Serving in the legislature is sometimes combined with serving in the military reserves, which these days, is likely to include deployment, as well. There are five Pennsylvania legislators now deployed and four from South Carolina. Altogether, 34 states have had lawmakers serve time while they were in office.
The issue of what to do when legislators are deployed has created a need for legislation to deal with the situation. Some states have created laws to protect lawmakers' re-entry into the legislature upon return, others have set up appointees to fill in while they're gone.
Illinois' Rep. Jim Watson is featured in the National Conference of State Legislators' press release on the topic yesterday ...
Illinois Rep. Jim Watson, a former member of the U.S. Marine Corps and Marine Corps Reserves, is a member of the Individual Ready Reserve. As a Staff Sergeant with the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves’ 3rd Civil Affairs Group, he was recently deployed to Iraq as a member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force’s Governance Cell. He also served in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm from 1990-1991 During his most recent nine-month deployment to Iraq, Watson missed the spring legislative session, leaving his district without a vote in the Illinois General Assembly.
“This is important to me, and I hope that is important to them,” Watson said prior to his deployment.“We are at an important point in our nation’s history. There is a general sense of duty that does not end when you take the uniform off. For some time now, I have felt the call to again serve my country."
Enacted this year, Arkansas specified that an elected official retains the public office upon returning from active military duty. In 2008, Louisiana allowed for temporary successors to be appointed if a legislator is called to active duty for more than 180 days and Maine exempted National Guard members from the law prohibiting an unclassified employee of the executive branch from being a candidate for elective office in a partisan public election.
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