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Rich old SOTs: Who is "Save Our Tulsa"?

Who is backing the latest effort to dilute grassroots influence over City Hall? I took the list of 23 names in the list of Save Our Tulsa steering committee members in John Brock's email and did some research. According to recent voter registration records, the median age is of Save...

Posted by Michael Bates on October 12, 2010 11:42 PM

"Save <em>Our</em> Tulsa for our kind, dahling"

There they go again. Many of the same people involved in the attempt to recall Tulsa City Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock, many of the same people involved in Tulsans for Better Government (the group promoting at-large councilors) -- they're on the list of named members of a group...

Posted by Michael Bates on October 10, 2010 10:53 PM

The 2005 recall: Five years later

Five years ago tonight, on July 12, 2005, I was at The Embers, a wonderful steakhouse at 81st and Harvard (now gone, sadly), celebrating the overwhelming defeat of the attempt to recall two Tulsa City Councilors, Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock. The recall effort dominated the local political scene for...

Posted by Michael Bates on July 12, 2010 11:22 PM

Bartlett Jr showing his TfBG loyalties?

What are the odds? After protesting loudly during the mayoral campaign that he wasn't a member of Tulsans for Better Government and had no idea how his name got on that list, Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr is now talking sympathetically about the concepts -- at-large councilors and non-partisan elections...

Posted by Michael Bates on July 12, 2010 12:32 PM

Dewey Bartlett Jr backtracks on Tulsans for Better Government

Steven Roemerman has a post up on Dewey Bartlett Jr's belated denials that he was a member of Tulsans for Better Government, the group that in 2005 unsuccessfully circulated a petition to change the Tulsa City Charter to reduce the number of City Council districts to six and add three...

Posted by Michael Bates on October 27, 2009 12:10 PM

Non-partisan initiative petition struck down

Earlier today District Judge Jefferson Sellers ruled that an initiative petition seeking a charter amendment to make Tulsa city elections non-partisan is invalid. The petition, circulated in 2008 by the group Tulsans for Better Government, was challenged by City Councilor John Eagleton on two grounds: That the petitions lacked a...

Posted by Michael Bates on August 24, 2009 1:48 PM

Rewriting Tulsans for Better Government history

Still too swamped for a detailed analytical post, but I must at least point out the misstatements at the end of last Friday's story in the daily about the initiative petition filed by Tulsans for Better Government in support of a charter change for non-partisan elections. The original web story...

Posted by Michael Bates on August 3, 2009 7:49 AM

At-large barge runs aground

An edited version of this piece was published in the June 21, 2006, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The archived version is no longer online. Here is my blog entry linking to the article. Posted on the web August 2, 2009. Links to the Citizens' Commisison final report added October...

Posted by Michael Bates on June 21, 2006 10:12 PM

A timeline of the "at-large councilor" push

Bobby of Tulsa Topics has done a great service by collecting in one place, in chronological order, the petition origins of the recent drive to dismember three Tulsa City Council districts and add three at-large seats on the Council, and the parallel thread leading to the Mayor's "Citizens' Commission on...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 18, 2005 11:16 PM

At-large petition dead; LaFortune forms Citizens' Commission

An edited version of this column was published in the December 14, 2005, edition of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is still online, courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Here's my blog entry linking to the article. Posted October 28, 2017. The at-large councilor petition appears to be...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 14, 2005 8:56 AM

At-large councilors

An edited version of this piece was published in the October 26, 2005, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The archived version is no longer online. Posted on the web October 27, 2009. It's been a tough couple of years for Tulsa's traditional political establishment. The bunch that for years has...

Posted by Michael Bates on October 26, 2005 12:09 PM