If you grew too fond of public life it might exact compromises even if finances were not involved.
A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.
I don't see myself in any way in elective office.
Elective office is one of many ways to serve the community and the country. It's one that I would consider at some point.
In our system, at about 11:30 on election night, they just push you off the edge of the cliff-and that's it. You might scream on the way down, but you're going to hit the bottom, and you're not going to be in elective office.
Elective office and public service are obviously something that have long ties with my family, and something I'm definitely interested in.
It's hard to have both parents involved in elective office at the same time.
I'm not going back to acting, and I'm not going to seek elective office.
This idea that once you get into politics... you are now signed up for lifelong duty being in elective office, makes a fundamental error - and that is believing that the only way you can hold progressive views and implement them is in elective office.
Most of the people who are in elective office in Washington, D.C., they have held public office before. How's that workin' for you?
The only way you approach politics and seek elective office is to move forward. For me to look back in anger or with any rancor would be a mistake.
I was eleventh-grade class president. That was the first elective office I held until I came into Congress.
It is a travesty for anyone who is elected to office, who serves in an elective office, to engage in voter suppression.
I didn't set out with the notion of running for elective office; it sort of grew over time. And I honestly at times questioned if progressive change can be effected through elected office.
What people fail to appreciate is that the currency of corruption in elective office is, not money, but votes.
History has proved the haphazard form of selecting and preparing candidates for elective office is fatal, with ill-equipped officials compounding the error by appointing other unqualified individuals to offices upon which our nation's independence must rely.
The traditional path to making a name for yourself in our family is running for elective office, and I couldn't do that because, for one thing, all the really good offices were taken.
Under the circumstances, may I suggest another means of encouraging probity in elective office. I refer to term limitations, which can serve ends beyond that of saving congressional souls.
Before holding elective office - 12 years in the Wyoming House of Representatives and 18 years in the U.S. Senate - I served a different type of time. I was on probation for a federal offense committed as a teenager.
I always knew that I would give back. My mother and my father both believe you have to work hard and give back. That's why I was a volunteer firefighter, that's why I worked in a homeless shelter. I always knew I'd give back, elective office or not.
If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will, in fact, be for life, and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance.
