On Wednesday, 85-year-old Rep. James Clyburn announced he would seek an 18th term in Congress. Not retire. Not pass the torch. Run again.
This is the first in a three-part Centercratic series on how incumbency became a lifetime appointment, how safe districts became personal fiefdoms, and what we can do about it.
On March 12, 2026, Representative James E. Clyburn walked into the South Carolina Democratic Party headquarters in Columbia and did what almost no one expected: he filed paperwork to run for reelection. Again. For the 18th time. He will turn 86 in July. If he wins, and in his D+13 district there is no plausible scenario in which he doesn’t, he will be 88 years old at the end of his next term.
His 2024 primary was cancelled. Not because he won it. Because no one filed to run against him.
Let that sit for a moment. In the world’s oldest democracy, an 85-year-old man is running for a seat that no one is allowed to meaningfully contest. And he is not the exception. He is the system.
ACT I: The Numbers
The 119th Congress is the third-oldest in American history. The average age is 58.9 years. The median age of the United States is 39.1.
But averages are polite. The real story is in the tails of the distribution, the members who have been in Congress so long that the institution has become less a place where they serve and more a place where they live.
There are currently 24 members of Congress born during or before World War II, the Silent Generation. Their average age is 83.8. More than half of them, 13, are running for reelection in 2026. Seven are 85 or older. The oldest, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, is 92. He was first elected in 1980, the year Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter.
In the House alone, six members are 85 or older:
Three of those six, Pelosi, Hoyer, and eventually Norton, have announced their retirements. Three have not. Clyburn, Waters, and Rogers intend to keep going.
And they are not alone. Across the full House, members aged 70-79 now constitute 16.9% of the body. Members 80 and up represent 6.5% of House Democrats and 4.1% of House Republicans. This is not a functioning legislature. This is a gerontocracy.
ACT II: The 30-Year Club
Age alone doesn’t tell the full story. Tenure does.
There are currently 26 members of the U.S. House who have served 30 years or more, three full decades in one job, in one institution, in one district. Twenty-one of them are Democrats. Five are Republicans. That 4-to-1 ratio is not coincidental; it is structural, a product of the Democratic Party’s seniority system that rewards long tenure with powerful committee chairmanships and the safe urban districts that make those careers possible.
Here is the full roster:
Read that PVI column carefully. Cook PVI measures how much more Democratic or Republican a district votes compared to the national average. A PVI of D+40 means Nancy Pelosi’s district runs 40 points more Democratic than the country. D+38 for Danny Davis. R+33 for Hal Rogers and Robert Aderholt.
These are not competitive seats. They are fortresses. And the people inside them are not representatives in any meaningful democratic sense. They are district emperors, permanent and unchallenged.
The following chart makes the point visually. Every bubble is a member of the 30-Year Club, plotted by their district’s partisan lean and their average vote share. The pattern speaks for itself.
ACT III: District Emperors
What makes an emperor? Talent? Popularity? Neither. What makes an emperor is the power they hold that no one can take from them. This is exactly what the election data reveals about the 30-Year Club.
Of the 21 Democrats in the 30-Year Club, 90.5% represent districts with a Cook PVI of D+12 or greater. Their average general election vote share across recent cycles is 73.8%. Nearly half, 43%, have run at least one recent primary completely unopposed. Not won. Unopposed. No one on the ballot.
James Clyburn’s 2024 Democratic primary was cancelled for lack of a challenger. Bobby Scott has been unopposed in his last three primaries. Robert Aderholt has been unopposed in both his primary and general election in three of his last four cycles. In his R+33 district, running for Congress is functionally indistinguishable from being appointed.
Across the full 30-Year Club, the lack of competition is systematic, not anecdotal.
And this Tuesday, just two days before Clyburn announced he’d run again, 78-year-old Bennie Thompson won his 2026 Democratic primary in Mississippi’s D+12 2nd District with 86% of the vote. His general election opponent is, for all practical purposes, a placeholder.
This is what a 97% incumbent reelection rate looks like in practice. In 2024, 97% of House incumbents who sought reelection won. Thirty-seven House races had only one major-party candidate on the ballot. At the state legislative level, 35% of incumbents ran completely unopposed, no opponent from either party.
And the trend is getting worse, not better.
The system has been optimized to prevent turnover. Gerrymandered districts. Fundraising moats. Universal name recognition for the incumbent, zero for the challenger. These are not elections. They are coronations.
ACT IV: Sad Yet Preventable
This is not a partisan problem. It is a human one. And the consequences of staying too long are not hypothetical.
Dianne Feinstein served in the Senate until she died at 90 in September 2023. In her final years, she suffered severe memory lapses, repeated herself during hearings, and had to be wheeled around the Capitol by aides to avoid situations where she might appear confused. Her months-long absence due to shingles complications stalled Democratic judicial appointments. She announced she would not seek reelection but refused to resign. The institution she claimed to love was diminished by her presence in it.
Steny Hoyer, to his credit, recognized the moment. When he announced his retirement in January 2026 at age 86, he told the Washington Post: “I did not want to be one of those members who clearly stayed, outstayed his or her ability to do the job.” He broke down on the House floor. He quoted Shakespeare. He left on his own terms, with dignity. It should not be remarkable that a public servant chose to leave voluntarily. The fact that it is remarkable tells you everything about the system.
Strom Thurmond served until age 100. In his final years, he had to be helped to the Senate floor by aides, could barely speak audibly, and staff essentially voted on his behalf. He refused to resign despite being visibly incapacitated. He died just six months after finally leaving office in January 2003.
Don Young served 49 years, the longest-tenured Republican in House history. He died in office in March 2022 at age 88 while flying back to Washington. He had visibly slowed in his final terms but kept running in his R+15 district where he was essentially unopposed.
And then there is Clyburn. Eighty-five years old. Filing paperwork for term number 18. His district’s last contested primary was a formality. When asked about his age, he joked that he was celebrating “the 47th anniversary of my 39th birthday.”
He said: “I would not run if I were not up to it.”
Feinstein said the same thing. Thurmond, who could barely communicate when he finally retired at 100, presumably thought the same thing.
The problem is not whether they believe it. The problem is that the system provides no mechanism to test it.
FINAL ACT: The System Won’t Fix Itself
Here is the truth that no sitting member of Congress will say out loud: the combination of safe districts, uncontested primaries, and seniority-based power has created a class of permanent incumbents who face no meaningful electoral accountability. Eighty-two percent of Americans, 76% of Democrats, 89% of Republicans, 83% of independents, support congressional term limits. It is one of the only issues in American politics with near-universal bipartisan support. And yet nothing happens, because the people who would have to vote for the change are the same people the change would remove.
This is not about age. It is about accountability. A 70-year-old in a competitive district who wins a hard-fought primary and a close general election has earned their seat through democratic contest. An 85-year-old in a D+13 district whose primary was cancelled because no one bothered to challenge them has not earned anything. They have simply persisted.
The Centercratic Party was built for exactly this kind of structural failure, problems that both parties helped create, that neither party will fix alone, and that only systemic, accountable reform can solve.
In the next article in this series, we will examine the term limits landscape: what 16 states are already doing, what works, what doesn’t, and why the Supreme Court said Congress itself must act.
In the third and final article, we will lay out the Centercratic solution: smart term limits, redistricting reform, and the structural changes needed to turn district emperors back into public servants.
The American people did not consent to a gerontocracy. It was built around them, one safe district and one uncontested primary at a time. It is time to dismantle it.
For our Friday Vision series at the Center Voter Community, each week we trace the arc from past to present to future: how the systems that once worked broke down, where the structural failures are driving today’s dysfunction, and what governance looks like when results matter more than partisanship. We are grounded in data, guided by Centercratic principles, and built on the belief that this country’s greatest chapter has not been written yet. The future is not predetermined. It is a choice.
Join us every Friday.
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YES INDEED!