Tulsa Election 2022: District 4 dilemma

I've lived in the district for 29 years now, and I ran two times when the seat was open, finishing second in the 1998 Republican primary to Anna Falling, who went on to win the general, and winning the 2002 GOP primary but losing in the general to recently retired fire chief Tom Baker, who had the backing of the city establishment. I had 45.3% of the vote, losing 3,466 to 4,182.

People tell me that this is a "purple" district and so if a conservative were to run here, he would need to run in stealth mode. By 2002, I was too vocal and involved to be stealthy, but my advocacy for neighborhood integrity and urban design and my opposition to regressive sales taxes to pay for a downtown arena won me the endorsement of nearly every neighborhood leader in the district, both Democrat and Republican. (The exceptions fell into this category.) Working to defeat me were the Chamber and developers and their allies, who were sore that a ragtag opposition group, of which I was a leader, had managed to beat their campaign for an arena tax, and who were terrified that someone one on the council might advocate for neighborhood and historic protections that all of our peer cities had had for decades. Even with those headwinds, the result was close enough that, if I had been more strategic about the use of my own time, if I had handed web design and mailer design and voter lists off to someone else and focused on meeting more voters, it might have made up the difference. In hindsight, however, it was a mercy to my family that I didn't win.

I have watched two candidate forums -- the August 16 Tulsa Press Club forum featuring all five active candidates (Laura Bellis, Michael Birkes, Michael Feamster, Matthew Fransein, Bobby Dean Orcutt), and the August 4 Center for Public Secrets forum with Bellis, Fransein, and Orcutt only. I've read questionnaire responses and perused social media, mailers, and campaign disclosures for each of the candidates. (A sixth candidate, Weydan Flax, is on the ballot but not campaigning at all.)

That TPC forum was not very revealing. Neither person asking questions has been in Tulsa very long. It was surprising that the panel didn't include a city hall reporter from the daily. The FB profile of Public Radio Tulsa reporter Elizabeth Caldwell says she's from Fort Myers, Florida, and lives in Homer, Alaska, "as far as you can go without a passport," as Tom Bodett used to say, but she appears to be recently registered to vote in Tulsa. Clifton Adcock, a reporter for many years for Oklahoma City's alt-weekly, the Oklahoma Gazette, is registered to vote in Coweta. Someone who has been watching City Hall since before the current city charter was enacted and who lives in the district could have asked more salient questions.

I am struck by how little the best-funded candidates -- Bellis and Feamster -- want to reveal about themselves or their true motivations for running. They act like they're running for student council. This is true of the material that friends have shared with me from other districts. The theory is that the vaguer they are, the less likely to offend anyone and lose votes. I find this offensive.

I miss the days when candidates were often neighborhood leaders like Roscoe Turner, Jim Mautino, Maria Barnes, Bonnie Henke, and Al Nichols -- people who had a track record of advocacy on behalf of citizens at City Hall, who understood City Hall before they got there, and who were vocal about the issues that drove them to run. Their boldness made them targets of special interests, but those who were elected had a mandate to pursue the platform on which they ran.

During the Center for Public Secrets forum, one of the candidates present said that Tulsa is a great non-profit city, said it like it was a good thing. Charitable organizations fill important roles, but we need leaders who understand how much the free market can accomplish without being propped up. To the extent that these types think about manufacturing at all, they see it as something that government attracts by offering massive packages of incentives to lure jobs from other states. In this view, if government and billionaire foundations don't initiate and fund, nothing can grow. I'm reminded of the term "urban husbandry" -- Roberta Brandes Gratz's term for an incremental approach to revitalizing cities. A wise farmer works in alignment with nature's ability to make plants grow with sun, soil, and water. A foolish farmer uses up his resources trying to make the wrong plants grow in the wrong conditions.

All that to say we need fewer people in government who only know the world through the non-profit lens.

Laura Bellis is proud of her non-profit leadership, but not proud enough to tell you its name on her campaign materials. She is executive director of "Take Control Initiative" which provides access to free birth control. The two most prominently featured donors on their website are the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. The "who we are" page makes all the usual silly leftist virtue signals, including trans-nonsense and a land acknowledgement of all the tribes that battled each other, tribes that the Osage drove out of Oklahoma, before the US bought the land from the Osage and sold it to other tribes. I am disappointed that the land acknowledgement does not acknowledge the Spiro Mound Builder civilization.

In forums, Matthew Fransein comes across like he's still trying to find himself. He too seems to have worked almost exclusively in the non-profit world since graduating from American University.

Some of my Republican friends are excited about Michael Feamster, the only registered Republican on the ballot. I found his LinkedIn and found his feed dominated by cheerleading for the Tulsa Regional Chamber, Bynum IV, and GKFF. I found no record of any discontent with the way the city is being governed, which is often what drives someone to run for office. His mailers tell you that he is "above politics." I happen to think politics is a good way to settle differences over policy options, much better than violence on the one hand and repressive conformity on the other, which is probably what he means by "above politics": Rubber-stamp whatever the foundations and the Chamber command. He is a father of four, and he has an executive position over a large region. He really doesn't have time to do this job well -- to scrutinize proposals, to drive the direction of the city -- on top of his responsibilities as a father and businessman. I am told that he may be more conservative than he is revealing, but I've noticed that a candidate who isn't willing to take a stand when he's seeking votes isn't willing to do it after he's one. There's always the next election to fight. "This isn't a hill to die on."

A supporter has harangued me about meeting Feamster in person. I haven't met with any of the candidates in person. I learned long ago that you cannot trust private assurances given by a candidate who is trying to close the deal for your vote. If it's not said in public, it won't be honored in office.

Bobby Dean Orcutt has an interesting background. He has deep roots in Tulsa -- his family platted the subdivision now known as Swan Lake -- but unlike the trust-fund descendants of some old Tulsa families, Mr. Orcutt has known hard times. He grew up in a mobile home park at 36th Street North and Mingo, a neighborhood that isn't there any more. He has a small business -- Mercury Lounge. A working-class and small-business perspective would be a good thing on the council. He's won the endorsement of a number of small business owners and trade unions.

Then again, back in the spring Orcutt decided to print up a bunch of T-shirts reading "Abortion Is Harm Reduction", which is exactly the opposite of the truth -- it murders a child and deeply wounds that child's mother -- and appalling that someone would promote such a message.

Michael Birkes is a retired architect with a master's degree in urban planning. In private practice and working for Matrix, he's had many dealings with local government over the years. i can vaguely recall being on the opposite side of some issues over the years, probably because it was his job to advocate for a project as part of a developer's team. Another architect friend and neighborhood advocate was once warned by zoning attorney Charles Norman that architects should not speak out against the plans of a potential future client. Architects work for developers, and an architect willing to speak out against any development, even the most egregiously awful, might find herself hearing, "You'll never work in this town again." But a retired architect is unfettered from such constraints.

Birkes is the only registered independent in the race. I'm sure we wouldn't agree on much at the national level, but that's been true of several of the best councilors Tulsa has had. He strikes me as more of an old-fashioned liberal who is able to work with people of other political views, not the sort of strident ideologue who ends friendships over the least political disagreement.

We could use someone on the council who understands zoning and planning from years of personal experience and is willing to do his own thinking rather than rubber-stamping the TMAPC on every case. We could use someone on the council who knows how City Hall works, and who uses the independence and time granted by retirement to dig into the issues presented by bureaucrats and boards and ask tough questions. Michael Birkes is the only person on the ballot who might be that sort of city councilor. (He might not be, but he seems the best hope.)