Candidate Eric Greitens' campaign for governor last year included a pledge to impose term limits on all of Missouri's statewide elected officials.
If Missouri voters approve the idea, the Show-Me State would join only four others where most, or all, of the statewide elected officials are term-limited - Nevada and Ohio, six offices each; New Mexico, five of seven; and Michigan, four offices.
Missouri is one of 36 U.S. states where the governor faces term limits, while 14 other states impose no limits on the number of times a governor can hold that office.
Missouri's Constitution limits the governor and state treasurer to two four-year terms - with up to two years more possible if they succeeded someone in the office for less than two years of that previous person's term.
Last week, the Missouri Senate's Rules, Joint Rules, Resolutions and Ethics Committee heard Sen. Will Kraus' proposed constitutional amendment to limit Missouri's lieutenant governor, secretary of state, auditor and attorney general to serving no more than two four-year terms.
No one testified for or against that proposal at Tuesday's hearing. A similar resolution in the House has not yet been assigned to any committee.
Voters must approve the idea before it could go into effect.
Kraus told the News Tribune last week: "This is not a conversation about term limits. This is a conversation about an uneven playing field.
"Some statewide elected officials have term limits some do not. I propose the same term limits for all elected officials."
During his first State of the State address as governor, Greitens on Jan. 17 urged the Legislature "to put on the ballot term limits for every statewide officeholder. I know that the people of Missouri will vote for term limits, and people are counting on us to put an end to politics as a lifelong profession."
In Missouri's 196-year history, the average time spent in a statewide office is less than six years:
Governor, 55 administrations, 3.6981 years.
Lieutenant governor, 46 administrations, 4.2609 years.
Secretary of state, 39 administrations, 5.0256 years.
Auditor, 36 administrations, 5.4444 years.
Treasurer, 45 administrations, 4.3556 years.
Attorney general, 41 administrations, 4.7805 years.
Only 16 Missourians have held one statewide office for more than eight years.
For this story, we did not look at the totals for people who held more than one statewide office, such as former Gov. Jay Nixon's total 24 years as attorney general and governor or John Ashcroft's 18 years as auditor, attorney general and governor.
If it were passed, the proposed constitutional amendment would shorten - but not prohibit - a politician's holding more than one office in a career.
Democrat James Kirkpatrick holds the record for staying in one statewide office - 20 years as secretary of state, from 1965-85.
Democrat Haskell Holman served 18 years as state auditor.
Democrats Jay Nixon and Forrest Smith each served 16 years in one office - Nixon as attorney general from 1993-2009 and Smith as auditor from 1933-49. And both went immediately from the first office to governor.
Democrat Michael Knowles McGrath was secretary of state for 14 years, from 1875-89.
And five Missourians held one statewide elected office for a dozen years:
Alexander A. Lesueur, D-secretary of state, 1889-1901.
Charles U. Becker, R-secretary of state, 1921-33.
James Monroe Siebert, D-auditor, 1889-1901.
Roy M. McKittrick, D-attorney general, 1933-45.
Peter D. Kinder, R-lieutenant governor, from 2005-Jan. 9, 2017.
Democrat Frank Gaines Harris died in office in December 1944, just a few weeks short of serving as lieutenant governor for 12 years.
Because Missouri governors couldn't succeed themselves until 1968, only four men - Phil M. Donnelly, Christopher "Kit" Bond, John D. Ashcroft and Nixon - have served eight years as governor.
Ashcroft and Nixon served two consecutive terms as governor, but Donnelly and Bond both served their two terms in a 12-year period.
Donnelly served when governors couldn't succeed themselves, so he was in office from 1945-49 and again from 1953-57.
Bond lost his 1976 re-election bid to Democrat Joe Teasdale, then won the 1980 re-match.
Mel Carnahan's October 2000 death in a plane crash came 12 weeks before he would have reached eight years in the governor's office.
Nationally, 28 states impose term limits only on the governor.
Three states - Missouri, Alabama and Arkansas - limit the governor and one other state official.
Pennsylvania limits the terms for governor, auditor and attorney general.
The national group U.S. Term Limits says it "advocates for term limits at all levels of government (and), since it was established in the early 1990s, has assisted in enacting and defending term limits on state legislatures in 15 states, as well as Congressional term limits in 23 states."
In 1992, Missourians approved term limits proposals for both the state Legislature and for the congressional delegation, by nearly three-to-one margins.
But, U.S. Term Limits noted on its website: "Unfortunately, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in (the case) U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton that states may not individually enact term limits for their members of Congress - and the popular and hard-won Congressional term limits never went into effect."
The High Court ruling came in a challenge to Arkansas' 1992 vote to impose term limits on its congressional delegation - and the court ruled the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution does not reserve rights for the States that were not within the states' original powers, and that the men who wrote the federal Constitution intended it to be the sole source of qualifications for members of Congress.
But that ruling only affected Congress, and doesn't prohibit Missouri lawmakers from proposing new restrictions on serving in statewide offices.
Still, many who oppose the idea of term limits argue voters - not constitutional restrictions - should control whether a person is re-elected to an office.
Kraus told the News Tribune last week: "Missourians overwhelmingly voted for term limits. If we want to change the length of term limits or get rid of them, that is a separate conversation."
Missouri term limits bring new blood, but cut experience
Under term limits, which voters added to Missouri's Constitution in 1992, no person can serve in either the state House of Representatives or the Senate for more than eight years - four two-year terms in the House and two four-year terms in the Senate - and no more than 16 years total if serving in both chambers.
A 2002 modification allowed a person elected to complete no more than half of another person's term - a year in the House or two years in the Senate - without having that partial time counted against the eight-year term limits.
Term limits mean new faces in the Legislature after every election.
For instance, in two years, term limits will prevent nine state senators from running again - including Mike Kehoe, R-Jefferson City; Dan Brown, R-Rolla; and President Pro-Tem Ron Richard, R-Joplin.
Richard will have served a total of 16 years in the Legislature, including three years as the Senate's president pro tem, when he leaves the Legislature at the end of next year.
He also served as the House speaker in 2009-10 - the only person in state history to lead both chambers.
Sen. Richard M. (Dick) Webster, R-Carthage, served about 32 years in the Legislature, until his death in 1990. He was in the House for five years, serving as speaker in 1954.
But he never had the chance to be Senate president pro tem, because he always was in the minority party during his 27 years in the Senate.
In the House, term limits will block 45 members from returning - including Jefferson City Republicans Jay Barnes and Mike Bernskoetter.
Because of term limits, no one in the modern Legislature will be able to equal some of the record terms of the past.
State Sen. Michael Kinney served the longest of any lawmaker in Missouri history - or in the nation, according to historian Bob Priddy in a 2010 Missourinet blog post.
Kinney began serving in 1912 and was retired by the voters of his inner-city St. Louis district in the 1968 primary, when they chose Raymond Howard over the 56-year veteran incumbent, then 94.
In the first year that term limits had an effect - the 2002 elections for the 2003 Legislature -102 of the state's 197 lawmakers were replaced, including Mid-Missouri Sen. Larry Rohrbach, R-California, who had served eight years in the House and 12 in the Senate.
He was succeeded by Carl Vogel, R-Jefferson City, who had served 12 years in the House and would serve eight in the Senate until term limits forced him to retire from the Legislature.
Others forced to leave office by term limits at the end of 2002 were:
Sen. John D. Schneider, D-Florissant, 34 years - 2 in the House, 32 in the Senate.
Sen. Harry Wiggins, D-Kansas City, 28 years, all in the Senate.
Sen. Danny Staples, D-Eminence, 26 years - 6 in the House, 20 in the Senate.
Rep. Charles Quincy Troupe, D-St. Louis, 24 years, all in the House.
And term limits caused another group of experienced lawmakers to leave at the end of 2004, including:
Sen. Wayne Goode, D-Normandy, 42 years - 22 in the House, 20 in the Senate.
Sen. John T. Russell, R-Lebanon, 42 years - 14 in the House, 28 in the Senate.
Sen. John E. Scott, D-St. Louis, 34 years - 6 in the House, 28 in the Senate.
Sen. Jim Mathewson, D-Sedalia, 30 years - 6 in the House, 24 in the Senate.
Sen. Harold Caskey, D-Butler, 28 years, all in the Senate.
Sen. Doyle Childers, R-Reeds Spring, 22 years - 14 in the House, 8 in the Senate.