Oklahoma State Attorney General Drew Edmondson’s campaign to stop a bill (SB 1987) to term-limit state officials, including himself, has succeeded. The bill is currently in a conference committee but Democrats have signaled that they will kill it. The law would have limited the AG and other statewide officials to 12 years in office, the governor to eight years. State lawmakers are already term-limited.

There was some squabbling over whether the proposed law would have retroactively counted terms already served before enactment of the law. We don’t think the retroactivity would have been such a horror. But most state legislative term limits laws passed in the 1990s were not retroactive in character.

The sponsors of the current proposal had been willing to clarify the bill’s wording to preclude any such interpretation, even accepting revised language provided by the attorney general’s office itself. But it was all for nothing, and Edmondson apparently was able to convince Democrats who had previously supported the bill to change their minds and vote No. So Oklahoma voters are not going to see this measure at the ballot box and have their own say on the matter.

Not yet, anyway.