After 34 years in Congress, Rep. David Price reflects on his tenure and term limits

Congressman David Price has been going on his own farewell tour in recent days. Last weekend, he was honored with a staff party that brought together folks who had worked with him and for him since his first campaign in the 1980s. Earlier this week, Gov. Roy Cooper surprised him with the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest honor a North Carolinian can receive.

“I’ve certainly had a kind of wave of nostalgia and gratitude with these events in the last week,” Price tells me.

Price has been serving in Congress longer than I have been alive. He’s held leadership positions in the U.S. House and won awards for his service. He has won at least 60% of the vote every year since 2002 (except for 2010, where he won with a 57%). And when people ask about term limits, he has another question in return.

“Do you know any organization that would cast out its leadership after an arbitrary period of time?” Price told me back in November. “Any organization you can think of needs a mix of new blood, fresh ideas, and experienced, seasoned individuals.”

Price, alongside other Democratic stalwarts like Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn, made the decision to tough it out when former president Donald Trump was elected in 2016. When the midterms rolled around in 2018, they decided to weather the storm.

His political career has been about weathering the Republican storms, from Newt Gingrich’s rise in Republican leadership to Jesse Helms’ tenure in the Senate. Price was chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party in 1984, the year Ronald Reagan won all but one state, the year Helms won his third term in the Senate despite his Democratic opponent leading in the polls. It was devastating for the party.

“So much that we had fought for in this state and in the South seemed to be suffering defeat — with Helms in particular,” Price says of that election. “But two years later, we turned it around, and I decided that I might as well run myself.”

In 1986, Price beat the Republican incumbent and began his first term in District 4. He served until 1995, when a Republican wave flooded national politics as a response to Bill Clinton. A Republican once again took control of the district. Price went back to teaching at Duke but felt he wasn’t done in politics.

“I didn’t want to leave Congress or public life in that fashion,” Price says. “I did believe that I could turn it around, and should try to turn it around, so that’s what we did.”

He won his seat back in 1997 and has been serving the district since. If it weren’t for those two years, Price would be in a three-way tie for the fifth-most senior member of the House of Representatives, alongside Peter DiFazio (D-Oregon) and Fred Upton (R-Michigan). He beat Pelosi to the House by six months. Even with the two year absence, he is the second longest-serving representative in North Carolina history.

Price is not a member whom people outside of his district, much less outside of North Carolina, may recognize. He isn’t the majority leader or the Speaker of the House. He isn’t the chair of any committees (although he is the chair of the Transportation subcommittee within Appropriations). He is not the kind of leader that commands attention, but he is the kind that commands respect.

Within the Triangle, his handiwork is palpable. He helped consolidate the EPA offices into one complex in Research Triangle Park. He has brought in millions for transit improvements in the Triangle. He knows his job is to serve the 800,000 people in his district, who consider him the closest they’ll get to the highest law of the land.

I’m still not the biggest fan of career politicians — Congress is about 20 years older than the general population, according to Census data, and younger Americans like Gen X and Millennials are underrepresented. But Price is a great example of an elected official who has used those decades to better the district, instead of his own resume.