Republican 58th District State Senate candidate and retired Marine Lt. Col. Paul Schimpf recently offered his stance on political term limits for the Illinois General Assembly after Gov. Bruce Rauner expressed his support.
“Term limits are a necessary component to reforming the political process and making Illinois government more accountable to its citizens," Schimpf said. "In addition to allowing citizens the opportunity to vote to reform our broken redistricting system, term limits will help put an end to the stranglehold that career politicians have on our state.”
Schimpf's view of term limits stands in stark contrast to that of his opponent, former Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon (D-Carbondale).
“As Pat Quinn's running mate, Simon sided with House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, who blocked multiple attempts to get Constitutional amendments past the committee level in the General Assembly,” Schimpf said.
Schimpf argued that unfortunately for the voters in Southern Illinois, Simon is still opposed to term limits, which is a primary focus of his campaign — gaining fresh perspectives in government to help his constituents and the state.
"About a month ago, my opponent reaffirmed her opposition to term limits while speaking to a group of Randolph County citizens stating that she wasn’t a ‘big fan of term limits. I like to have a choice. I like voting for someone into office or out of office,'" Schimpf said. "Term limits is just another issue where there is a bright line difference between my opponent and me. My first priority will be to serve my district where most people are in favor of term limits.”
Despite her rejection of term limits, Simon said she is in favor of term limits for positions of a great deal of authority.
“It won’t make me popular in Springfield,” she said.
Schimpf explained that in March, a Southern Illinois University Poll found that 78 percent of Illinoisans are in favor term limits for politicians.
“Of all of the restructuring proposals asked about in this poll, the widest support was for term limits on state legislators,” the poll said. “Seventy-eight percent of the sample favored term limits while only 20 percent opposed the proposal and 3 percent didn’t know. Term limits were most popular among Republicans.”
Schimpf regularly stressed that his message is pretty simple and to-the-point.
“Government corruption is killing Illinois and the political class is not capable of solving that problem,” he said. “We got a Republican elected the governor of Illinois. That victory wouldn’t have happened without the hard work of (Republicans).”
Schimpf also explained that it was time for the people to work even further for change. A big part of that change is to get corruption out of the government, or at least limit the amount of time one can stay corrupt.
“(Our Republican victory in electing Rauner) doesn’t mean we get to take ourselves out of the game,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we get to leave the rest of the fighting to others. We have to do more. If we want to turn our state around, we need more than just a Republican governor.”
Schimpf said he is adamant about how important it is to vote out the corruption in November.
“We will not turn our state around unless we get a handle on government corruption,” he said. “ That point is important enough that I’m going to say it again. Illinois will not recover from its death spiral until we tackle the problem of institutionalized government corruption.”
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