As Oklahoma Goes, So Goes. . .? : Term limitations could produce a near-revolution in politics

A dozen years ago California voters passed Proposition 13, the property tax-limitation initiative, setting in motion a taxpayer revolt that swept across the country. Now, Oklahoma voters, by a 2-1 margin, have made their state the first to limit the number of years a legislator may serve. Such measures will be prominent on the November ballots in Colorado and California. Is the Oklahoma vote an omen of things to come?

Political opinion on that is typically divided. In California, opponents of the two initiatives to limit terms of state officeholders say they doubt that the Oklahoma vote will significantly influence opinion. Supporters of the measures, not surprisingly, see it as reinforcing a swelling sense that term limitation is an idea whose time has come. Probably all would agree with California Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), an opponent of term limits, who acknowledges the national dimensions of the limitation movement.

Nothing is more calculated to make a professional politician’s blood run cold than the prospect of being limited by law, and not just voter preference, to a finite term of service. But it’s not just politicians who recoil from term limitation measures. Many see any abridgement of voters’ rights to reelect officeholders as many times as they want as a blow to democratic principle. Of course, if voters themselves freely choose to abridge that right, the argument becomes moot.

The Oklahoma measure, to take effect Jan. 1, limits an individual’s lifetime service in the state Legislature to 12 years. California’s Propositions 131 and 140, though they conflict to some degree, would among other things set term limits for nearly all state elective offices, in the Legislature and in the Executive Branch.

Does this week’s vote in Oklahoma presage a more sweeping approach in California? We’ll know on Nov. 6, when voters make decisions that could produce a near-revolutionary transformation of the state’s political landscape.