Republican congressional candidate Chris Gibson is calling for an eight-year limit on serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, with a switch from two-year terms to four-year terms.

Gibson cast his proposal as a "creative way" to address campaign finance reform without impeding on the rights of free speech, which had been an objection by critics of efforts to limit campaign contributions.

"The virtue I see in this proposal is that an individual would run for Congress and then only have to run for re-election one time," Gibson said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "And what you would not see are these massive war chests - these members of Congress who have been in for 40 years that raise hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars and then influence the system with their war chests."

Gibson said term limits would be an alternative to a campaign finance system funded by the federal government.

"And public financing, I don't think this is the time to take on yet another big government program with more spending," he said. "We do not want to do that. I would not like to see us move down that road."

Gibson, a retired Army colonel from Kinderhook, in Columbia County, is running against incumbent U.S. Rep. Scott Murphy, D-Glens Falls.

In an interview on Tuesday, Murphy said he hasn't really thought much about term limits.

"It's something I guess I could think about, but I haven't really spent a lot of time thinking about it," he said.

Asked if he thinks some members stay in Congress too long, Murphy said, "I think that there are definitely people that stay a very, very long time. I think we need to have people in Congress that have time to understand all the issues and be effective. But at the same time, I think that having some kind of limit on the back end wouldn't be the end of the world."

Gibson first mentioned the term limits proposal in an interview on the FOXBusiness network on Friday.

Gibson told The Post-Star on Tuesday he is pledging, if elected, to serve no more than eight years, regardless of whether Congress imposes term limits.

"I want to lead by example," he said.

Gibson reiterated his previous statement that, if he's elected, while in office he would donate his military pension back to the government to help reduce the federal deficit.

Murphy has served for about 15 months. He succeeded Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, of Greenport, who represented the local area for a little over two years before she was appointed to the U.S. Senate.

Prior to Gillibrand, Republican John Sweeney, from Clifton Park, represented the area for eight years, and before that, Republican Gerald Solomon from Queensbury represented the area for 20 years.

Gibson, when asked on Tuesday whether he thought term limits should have been in place when Solomon was in office, said that was a different time with different issues.

"I just want to say that Jerry Solomon is a hero of mine and somebody who I look to for inspiration," Gibson said. "That was a different time period, and I'm addressing 2010 and the situations that I see before all of us right now."