on the Council, he or she has to start thinking about the next office, because two terms is not enough time to build a political base.
The support for term limits comes, oddly enough, from someone who has been in the state Senate for 19 years: Sam Slom, who today is the only Republican in the 25-member body.
"I think term limits are very popular with those outside of the Legislature and very unpopular with those inside the Legislature," Slom said.
He answered the obvious question of why he is still in the Legislature if he thinks term limits are so great by explaining that if there were 25 Democrats, the Senate would have even fewer checks and balances.
Natural selection indeed.
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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
