We’re not the only ones who noticed what Bob McDowell calls “the ugly head of elected official arrogance” in the debate in the Oklahoma legislature to term-limit state elected officials. In an op-ed for the Tulsa Beacon, McDowell writes:

Our State Legislature has initiated legislation that would direct a vote at the general election in November to amend the Oklahoma Constitution to provide term limits on all statewide elected officials of 12 years…. Attorney General Edmondson has loudly and strongly expressed his objection to this proposal. Some of the other elected officers have probably also objected, but not so publicly. They, of course, seem to feel that the office is theirs for life, or as long as they want to keep it before going to another office.

This bill passed the House of Representatives easily and was sent to the Senate, where, because of the even division between the parties and the ensuing agreement for “joint” management, it has experienced a more difficult course.

It was on the way to approval when the AG raised the objection that, in his opinion, it was worded retroactively, meaning that he, the state school superintendent and Corporation Commissioner Bob Anthony would be prohibited from running for re-election in 2010.

This came despite the claims of the authors that this was not the intent nor wording of the bill as written.

To accommodate his complaints, the senators changed a few words to make it very clear that the term limits established would begin with the next election after adoption of the amendment, meaning they would begin with the 2010 election.

However, that did not satisfy Mr. Edmondson and he leaned on the Democrat members of the Senate to achieve his goal, that is killing of the bill.

Thus, we citizens have been deprived of the right to vote on this matter by the pressure tactics of one person, probably speaking and acting for a number of other current office holders.

This is pretty much what happened, although, given how adamantly opposed to term limits politicians of all stripes tend to be (with notable exceptions in Oklahoma as elsewhere), it’s an open question whether the AG’s very visible and untoward intervention in such a pending legislative matter was needed to prevent the question from reaching ballot.

At any rate Oklahoma lawmakers bowed all to eagerly to the disingenuous pressure Edmondson applied. We admit we are not surprised by his conduct, having seen much worse.