in with the observation that incumbents are rather rarely defeated, the re-election rate in Congress being on the order of 90 percent or 95 percent. The advantages of Congressional incumbents include greater media coverage, taxpayer-paid staff workers (who are not supposed to do campaign work, but whose work still effectively supports their bosses' reelection efforts), campaign contributions by special interests of all sorts, and use of the franking privilege to send their constituents material promoting themselves free of mailing costs. Incumbents in state legislators do not have a franking privilege, but they enjoy the other advantages of incumbency. Challengers at both state and congressional levels thus face an uneven playing field.
In the view of term-limit advocates, the advantages of incumbency have several detrimental effects on the political process as a whole. Instead of being citizen-legislators who genuinely represent the people of their districts, federal and state legislators become career politicians whose chief concern is winning continued reelection (Jacob, 1994, pp. 37-38). They become captives of special interests who fund their campaigns, and more generally of a Washington Beltway or state-cap
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