Drew Edmondson

William Andrew Edmondson (born October 12, 1946) is an American lawyer and politician from the state of Oklahoma.

Drew Edmondson was born in Washington, D.C., on October 12, 1946, and is the son of former U.S. Congressman Ed Edmondson and June Edmondson.

He is also a nephew of former governor J. Howard Edmondson.

His brother, James E. Edmondson is a justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

He was defeated twice in campaigns for U.S. Congress in Oklahoma's 2nd congressional district, where his father Ed Edmondson served from 1953 to 1973.

Edmondson was defeated twice in statewide races for Governor of Oklahoma.

As a child, he grew up in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and Washington, D.C., and graduated from Muskogee High School in 1964.

In 1968, he earned a B.A. in speech education from Northeastern State University, where he was a member of Phi Sigma Epsilon, now Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity.

From 1968 to 1972, Edmondson served in the United States Navy including a year of duty during the Vietnam War.

From 1975 to 1977, he served one term in the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

He graduated from the University of Tulsa Law School in 1978.

That same year, he joined the Muskogee County District Attorney's Office as an intern and became an assistant district attorney the following year, serving under District Attorney Mike Turpen.

Following a loss to Mike Synar in the 1980 primary election, Edmondson sought the second congressional district seat in the 1992 election.

With backing from the NRA Political Victory Fund who had turned against the incumbent Synar, Edmondson again ran for Oklahoma's 2nd congressional district.

After a heated campaign during which Synar criticized Edmondson for being soft on crime and for taking PAC money not just from the NRA but also from Big Tobacco and from out-of-state ranchers and Edmondson accused Synar of being ineffective on state economic problems and out of touch with his district as exemplified by his vote against authorizing the death penalty for drug dealers Edmondson finished with 38% to Synar's 43% in the primary election, forcing a runoff that Synar won with 53%.

Following a brief stint in private practice with his brother James E. Edmondson, when incumbent District Attorney Mike Turpen stepped down to run for Attorney General of Oklahoma, Edmondson was elected as Muskogee County District Attorney in 1982.

Prior to his election as state attorney general, he served as district attorney for Muskogee County, Oklahoma, from 1983 to 1992.

He was subsequently reelected without opposition in 1986 and 1990.

As District Attorney, he personally prosecuted cases ranging from DUI to death penalty.

He resigned halfway through his third term, to run for Congress in 1992.

In the 1992 campaign, Synar charged that Edmondson "was not a good District Attorney" and Muskogee County under Edmondson had given 90 convicted sex offenders no jail time.

The specific case that commanded the most attention was that of Donald Lee Robertson who initially agreed to plead guilty to raping his ten-year-old cousin and received a two-year suspended sentence by Judge Jim Edmondson, Drew's brother.

The light sentence became an issue and despite the questionable legality of reopening the case Robertson was persuaded to withdraw his plea and was put on trial, eventually being sentenced to 70 years in prison where he remains today.

Edmondson was elected as Oklahoma Attorney General in 1994.

During his first term, he joined other state attorneys general in filing suit against the tobacco industry, successfully advocated for reform of the death penalty appeals process, and created a victim assistance unit.

A member of the Democratic Party, Edmondson served as the 16th Attorney General of Oklahoma from 1995 to 2011.

In 1998, he became the second Oklahoma Attorney General to win reelection unopposed.

In 2001, Edmondson became involved in a legal dispute with then-governor Frank Keating over the Governor's restructuring of his Cabinet, winning a state Supreme Court ruling that Keating had no authority to restructure his Cabinet without legislative approval in the case of Keating v. Edmondson.

When Oklahoma City Police Department chemist Joyce Gilchrist was accused of falsifying evidence in hundreds of cases, Attorney General Edmondson was asked to appoint independent counsel to investigate and refused to do so.

In addition to having defended her work in appeals proceedings prior to the scandal, he made the decision that most of the death-penalty cases that depended upon her testimony did not need additional review.

He was elected to a third term in 2002, defeating state Corporation Commissioner Denise Bode.

During 2002–2003, he served as president of the National Association of Attorneys General.

Notable cases investigated during his tenure as attorney general included the August 2003 indictment of WorldCom and its former CEO Bernard Ebbers on charges of violating state securities laws although the charges were later dropped following Ebbers's federal sentencing.

Furthermore, he conducted a corruption investigation against then-State Insurance Commissioner Carroll Fisher, which resulted in Fisher's impeachment, resignation, and indictment on charges including embezzlement, tax evasion, perjury, and bribery.

In October 2007, Edmondson charged term limits and initiative rights activist Paul Jacob and two others on the grounds that they had illegally used out-of-state petitioners to collect signatures on a ballot initiative.

In December 2008 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit struck down the underlying Oklahoma law that barred out-of-state petition circulators, ruling that it violated the First Amendment.

The attorney general's office dismissed the charges against Jacob and the other defendants in January 2009, with Edmondson saying "The statute under which these defendants were charged has been declared unconstitutional, and the appellate process is complete...The statute is no longer enforceable."

In 2010, Edmondson was defeated by Jari Askins in an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic Party nomination for governor.

Following his service as attorney general, he joined the Oklahoma City law office of Riggs Abney.

He was the Democratic nominee for governor in 2018 but was defeated by Republican nominee Kevin Stitt in the general election.