Elaine Hays, an Amarillo businesswoman, has decided that 20 years of service in the U.S. House of Representatives is enough, so she’s running to replace Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, in the People’s House.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=916936#.UdRBWkoo6t8

I don’t know Hays. I understand she had about 75 people attending her campaign kickoff announcement at the Ambassador Hotel in Amarillo.

She talks about the nation being $16 trillion in debt and I suppose she’s blaming Thornberry for that huge debt load.

What’s most interesting to me is that she has been endorsed by newly elected Texas State Board of Education member Marty Rowley, a fellow Republican who attended Hays’ event at the Ambassador. I would have thought Rowley would be in Thornberry’s camp.

Whatever.

I’m hoping someone along the way asks Hays this simple, direct question: Will you pledge to serve only two, maybe three, terms in office and will you leave office after that time?

Thornberry keeps getting hammered — unfairly, in my view — by those who think he’s reneged on a term-limits pledge. He never promised to serve the number of terms prescribed in the Contract With America, which Thornberry endorsed when he ran for his first term in the House in 1994. He’s voted for the constitutional amendment every time it’s come up; the amendment simply has failed to gather the required number of votes needed to send it to the states for ratification.

So, I’ll be the first to ask Ms. Hays: Will you hereby make that term-limits pledge and will you bow out of public office after six years?