Four screws keep the name plates of our 76 new state legislators in place.

That mundane fact, U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie reminds his fellow politicians, is what should keep them humble.

“;I learned on Day One, the name slides into the door bracket and the name can slide right out; nobody is there forever,”; Abercrombie is fond of saying.

This is how we limit terms - not with a law, but with a ballot.

For instance, look at the state's Millennium class, the lawmakers either elected or re-elected in 2000 to start work in January 2001.

Of the 51 in the House, 35 have left. Two moved to the state Senate, one to the City Council and another to the Board of Education. One was convicted of federal tax fraud and another of molesting a woman sleeping on an airplane.

The state Senate lost 12 of its 25 members from the class of 2001. Of those 12, one went to the Council and another died.

  It was the slippage of support, not the passage of time, that did in the 47 out of 76 who are no longer serving. By the way, that is nearly 62 percent of the class of 2000.

Some of those 47 were done in by their own hubris. The over-confidence that lets politicians think they can always make the jump from one office to another can be fatal.

It starts with the tearful, nostalgic speech on the House or Senate floor at the end of the session as representatives and senators say farewell with visions of mayor, lieutenant governor, governor or county council in front of them, only to find failure at the end of the ballot.

  And there are others who skated or stumbled through investigations and while not locked up, were tarnished enough that voters weren't buying their merchandise anymore.

That 2001 session was also when the state Republican Party woke up with a new, bold and muscular presence in local politics.

There were 19 GOP members in the House and go along with the three GOP senators. Twenty-two out of 76, almost 29 percent, would be the most the Republicans could muster. Today just 10 percent of the Legislature is Republican.

However you count it, Hawaii's new 76 would do well to think about those four little screws on their Capitol doors.