SC Democrat seeks age limit for 'geriatric' politicians

Source: Associated Press

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Democratic gubernatorial nominee Joe Cunningham is proposing an age limit for South Carolina politicians — a cap that would cut off the 75-year-old incumbent Gov. Henry McMaster — and making a veiled argument that even fellow Democrats like President Joe Biden are staying “in office way past their prime.”

“Our country and our state are being run by a geriatric oligarchy, people who stay in office way past their prime,” Cunningham says in a campaign video, provided Wednesday to The Associated Press ahead of its public release.

“Some of these folks have been clinging onto power for 30, 40, even 50 years,” Cunningham says. “The folks who are making a career out of politics are making a mess of our country.”

Cunningham proposes instituting a 72-year-old age limit for South Carolina politicians, a retirement bar already in effect for the state’s judges, and one that would take a constitutional amendment, approved by voters, to implement. South Carolina currently requires judges to retire officially at age 72, although jurists are allowed to stay on the bench in a fill-in capacity beyond that age limit.

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