Earlier this evening, I sent the following email to Karen Keith and Monroe Nichols, the two Democrats who advanced to the November 5, 2024, runoff for Mayor of Tulsa.

The idea was inspired by conversations I had with the two candidates after last month's forum hosted by Women for Tulsa at the Campbell Hotel. I pointed out to both that the Supreme Court's Castro-Huerta ruling limited the scope of the McGirt ruling and signalled that SCOTUS would likely find in favor of the State of Oklahoma and its political subdivisions should further tribal challenges to their authority reach the High Court. McGirt happened because Neil Gorsuch sided with the four SCOTUS progressives to form a majority of five, but after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by Amy Coney Barrett, Gorsuch and the remaining three progressives only formed a minority of four in the Castro-Huerta case.

For example, say the owner of a restaurant in Tulsa, a tribal citizen, decides not to collect or remit state, county, and city sales taxes. After Oklahoma Tax Commission padlocks the door, this tribal citizen files a federal lawsuit challenging the authority of Oklahoma and its political subdivisions to collect taxes on an Indian-owned enterprise on Indian-owned land in an Indian reservation. If the case were to reach SCOTUS, the High Court as currently constituted would almost certainly uphold the taxing power of state and city, notwithstanding "reservation" status. But that would only happen if the City of Tulsa and State of Oklahoma pursue the case aggressively in the courts, even if district court and appeals court rulings go the other way. When I asked Rep. Nichols if he would defend Tulsa's power to collect sales tax, he indicated that he would, of course! This questionnaire is designed to give him and his opponent the opportunity to say so in writing and to commit themselves publicly on other issues that really ought to be no-brainers.

I will let you know if I hear back from the candidates. I will also be tweeting these questions out on X, to make sure they're seen.

To the surviving candidates for Mayor of Tulsa:

The elimination of all conservative mayoral candidates in the August 27 election has left me and a third of the city's electorate in a quandary. We will show up in large numbers on November 5 to vote for Donald Trump, Kevin Hern, and other Republican candidates, but we don't yet have a compelling reason to vote in the mayor's race. Nevertheless, if one of you is willing to commit publicly to at least some of the actions below and the other is not, it would make a difference in how conservatives vote.

I know you're busy campaigning, so I'll keep this short and simple. Please reply at your earliest convenience to the following yes/no questions. I will post the responses (or lack of response) verbatim on BatesLine.com. You can feel free to explain or elaborate, but I'm looking for a yes or no answer. The heart of each question is "will you pledge?" and the more "yes" answers you can honestly give, the more inclined conservatives will be to vote for you on November 5.

Thank you for your time.

Section A: City authority in light of McGirt

Background for questions 1 - 4: The challenge to the City's authority to tax, regulate land use, and enforce traffic laws is not likely to come from the tribal governments directly, but, as with the McGirt case, tribal citizens will file federal lawsuits seeking exemption from state and local laws, which tribal governments will join as amici curiae.

1. If a tribal citizen sues in Federal court to claim exemption from the City of Tulsa's zoning laws, will you pledge to commit the City's resources to defend in Federal court the City's power to enforce its zoning laws over all property within its municipal limits, pursuing the case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States if necessary?

2. If a tribal citizen sues in Federal court to claim exemption from the City of Tulsa's traffic laws, will you pledge to commit the City's resources to defend in Federal court the City's power to enforce its traffic laws on all drivers within its municipal limits, pursuing the case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States if necessary?

3. If a tribal citizen with a retail business sues in Federal court to claim exemption from collecting and remitting state, county, and city sales taxes, will you pledge to commit the City's resources to defend in Federal court the City's taxing authority within its municipal limits, pursuing the case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States if necessary?

4. If property owner who is a tribal citizen sues in Federal court to claim exemption from paying ad valorem tax, will you pledge to commit the City's resources to defend in Federal court the City's taxing authority within its municipal limits, pursuing the case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States if necessary?

Section B: City involvement in controversial cultural issues

5. The City Council and Mayor Bynum approved the use of Federal COVID relief funds for Amplify Tulsa to survey 15-17 year old children about their "sexual health and well-being." Will you pledge to veto any proposal that gives any funds under the City's control for the purpose of communicating with minors about sexual matters?

6. Mayor Bynum used an executive order to add "gender identity" and "gender expression" to the City's non-discrimination policy. The idea that someone can be "born in the wrong body" or "born the wrong gender" has no basis in science, and it has led vulnerable youth to damage their bodies with cross-sex hormones and surgery. Will you pledge to remove "gender identity" and "gender expression" from the City's non-discrimination policy?

7. Will you pledge to enact and enforce city policies that exclude all biological males (including purported "transwomen" and "non-binary") from private female spaces and activities, such as restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, and city sports leagues?

8. Will you pledge never to require city employees to participate in Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE) training sessions, which have proven to sow mistrust and division among an organization's employees?

Section C: Taxes

9. Improve Our Tulsa 3, passed in 2023, has already obligated our current sales tax and property tax rates beyond 2028. Will you pledge not to put a general obligation bond issue or sales tax proposal before the voters during your four-year term of office?

[I was manually numbering these questions, and left room for another question that I didn't end up writing. Oh, well.]

Section D: Law enforcement

11. Citizen oversight panels have been used in many cities to second-guess the split-second decisions made by police officers in the line of duty. This has reduced proactive policing, causing police officers to hesitate to act decisively against crime, leading to an increase in crime in those cities. Will you pledge to veto any proposal to create a citizen oversight panel for the Tulsa Police Department?

12. In 2020, under activist pressure, Mayor Bynum ended the Tulsa Police Department's relationship with Live PD, which showcased TPD's professionalism in difficult and dangerous circumstances. Will you pledge to authorize TPD to resume cooperation with Live PD and similar network television shows?

13. For many years, the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office has had a 287(g) agreement with ICE. According to the ICE website: "The 287(g) program allows ICE -- through the delegation of specified immigration officer duties -- to enhance collaboration with state and local law enforcement partners to protect the homeland through the arrest and removal of noncitizens who undermine the safety of our nation's communities and the integrity of U.S. immigration laws." Will you pledge to have the Tulsa Police Department participate in the 287(g) program to the fullest extent possible for city governments?

Section E: Homelessness

14. The Housing, Homelessness & Mental Health Task Force, which oversees the $75 million in IOT3 funds set aside to address homelessness in Tulsa, does not include anyone who works directly with homeless people. Will you pledge to add leaders of Christian ministries that serve the homeless (e.g., John 3:16 Mission, City of Hope) to that task force?

15. Will you pledge to enact and enforce ordinances that prohibit camping on public property and panhandling, requiring those convicted to enter a diversion program or else face jail?

Section F: Public health

16. The mandatory closure of businesses, schools, churches, and other gathering places, and the imposition of social distancing requirements during the COVID-19 epidemic proved to be ineffective at preventing the spread of the disease but disastrous to the economic and social well-being of Tulsans. In the event of a similar respiratory pandemic, will you pledge not to seek or use emergency powers to require Tulsa businesses, churches, schools, and other gathering places to close?

17. The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are now known not to prevent the spread of that virus, and its efficacy at mitigating the severity of the virus is questionable, at best short-lived and decreasing with each new variant. Severe adverse effects, including myocarditis and pericarditis in young men, have come to light. Many government workers were faced with a choice of taking the vaccine against their will or losing their jobs. Will you pledge never to mandate a vaccine as a condition of employment with the City of Tulsa?

### END ###

A parting thought: If I were to say that someone like Kevin Stitt should have twice as much say in how Tulsa is run than someone like Monroe Nichols, or that Stitt and Nichols should be treated differently if accused of a crime, because of their respective ancestry, I'd be accused of racism, and rightly so. But that is what tribal co-governance is all about. Stitt had an ancestor on the Dawes Commission roll, Francis Dawson. If I've found the right Dawson, he was enrolled with a blood quantum of 1/16. If that's Stitt's great-great-grandfather, and assuming no other Indian ancestors, that makes Stitt's blood quantum 1/256: One Cherokee ancestor 8 generations ago entitles him to special rights, regardless of the degree of engagement he has with Cherokee culture.

The second and simplest state question on Oklahoma's November 5, 2024, ballot is SQ 834. It would modify the language of Article III, Section 1, of the Oklahoma Constitution:

Subject to such exceptions as the Legislature may prescribe, all only citizens of the United States, who are over the age of eighteen (18) years, and who are bona fide residents of this state, are qualified electors of this state.

If SQ 834 passes, the section will read:

Subject to such exceptions as the Legislature may prescribe, only citizens of the United States who are over the age of eighteen (18) years and who are bona fide residents of this state are qualified electors of this state.

The gist you will see on the ballot is:

This measure amends Section 1 of Article 3 of the Oklahoma Constitution. It clarifies that only citizens of the United States are qualified to vote in this state.

SQ834 began life as SJR 23, with a long list of coauthors. It passed the Senate 37-7 and passed the House 71-11. Among Tulsa Democrats, Reps. Suzanne Schreiber, John Waldron, Meloyde Blancett, and Regina Goodwin, and Sens. Jo Anna Dossett and Kevin Matthews voted no. Reps. Monroe Nichols (candidate for Tulsa mayor), Melissa Provenzano, and Amanda Swope did not vote.

The current language leaves open the possibility that a charter city might allow non-citizens to vote in city elections. Stating that all citizens are qualified electors doesn't exclude the possibility that non-citizens might also be qualified electors. The new language closes off that possibility, unless the Legislature itself permitted it.

I'd rather "subject to such exceptions" spelled out what types of exceptions would be reasonable. I assume those would only be excluding felons from voting. I'd prefer something like: "Subject to such exceptions as the Legislature may prescribe depriving felons of the vote, all citizens of the United States, and only citizens of the United States, who are over the age of eighteen (18) years and who are bona fide residents of this state are qualified electors of this state."

Nevertheless, this is an improvement over the existing language, and I will be voting YES.

Oklahoma has two state questions on the November 5, 2024, ballot. The first and most controversial and confusing is State Question 833. I have this uneasy feeling that the proposal is not so much about solving problems for cities or even for developers as it is about creating a new market for financial services companies. I'm voting NO on SQ 833.

Here is the gist that appears on the ballot:

STATE QUESTION NO. 833 LEGISLATIVE REFERENDUM NO. 376

This measure adds a new section, section 9E, to article 10 of the Oklahoma Constitution. Section 9E will permit the creation of public infrastructure districts to provide support, organization, operation, and maintenance of services. To create such a district, proponents for creating the district must file a petition with the municipality. The petition must include the signatures of one hundred percent of all surface property owners falling within the district's proposed boundaries. The municipality possesses the right to impose limitations on the district's powers prior to approving the district. Once approved, the district will be governed by a board of trustees.

Through the board, the district may issue bonds to pay for all or part of all public improvements implemented by and for the public infrastructure district. The district will be limited to issuing bonds issued for such improvements not exceeding ten (10) mills. For repayment of the bonds, the district, acting through its board of trustees, will levy and assess a special assessment on all property benefiting from the improvements in the district. Section 9E also authorizes the Legislature to enact laws necessary for the implementation of public infrastructure districts.

This question is a legislative referendum, which means the state legislature approved a joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment, which must then be ratified by the voters. SJR 16 was authored by Sen. John Haste, R-Broken Arrow, Rep. Terry O'Donnell, R-Catoosa, and Rep. Lonnie Sims, R-Jenks, who is the Republican nominee for Tulsa County Commission District 2. The resolution passed the Senate 38-7, with most of the consistent conservatives (e.g., Dahm, Deevers, Hamilton, Jett) voting no, and passed the House 66-27, again with most of the consistent conservatives (e.g., Banning, Gann, Olsen) voting against. Some usually reliable conservatives voted yes in both houses (e.g. Prieto, Crosswhite Hader), but I also notice lots of prominent Democrat names on the yes side (e.g., Provenzano, Schreiber, Dossett, Nichols, Blancett).

Here is the language that will be added to Article X of the State Constitution if SQ 833 passes:

Section 9E. A. There are hereby created public infrastructure districts.

B. Municipalities may approve the creation of public infrastructure districts, which may incur indebtedness and issue public infrastructure district bonds to pay for all or part of the cost of public improvements within such districts. The cost of all indebtedness so incurred shall be levied and assessed by the board of trustees of a public infrastructure district on the property benefited by such improvements following the passage and approval of the organization of a public infrastructure district pursuant to subsection C of this section. The board shall collect the special assessments so levied and use the same to reimburse the public infrastructure district for the amount paid or to be paid by it on the bonds issued for such improvements not to exceed ten (10) mills for the purpose of providing funds for the purpose of support, organization, operation, and maintenance of such services.

C. A public infrastructure district shall not be created unless a petition is filed with the municipality that contains the signatures of one hundred percent (100%) of surface property owners within the applicable area consenting to the creation of the public infrastructure district.

D. The municipality may impose limitations on the powers of the public infrastructure district through the governing document presented by the public infrastructure district applicant.

E. The levy shall be in addition to all other levies authorized by this Constitution, and when approved, shall be made for the repayment of public infrastructure district bonds issued by the public infrastructure districts for the public improvements agreed upon by the voters of the district as provided by the governing document.

F. The Legislature shall be authorized to enact such laws as may be necessary in order to implement public infrastructure districts in this state.

Reading between the lines to think through how this would work:

A public infrastructure district (PID) would likely be set up by a single property owner, since the consent of 100% of property owners is required. The property owner would be the proponent and would develop the governing document for the public infrastructure, which would presumably spell out the number, terms, and process for appointment of the trustees.

Only a municipality can approve a public infrastructure district, but nothing in this amendment says that the infrastructure district has to be within that municipality's limits. (That may be implied by other law, but it ought to be spelled out here.) It says the municipality may impose limitations in the district's powers, but the only power authorized in this section is to incur indebtedness and issue bonds. Perhaps a limitation would include capping indebtedness or restricting what improvements could be financed in this way. The limit of 10 mills implies that the assessments must be ad valorem, based on property value, rather than some other measure, such as linear street frontage, land area, or proximity to amenities.

There's nothing in the amendment to specify how trustees should be appointed or how to disband a PID once it has served its purpose.

This would appear to be a way for a private property owner to sell tax-exempt bonds rather than taxable bonds, without having to ask a city or county industrial authority to issue conduit debt on his behalf.

Sen. Haste and Rep. O'Donnell issued a press release after SJR 16 passed the House in April.

"Oklahoma has a housing shortage across the state, and we know one of the most significant barriers to new homes is the need to build the necessary infrastructure to support them," Haste said. "PIDs will help our municipalities finance the infrastructure to handle our state's growth."

It's noteworthy that Haste and O'Donnell's districts overlap in the section of Wagoner County within Tulsa's city limits.

OpenSecrets has not identified any committees supporting or opposing the measure. A search of independent expenditures and state question expenditures on the Oklahoma Ethics Commission's website turns up nothing.

Utah has Public Infrastructure Districts, but they do not appear to be limited to municipalities. Here is a Salt Lake City TV news report on the use of Public Infrastructure Districts by the Utah Inland Port Authority and the website for a pair of PIDs, one residential, one commercial, called ROAM in Morgan County, Utah.

D. A. Davidson, a Denver-based financial services company, has a Special District Group that works with cities and developers to set up PIDs; their presentation, explaining PIDs and providing examples, is included in the minutes for the July 11, 2024, Millville, Utah, City Council meeting. Here is a draft policy statement from the City of Toquerville, Utah, setting out the basis on which PIDs would be established by the city; document metadata indicates it was written by Laci Knowles, a managing director of D. A. Davidson's Special District Group. I found her name on several similar policy statements from other cities.

(By the way, Utah has a website for collecting every public notice issued by every public body in the state, including municipalities. The search engine could be better, but this is a great idea.)

Texas has Public Improvement Districts, which are municipal. Here is an analysis of Public Improvement Districts by John Whitsell, the City Manager of Chandler, Texas; it sounds very similar to what is proposed in SQ833.

I ran searches for Public Infrastructure District and Public Improvement District on the websites of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), two organizations that develop model legislation that state legislators reuse and adapt to local circumstances, and could find no reference to either concept.

The general idea seems to be that a developer would be able to have the city issue bonds on its behalf to fund a new subdivision's streets, sidewalks, sewers, waterlines, and common areas, and then the bonds are paid back by the assessments on the property owner(s) within the PID. This would be in lieu of the developer needing commercial financing for those costs as part of the overall financing for the project. This sort of infrastructure financing has been done with a TIF, but a TIF diverts the additional property tax or sales tax revenue generated by the development (e.g., Tulsa Hills, Jenks Outlet Mall) from taxing entities, while in a PID, the taxing entities would collect the entire millage, even on the increase in value, and the over-and-above PID assessment would go to repay the bonds. Someone buying a lot to build a home in a PID would pay more in property taxes over the years, even after his mortgage is paid off, instead of paying a higher price upfront (the infrastructure cost of the development would be rolled into the initial price).

It would help a lot to know who brought the idea to Sen. Haste and Rep. O'Donnell and who was lobbying for SJR 16. It looks like it would be a moneymaker for bond attorneys and bond underwriters. I did not find any Oklahoma lobbying expenses listing D. A. Davidson as a principal ("principal" is the lobbyist's client), but I could imagine that a financial services company might push to create this type of district to open up an entire state for new business opportunities.

Maybe there is some value to this idea, but the proposal needs more clarity, limitations, and safeguards. I plan to vote NO.

P.S. If you want to induce nausea, go to that Lobbyist Expenditure search page, enter the last name of a current legislator, and then look at the lobbyist column and be appalled and disgusted at the large number of former legislators who are trading on their legislative connections for the benefit of special interest groups. Maybe we'd be better off as a state if we paid departing legislators a big pension while banning them from serving as lobbyists.

All Oklahoma voters will have 12 judicial retention questions on the backside of the November 5, 2024, ballot. Unlike district judges, where competitors run in non-partisan elections, justices of the Oklahoma Supreme Court and judges on the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals are appointed, but face a retention ballot every six years. (I think unopposed district judges should also face a retention ballot.)

Oklahoma has two separate appeals systems. Decisions of the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals can be appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, while the Court of Criminal Appeals is the apex of Oklahoma's criminal court system. All of the appeals judges are appointed by the governor; the public has the opportunity to oust them at retention elections every 6 years.

In the 56-year history of Oklahoma's judicial retention elections, no judge or justice has ever been turned out of office by the voters. That may change this year.

The OCPA has produced an Oklahoma judicial scorecard, reachable at oklajudges.com. The nine current Oklahoma Supreme Court justices have been graded based on their ruling in selected cases. A description of OCPA's scoring methodology states:

To score well, a justice will join in opinions which respect their role as the interpreter--not maker--of law. As John Marshall said in Marbury v. Madison, "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." That means it's not the Court's role to say what the law should be. Furthermore, we score justices well who interpret the law based on the text as it was written by the legislature without finding ambiguity where none exists. In sum, we expect judicial officers to decide cases based on the facts and the law--not their own individual preferences.

The three justices on this year's retention ballot, Noma Gurich, Yvonne Kauger, and James Edmondson, have scores of 18%, 18%, and 22% respectively, exceeded only by Douglas Combs's 14%. All three voted in 2020 to override explicit language in the statute and allow absentee ballots to be accepted without notarization. In 2023, Gurich, Kauger, and Edmondson "found" a right to abortion in the emanationes et penumbrae of the Oklahoma Constitution, which nowhere mentions the barbaric practice which state statute prohibits. This year, the three plus Combs were on the anti-speech side of a free-speech case.

James Edmondson is the brother and former law partner of Drew Edmondson, former attorney general and 2018 Democrat nominee for governor. Yvonne Kauger and James Edmondson are the only two remaining justices who participated in the unjust 2006 decision to invalidate the Taxpayer Bill of Rights initiative petition without a hearing.

Governor Stitt's three appointees, Justices Kane, Kuehn, and Rowe, all score 80 or above. Stitt has done well with his judicial appointments, despite the involvement of a left-leaning private club in the nominating process; defeating Gurich, Kauger, and Edmondson would give Stitt three more appointments, leading, we hope, to a Supreme Court majority that applies the law as written.

The judicial scorecard does not extend to the two appellate courts. I plan to vote for all of Governor Stitt's appointments. While my default in the absence of any information is to vote no (to cancel out someone else who reflexively votes yes), I don't want, ignorantly, to turf out a judge who is doing a good job. I've reached out to attorney friends to get their sense on the appellate judges.

Criminal Appeals Judge David B. Lewis was on the wrong side of a 2023 ruling in a case involving an egregious violation of due-process rights in an Oklahoma County District Court murder case. According to the findings of fact in an evidentiary hearing, District Judge Timothy Henderson and Assistant District Attorney Kelly Collins were involved in a secret sexual relationship at the time the case was assigned to Henderson and at the time the first pre-trial hearing was held. District Court Judge Paul Hesse, who conducted the evidentiary hearing, wrote that it was immaterial that the affair had ended before the trial proper had occurred: "An unconstitutional potential for bias existed because Henderson could not have been neutral if he still had romantic feelings for Collins or if he feared that Collins might disclose their relationship out of frustration if she was dissatisfied with a ruling." Henderson was suspended in March 2021 as allegations involving three female attorneys came to light.

(Henderson was also the judge in the Daniel Holtzclaw case; Holtzclaw was accused of the same sort of abuse of power for sexual favors that drove Henderson from office. In 2019, all five judges in the Court of Criminal Appeals concurred in upholding Holtzclaw's conviction; of those five, Lewis, Musseman, and Lumpkin are still on the court, Kuehn is now on the Supreme Court, and Hudson has retired.)

The Criminal Appeals Court agreed with Hesse and by a narrow 3-2 vote remanded the case for a new trial, but Judges David B. Lewis and Gary Lumpkin dissented. In his dissent, Lewis argued that the because the relationship had ended two years before the actual trial was held, "These facts do not establish an especially high degree of risk that the average trial judge in this situation is objectively likely to be biased in favor of the state and against the defendant."

In the tables below I list each judge on the ballot, their current party registration, age, and the governor who appointed them. I also list my recommendation where I have one. For the rest, I am still gathering information.

Oklahoma Supreme Court

Court of Criminal Appeals

Court of Civil Appeals

*NOTE: Judges Rowland and Bell no longer appear to be in the public voter database, presumably having sought protection under one of the Voter Privacy Programs. In the most records available to me, from 2022, both were registered Republican at that time.

MORE:

Ballotpedia has useful information on the Oklahoma Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals and the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals retention ballots.

The group People of Opportunity, whose board includes OCPA President Jonathan Small and OCPA fellow Trent England, is running television ads calling for the defeat of Kauger, Gurich, and Edmondson.

The December 2023 issue of State Politics and Policy, an academic journal, has an article updating the party-adjusted surrogate judge ideology (PAJID) scores for state supreme court justices nationwide through 2019. PAJID scores range from 0 to 100, where 0 is most conservative, 100 is most liberal. OCPA president Jonathan Small notes, "Only Hawaii, West Virginia, and Maryland had supreme courts whose justices' median PAJID score was as liberal as Oklahoma's throughout the entirety of the 1970-to-2019 period reviewed." The PAJID scores of the three Oklahoma justices up for retention: Kauger 79.08630, Gurich 35.72624, Edmondson 77.80814. The dataset is available for download by a link on the Supplementary Materials tab.

UPDATE 2024/10/15: Steve Fair of Fair & Biased and Jamison Faught of Muskogee Politico have posted their judicial retention recommendations. Both agree:

Reagan's first nominee, Sandra Day O'Connor, was thought to be an originalist, but balked in the Casey ruling at overturning Roe. (Her nomination as the first female justice was pushed by Reagan's advisors as a way of making history.) Anthony Kennedy was the result of Republicans losing the Senate in 1986 and Democrats politicizing the nomination of Robert Bork. In reaction, Bush 41 appointed David Souter, the local judge without a paper trail, hoping his conservative temperament would reflect an originalist philosophy. (It didn't.) But Reagan, the Bushes, and Trump also gave us Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. (Gorsuch and Roberts have generally been good, but too often seem to be steered away from the text by a sensitivity to public reaction.) All of the Democrat-appointed justices since LBJ have been progressives.

In the early 2010s, business travel sometimes took me to northern California, midway between San Francisco and Sacramento. That region has a deep connection to western swing and other traditional American music genres. During the late 1940s, Bob Wills and Texas Playboys recorded their famed Tiffany Transcriptions in San Francisco, broadcast from KGO in Oakland, then moved to Sacramento, broadcasting on KFBK with home base at Wills Point, a dance hall, swimming pool, and recreation center on the east side of the city.

There is still a lot of that kind of music around the region: San Francisco's Golden Gate Park hosts the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in October. HicksWithSticks.com covers bluegrass, folk, rockabilly, western swing, honky tonk, and related genres, listing bands and gigs around the Bay Area.

It was through that website, that I learned about Toshio Hirano, "the Japanese Jimmie Rodgers," and on a couple of occasions went to hear him perform at Amnesia Bar (now closed) in San Francisco's Mission District. It was a simple show, one man with his guitar, singing songs made famous by Rodgers, Hank Williams, and Bob Wills, backed by a standup bass and sometimes a fiddle player. He typically played once a month at Amnesia and once a month at the Rite Spot. He also performed with mandolinist Dave Berry as Mountain Dojo.

Toshio was born in Tokyo in 1951. As a teen in the 1960s, while his peers were wowed by rock'n'roll, Toshio obsessed over American folk music, which led him to old-time country music and one of its earliest stars, Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman. Toshio came to America as a young adult, riding his bicycle through Appalachia, living for a while in Minnesota and Texas before settling in San Francisco.

Toshio retired from his regular gigs in 2015, feeling the effects of arthritis in his hands. He's made a few appearances since then. He gave fans an update on his 73rd birthday in February.

In 2009, filmmaker Oscar Bucher captured Toshio Hirano's journey and music in the multiple-award-winning documentary, Waiting for a Train: The Toshio Hirano Story.

A couple of friends have posted links to an article alleging shenanigans in Oklahoma's voter registration records. The article is on a website known for sensationalistic headlines, but that article linked to an analysis on another site more temperate in tone, but missing important context.

The bottom line: The voter ID number patterns which the analyst found suspicious in the short time he spent with the database have explanations rooted in the history of Oklahoma's voter registration system, specifically the transition to our first statewide registration computer system in 1990 and its replacement with a newer system in 2011.

The headline on The Gateway Pundit screams "Jerome Corsi: Oklahoma Added to the List of States with Irregularities in Board of Election Voter Registration Databases Suspected of Fraud." Corsi gets off to a misleading start:

In a highly suspicious August 27 run-off mayoral election in Tulsa, two relatively inexperienced political operatives with pedigree-quality, radically woke Democratic Party credentials beat a conservative Republican CPA, attorney, businessman, and pastor with a long history of community service, in Oklahoma, by the narrowest possible margins.

It wasn't a run-off -- it was the general election, with a run-off to come in November. Karen Keith, a 16-year county commissioner and 30+ year TV news reporter and anchor endorsed by the police and firefighter unions, and Monroe Nichols, an 8-year state representative endorsed by a former mayor, two former governors, and the daily paper, are hardly inexperienced. Brent VanNorman's long history of community involvement happened in other cities and states. Corsi doesn't appear to know that this election is officially non-partisan, with no party labels on the ballot. VanNorman was one of three registered Republicans running for mayor, but the only information about the party affiliations of the candidates was on websites like this one, not on the ballot. (I wonder who fed Corsi the above characterization of the Tulsa election.)

More about the dynamics of the mayoral race below. It was impressive that VanNorman did as well as he did with so little money, no name recognition, and a standing start with only three months to introduce himself to the voters. I'm not shocked that he failed to make the runoff; I'm amazed he came so close to making the runoff and beating the one-time front-runner, and I'm frustrated with the Republicans who withheld support entirely or until it was too late to matter (Tulsa County GOP, Kevin Stitt).

Corsi quoted a New York State-based analyst named Andrew Paquette, who has been acquiring voter databases from election boards and analyzing them, focusing on patterns in voter identification numbers as a potential indicator of fraud. Corsi goes on:

Paquette has charged that State Board of Elections official voter registration databases may contain cryptographic codes of intelligence agency complexity that enable rogue actors to obtain official state voter ID numbers for non-existent fraudulently created voters in an apparently criminal scheme designed to facilitate the certification of fraudulent mail-in votes.

(I have detected irregularities in Corsi's spelling of Paquette, which he spells "Pacquette" about as often as he spells it correctly.)

The article embeds Paquette's report but doesn't link to it, which is rather dodgy. Here is Paquette's report. Paquette's report is provided on his site as non-OCRed images, which is also rather strange. Here is the beginning of his Oklahoma analysis, which is much more circumspect than Corsi's lurid prose:

I have spent literally one day looking at Oklahoma's voter rolls. Much less if you subtract the time it took to import each county's database into a master database for study. In comparison, it took weeks before the first hints of voter roll algorithms were found in Ohio and New Jersey, and even longer in New York. With the caveat that this is not enough time to yield a definitive response either way, here are a few preliminary observations:

In this entry I'm going to focus on Paquette's suspicions about Oklahoma voter ID numbers and registration dates. He created scatterplots of date of registration on the X axis and was surprised to see that the voter ID numbers don't correlate in any obvious way to registration dates before 1990:

What this plot tells us is that ID numbers generally ascend as registration dates become more recent. There is a large break in CID numbers between about 720,000,000 through 800,000,000 that occurs in 2012. This break is found in all other OK counties. The reason for this is unclear, particularly for a state with a population size that is unlikely to ever exceed the available unused numbers. A close-up of numbers on the left of the plot reveals another break in the numbers in the year 1990, after which they ascend normally. Earlier numbers do not follow a normal ascending pattern, but are found in any year from 1950-1990, regardless of number size. That is, a high number from the series is just as likely to be from 1950 as 1990, but later numbers always ascend with the year. This is different from some counties and bears further investigation (Figure 2).

Had Paquette had more time with Oklahoma's numbers (why the big hurry?) he might have noticed that a large share of voter IDs from a given county begin with the same two digits and those two digits match the sequence of the county name in alphabetical order. Adair is 01, Woodward is 77. Tulsa and Wagoner are 72 and 73, respectively. Osage is 57 and Rogers is 66. Historically, back in the days of handwritten indexes, people sorted names beginning with Mc before all other names beginning with M, because a Mc name (a Celtic patronymic) is sometimes spelled as Mac, so McClain, McCurtain, and McIntosh are 44, 45, and 46, and Major is 47. Precinct numbers are six digits beginning with the two-digit county code. (FIPS county codes follow the same order, but are all odd numbers separated by two, which I suppose allows for a new county to be added in alphabetical order without renumbering the rest.)

So a large share of Tulsa County voter IDs, 155,841 out of 390,753 in the August 8, 2024, download, begin with 72. These were all issued on or before April 18, 2011. The rest of the voter IDs begin with 80, reflecting a move to a new statewide election computer system in 2011. Existing voters kept their ID numbers beginning with a county code, but new voters were registered with numbers beginning with 80, a value that would not conflict with any existing voter ID numbers, because Oklahoma has only 77 counties.

(Here is a January 2011 story announcing selection of a vendor for the new system, an op-ed by Oklahoma State Election Board Paul Ziriax, announcing the new system from Hart InterCivic, which included new ballot scanning machines to replace those that were nearly twenty years old, a July 2011 story mentioning the model names of the old (OPTECH III-P Eagle) and new scanners (Hart InterCivic eScan A/T Paper Based Digital Ballot Scanner), December 2011 article showing the difference in ballot styles between old and new machines.)

So why do voter ID numbers after 1990 increase monotonically with registration date, but are seemingly random until 1990? Because the Oklahoma State Election Board got its first statewide computer system that year. In Tulsa County there is a break in registrations between June 15, 1990, and June 30, 1990. If you sort the Tulsa County voter file by voter ID number and filter for registrations prior to June 15, 1990, you'll find that the names are mostly in alphabetical order. The exceptions to alphabetical order are mainly women; women are more likely to change their last name after they get married, but they keep their voter ID number. For example, near the end of those pre-1990 records, I found someone I know with the last name Werner whose voter ID number falls in sequence with people named Zumwalt, which was her married name in June 1990.

My wife and I are four numbers apart, even though I registered to vote in 1981 after I turned 18, and she registered to vote in Oklahoma eight years later, after we were married in 1989. Even though our first names are close together in alphabetical order, there were once six Michael Bateses registered to vote in Tulsa County, four with different middle names, and one with the same middle name and a date of birth six months earlier in the same year. There's still one other Michael Bates -- Michael S. Bates, the retired City of Tulsa human resources director, who was also registered to vote before the 1990 computer system went online -- his voter ID is after mine and before my wife's.

What is likely is that Tulsa County Election Board took its existing alphabetized voter database and entered them into the new system in that order, from A'Neal to Zyskowski. In the current database, those numbers range from 720000002 to 720300782, and the registration dates range from June 23, 1942, to June 15, 1990. I found only three exceptions in Tulsa County, three voters with ID numbers in that range who registered in October 1990, February 1991, and October 1996. Tulsa County's population in the 1990 census was 505,289; 59.5% seems a reasonable ratio of registered voters to population. Today there are 390,753 voters, and the 2020 population was 670,653 -- 58.3%.

There are only 51,323 voter records in that range of voter ID numbers today. A lot of people die or move away in 34 years. Whoever had 720000001 must fall in one of those categories. In 2016, 77,007 voters had ID numbers in that range.

(Here is an August 1990 Associated Press story about the state's then-new election administration computer system, running on Digital Equipment Corporation computers with software by Andersen Consulting, a branch of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, a May 1990 Okmulgee Daily Times story about election board worker training and reporting that the new system will go into use on July 1, and a July 1990 Oklahoma Press Association story on the new system.)

There are 226 records in the Tulsa County database with no recorded registration date. 189 of these have their addresses redacted with asterisks; among this group I recognize the names of district judges, assistant district attorneys, and others who might be at risk from stalkers. I'm not sure how blanking registration dates helps with security for these people, but there is a correlation. The law authorizing address confidentiality is here; the rules adopted by the State Election Board are here. (30 with redacted addresses have valid registration dates in 2023 or 2024, perhaps reflecting a later tweak to the law or election board procedure.)

Of the remaining 37 with no registration date, they were all born in 1962 or earlier, and all but one are in that initial group of voters entered into the computerized system in 1990. The date may not have been entered on the original record, or perhaps was illegible when the records were entered in 1990.

There are 9 records in the Tulsa County database where the registration date is earlier than the birth date. All 9 are part of the records that were input into the system in 1990. It's reasonable to guess that these were data entry errors when transcribing from cards to computer.

So, excluding the 219 redacted records, that's 46 voters out of 390,534 with blank or impossible voter registration dates, only 12 thousandths of one percent -- 0.012%. Ideally there wouldn't be any, but the county election board would have been wrong, as they entered the existing registration rolls into the computer system in 1990, to drop a duly registered voter for lack of a legible voter registration date.

Not all counties tracked voter registration dates prior to the 1990 computer system. The Osage County roll has only 48 voters with registration dates on or before June 15, 1990. 3,168 registration dates are blank out of 29,442. Wagoner County has only 44 voters with registration dates that pre-date the 1990 computer system, and 3,802 blank registration dates out of 51,987. But Rogers County apparently tracked registration dates before the 1990 computer system: It has only 805 blank registration dates out of 64,776 voter records; 23 of that 805 belong to voters with redacted addresses.

In summary, there's nothing weird about Oklahoma voter ID numbers or registration dates that isn't explained by the history of Oklahoma's computerized election management system. There are a small number of oddities that reflect a reasonable number of clerical errors.

Another concern raised by Paquette is that purged records are not retained in the database. The definition of a purged record is that it has been removed from the database. The State Election Board does, however, provide a separate file containing all records deleted statewide in the last 24 months. I am surprised that Paquette overlooked this data source. The file I downloaded on September 30, 2024, contains 244,388 records, of which 90,381 were removed as a county transfer (removed from the database of the voter's former county), 83,701 were deleted for inactivity, 51,647 as deaths (health department, next of kin, nursing/funeral home, written notice), 7,965 were deleted as duplicates, 3,128 for felony convictions, 2,572 are labeled CONF. NOTICE - STATE or CONF. NOTICE - COUNTY (possibly indicating that a confirmation postcard to the address on record was returned with a change of address out of county or out of state), 2,518 as a state transfer, 2,254 license surrender, 222 mental incapacity. The file includes the date of deletion, ranging from October 3, 2022, to September 29, 2024.

Paquette also complains about possible clones -- records with the same date of birth and first and last name. I haven't checked this yet; that would require looking at the entire state at once, and that involves loading all 77 separate county files into one database. I'll take a look at that at a later date.

On the jump page, I've got more detail regarding the dynamics of Tulsa's mayoral race and why Jerome Corsi's description doesn't fit the facts, on the contents of Oklahoma's voter registration database, and on why I don't trust any headline on The Gateway Pundit.

Premiere Networks, Rush Limbaugh's syndicator, has added Your Morning Show with Michael DelGiorno to its offerings for national radio syndication. DelGiorno joins Glenn Beck, Clay Travis & Buck Sexton (Limbaugh's handpicked heirs in his timeslot), and Sean Hannity in the Premiere lineup. Congratulations to Michael for reaching this pinnacle. National syndication by Premiere is every conservative talk radio host's dream.

Here in Tulsa, Your Morning Show can be heard from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. on 1300 the Patriot (KAKC), which also carries Glenn Beck and Clay & Buck. The station is now simulcast on 93.5 (K228BR), a Tulsa translator for 106.1 KTGX-HD2 in Talala. The FM frequency was Chrome FM, playing oldies from 2007 to 2017. Broadcasting with 250 watts from 27th and Memorial, 93.5 covers most of the City of Tulsa east of the Arkansas River and the Cherokee Expressway. With 100,000 watts, 106.1 HD2 reaches from Hominy to Grove, Independence, Kansas, to Haskell.

DelGiorno launched Tulsa talk radio station KFAQ 1170 in 2002, but left in 2007 for a mid-morning slot at WWTN Nashville, which he held for 15 years. He launched Your Morning Show last October in Nashville, quickly adding iHeart stations in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, then expanding to a total of 25 cities coast-to-coast. (Driving through Maryland earlier this year, I had the surreal experience of listening to DelGiorno on Freedom 104.7, then turning the dial and hearing the voice of the late Pat Campbell, DelGiorno's successor at KFAQ, promoting Purity Products vitamin supplements.)

In the linked story, DelGiorno thanks Brian Gann, among others, for making this happen. Gann was program director and news director at KFAQ when DelGiorno was there; he has been with iHeart since 2014, now serving as a regional news director.

RELATED:

The KAKC entry on Wikipedia has a detailed history of 1300's ownership and format, although the information from the 1990s is rather scant. My 2021 intro article on 1300 The Patriot delves into the station's documented history and my own memories of its previous news/talk incarnations.

Griffin Media converted KFAQ 1170 from news-talk to sports-talk KTSB The Blitz in 2021. In June 2024, Griffin changed the call letters to KOTV-AM and is using the signal to simulcast the audio of News on 6 Now (digital channel 6.3 over the air; channel 53 on Cox Cable). The move ended the daily broadcast career of The Blitz morning show host Rick Couri, although he continues to do sports play-by-play.

Older readers will remember that back in analog TV days you could tune your FM radio to the bottom frequency and pick up the audio of VHF channel 6, which occupied 82-88 MHz, just below the FM radio band. While it's great to have another way to hear Travis Meyer during severe weather, it's otherwise a waste of a heritage 50,000-watt clear-channel signal which once was the Voice of Oklahoma.

This Saturday, September 21, 2024, at noon, I will be a guest on Tulsa Beacon Weekend, hosted by Jeff Brucculeri. The hour-long interview program is heard in Tulsa on KCFO AM 970, live-streamed online here and on the KCFO app. The show is a production of the Tulsa Beacon, the weekly newspaper founded in 2001 by the late Charley Biggs.

My interview is the second half of the program. Jeff and I discussed the recent City of Tulsa election and Oklahoma primary, the mayoral recount and November runoff, and my recent entry about Tulsa municipal boundaries and fence lines.

The most recent episode is available to listen again for one week through the KCFO app and through the website: From the Listen Live popup, choose Menu, then the microphone icon, then choose Tulsa Beacon Weekend; Joe Riddle's Old Time Radio Theater is also available.

UPDATE: Here's a direct link to the audio file, which will be available through Friday, September 27. The first half of the program is an interview with former HGTV host David Benham, co-author with his brother Jason Benham of Miracle in Shreveport.

Happy 918 Day to those who celebrate sequences of three digits arbitrarily chosen by public utilities.

The artist who was awarded a $250,000 commission from the City of Tulsa to build a Route 66 "roadside attraction" has released artwork showing a revision to his controversial proposal.

Back in mid-August, the City of Tulsa announced that the Route 66 Commission had given a $250,000 commission to Ken Kelleher for a 21-foot-tall statue to stand near 13th Street and Lawton Avenue, atop the hill that overlooks Cyrus Avery Plaza and the 11th Street Bridge over the Arkansas River. The news was greeted with outrage, not from uptight low-brow philistines like me, but from Tulsa's young artist community, angered that local talent would be overlooked in favor of an apparently AI-generated rendering that looks highly derivative and on the edge of intellectual property theft.

The prominence is known in the context of the Tulsa Tough bicycle race as Cry Baby Hill, a particularly steep climb from Riverside Drive up Lawton Avenue where cyclists encounter what the official website describes as "an adults-only marriage of Mardi Gras + cycling." Kelleher's winning proposal is called "Cry Baby Cry" and features a silver-skinned figure with a prominent cowlick and tears trailing down from cartoonish eyes. It has been described as "emo Astroboy," "Temu Astroboy," or a slenderized version of the Big Boy restaurant mascot.

The Church Studio throws some shade at Ken Kelleher's first Cry Baby Hill proposed statue

In response to complaints that the proposed figure had nothing to do with Route 66, Riverview neighborhood, or a bicycle race, Kelleher today released newly generated images of two revised concepts. In one, the figure is still standing in the same pose but is now also wearing a hat with the word CRYBABY on the bill and a shirt with the logo of Tulsa's Soundpony Lounge, the cycling-themed bar near Cain's Ballroom that invented the Cry Baby Hill tradition. the logo of Anchorball.ai, Kelleher's design website, is on the hat and sneakers. In the other concept, the figure, dressed as above, is seated on a child's bicycle, wearing a hat and a shirt. The Astroboy/Big Boy quiff is concealed by the hat, but the resemblance remains.

In the press release announcing Kelleher's win, Mayor G. T. Bynum IV stated: "This sculpture will be quintessentially Tulsa, and I couldn't be more excited for the enthusiasm that we all have for this stretch of our Mother Road and Cry Baby Hill. I am thrilled to have an artist who is helping bring this idea to life, and I'm eager that Tulsa has yet another way to celebrate the most famous road in American history here in the Capital of Route 66."

This quarter-million dollar commission was the outcome of a Request for Proposals (RFP), one of a set of four for development of the now-bare hill northeast of Southwest Boulevard and Riverside Drive, an area designated since 2005 for a taxpayer-funded Route 66 attraction. This particular RFP was for a "roadside attraction." An advisory committee ranked submissions and Kelleher was selected.

The RFP stated that "this artwork will echo the familiar form of kitsch regional roadside attractions yet focus on contemporary fanfare at Cry Baby Hill.... The installation should be classic, kitschy, and worthy of countless roadside selfies." The RFP also set out "the expectation that any explicit baby representations are not depicted with a particular human skin tone color."

Kitsch -- defined by the Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache as "ostensibly stylish, cultured, upper etc., but sweetish-sentimental (and artistically worthless) product of bad taste" -- is a term applied to objects like lawn flamingos, garden gnomes, and the kind of knick-knacks you'd find at a gift shop.

The kitsch that draws visitors from around the world to Route 66 was not created to make an ironic artistic statement. It could be whimsical folk art, e.g., Hugh Davis's Blue Whale, Ed Galloway's World's Largest Totem Pole. More often it was created as an attention-getting device for a roadside business. It might be a series of billboards -- the Fat Man of Club Cafe -- or a giant sign -- Roy's Motel -- or a giant object that serves as a sign -- Twin Arrows -- or the building itself as the sign -- the Wigwam Motel or Hugh Davis's ARK.

Roadside kitsch was not commissioned by a government committee with a big budget. It is an expression of constraints: Getting the attention of passing drivers within the owner's limited funds, his limited artistic skills, and the functional limitations of the materials available to him. Those constraints make roadside attractions a deeply individual expression with an attractively humble charm. Government-funded, committee-approved kitsch is an oxymoron.

The RFP specifically compares the proposed attraction to the repurposed Muffler Man that stands outside Mary Beth Babcock's Buck Atom's Cosmic Curios on Route 66. Why should the City of Tulsa create a competing attraction? If passing Route 66 cruisers have time for only one selfie stop in Tulsa, wouldn't it be better for the economy and for sales tax collections if they stop at Buck Atom's and spend some money on kitschy souvenirs there and across the street at Decopolis?

After the official announcement, the complaints crescendoed. The comments on this KJRH Facebook post are nearly unanimous in their opposition to the selection. Only one member of the committee voted against the award: the representative from Riverview neighborhood.

The City of Tulsa's response to a query from KJRH stated that the focus of the purchasing process "is on things like capability of applicants to deliver on time and within budget, experience with similar projects, and with meeting the desired deliverables."

Which raises the question: Does Ken Kelleher have experience with similar projects? Does he have a demonstrated capability to deliver on time and within budget? Tulsans critical of the pick noticed that Kelleher's website is full of realistic renderings of virtual, unbuilt and unbuildable scupltures. News stories linked on his website, mostly from 2018, all linked on Kelleher's website describe his monumental work as imaginary, not real. For example, a 2018 article from MyModernMet.com (emphasis added):

Artist Ken Kelleher combines his training as a sculptor with his prowess in UX design to create hyperrealistic projections of public sculpture. Kelleher allows his imagination to run free, placing contemporary sculptures everywhere from Venice's busy St. Mark's Square to minimalist interiors. Working with different series, Kelleher churns out three-dimensional renderings that give potential clients a look at the artwork that could decorate any given environment.

(See below for quotes from each of his linked articles.)

I have searched, so far in vain, for independent news stories, photos, and video showing a permanently installed, real-world, outdoor sculpture of similar size and complexity to Kelleher's proposed Tulsa installation. I have found Google Maps images of a set of four 10-ft tall monochrome figures claimed by Kelleher in a park in Krasnodar, Russia, a very recent blog entry with photos of a monochrome 3D squiggle in a new urban development in San Diego, and a video clip showing a large monochrome hat installed in an indoor atrium in a cruise liner. I've been unable so far to find independent confirmation of other installations claimed by Kelleher in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Indonesia, and China, some of which are said to be in private collections.

UPDATE 2024/09/20: I struck the world "claimed" above because I've found more independent attestation of Kelleher's "Inner Child" installation at Galitsky Park in Krasnodar, Russia. This video of a December 2021 walk through the park during snowfall shows the dedicatory plaque and the four identical figures. The park opened in 2017 and was donated by Russian billionaire retailer Sergey Galitsky.

Tulsans have noticed that many of the images on Kelleher's website flirt with copyright violations. The sculptures he claims to have installed at Boulevard City shopping district in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, include what looks like Sesame Street's Elmo in a red track suit, called "Elio" and eight Donald Duck heads attached to a donut with feet. The handful of Kelleher's photos of this installation that include people don't show any interaction between passers-by and the sculptures.

The Woofie series, which Kelleher doesn't claim to have realized, reminds me of the endless minor variations in Non-Fungible Token (NFT) series, like Bored Ape. Xs in place of eyes is a cartoon convention for death, making these characters even more disturbing.

Kelleher is also something of a "musician," likely with the help of AI. On July 17, 2024, four days after the first assassination attempt against Donald Trump, Kelleher posted a rap song to his Anchorball - Ken Kelleher Soundcloud account called "Six Inches to the Right." The image with the song shows the Statue of Liberty in chest-deep water, and the description reads, "How 6 inches to the right could have saved democracy." (Hat tip to Angie Brumley for spotting this on Kelleher's Instagram.)

I've long said that most city officials don't "get" Route 66. They know it attracts international visitors, but they don't really understand why, and they expect to be able to exploit that interest through the usual repertoire of government construction contracts. "Streetscaping" is a favorite line item: Concrete pavers and faux-historical acorn lights and park benches. In 2000, there was talk of including money for Route 66 in the "Tulsa Time" sales tax package -- it was designated for "demolition and clearance". One of the task force leaders suggested turning Route 66 into a "tree-lined boulevard." I suggested at the time that funds should go into grants for building restoration, facade improvements, and neon repair, following the example of the federal Route 66 grant program, but that idea was knocked down as impractical and maybe unconstitutional.

Even the committee assembled to spend the Vision 2025 money didn't seem to get it. Their report said to "Make it hip -- in the era of iPods and blogs, Route 66 desperately needs a cool factor." I wrote at the time that they didn't "understand the idea of a niche attraction. Route 66 is never likely to be a mass appeal attraction. The way to approach it is to make it a high-quality, must-see attraction for enthusiasts, but make it accessible to interested outsiders. If you take the other approach -- dumb it down for people who don't know and don't care about 66 -- you won't create anything interesting enough to make it worth the enthusiasts' while to stay the night and spend money."

The way you make your part of Route 66 must-see is through preservation and small business, something too many local politicians have failed to appreciate. The government laid the concrete, but it's what's on the side of the road, quirky only-in-America landmarks and businesses, built by quirky individuals, that visitors hope to encounter -- not big government projects (the Communists built plenty of those in eastern Europe), not corporate chains.

Below (on the jump page if you're on the home page) are the deep-dive details and links and extended excerpts backing up what I've written above:

Since the City of Tulsa primary on August 27, I've received some questions from puzzled readers about city limits and jurisdictions.

One reader wanted to know why there were four Rogers County precincts listed in the City of Tulsa election results, but no votes were cast.

A friend who lives in Turley was ready to vote in the mayoral election, but his precinct didn't open at all on August 27. He has Tulsa water, a Tulsa address, and pays property taxes to Tulsa Public Schools, Tulsa County, Tulsa City-County Library, Tulsa City-County Health Department, and Tulsa Community College. He asks: Who takes care of Turley?

Another reader wanted to know how Vanessa Hall-Harper and Angela K. Chambers could run for Tulsa City Council District 1 when both are registered to vote in Osage County.

The big-picture answer is that, in Oklahoma, county boundaries, municipal boundaries, school district boundaries are completely independent of one another. Boundaries of state house, state senate, and congressional districts also are independent of any other political subdivision.

This is strange and confusing if you've come from some other part of the country or world. In Massachusetts, every square inch of territory is within a city or town, and there is no such thing as unincorporated land. By default, every municipality runs its own school system, but smaller municipalities can band together to form regional school districts for all grades or for secondary grades. Regardless, everyone who lives in a given municipality is part of the same public school system. Every Massachusetts municipality is entirely within one of the Commonwealth's 14 counties. When the City of Boston annexed the towns of Roxbury, West Roxbury, and Dorchester in the late 19th century, those areas changed counties, too, leaving Norfolk County for Suffolk County, and isolating Brookline as a no-longer-contiguous part of Norfolk County.

In Minnesota, there are exactly twice as many state representatives as state senators, and each state senate district is divided into exactly two state house districts. Senate District 1 is comprised of House District 1A and House District 1B. Outside of the metro areas, legislative district boundaries follow township and town boundaries. But school district boundaries are independent of township and town boundaries.

Plenty of Tulsans live in the Jenks, Bixby, or Union school districts. The fastest growing part of east Tulsa is the area within the Broken Arrow school district, southeast of 31st Street and 145th East Avenue. Only Berryhill, Union, and Glenpool school districts lie entirely inside Tulsa County -- every other school district has at least some territory in at least one other county. Although school districts typically share a name with their city or town, they don't share boundaries or governing bodies. Union and Berryhill don't even have a corresponding municipality, although Berryhill may change that.

Oklahoma school districts don't even have to be contiguous: Cherokee County is a crazy-quilt. Tahlequah has two major non-contiguous sections, plus small exclaves locally situate in three rural districts -- presumably individual farms that preferred Tahlequah schools to the local offering. Grandview and Peggs districts each have exclaves that are enclaves to the other. Closer to home, Sand Springs has two separate sections, one in Tulsa County and one in Osage County, separated by Anderson, an Osage County K-8 district that sends its students to Charles Page High School.

According to the Tulsa County Treasurer's website, there are 46 possible combinations of school district and municipality (or no municipality) in the county, each with a unique property tax rate. City of Bixby property owners in the Bixby school district are hardest hit, at 139.90 mills, while property owners in the Keystone school district pay only 92.10 mills, whether they live in the City of Mannford or in an unincorporated area. Bixby has the highest municipal property tax rate by far at 21.83 mills, while five municipalities (Collinsville, Glenpool, Owasso, Skiatook, Sperry) have no property tax at all because they have no general obligation bonds. The City of Tulsa overlaps with Tulsa, Union, Jenks, Bixby, Broken Arrow, Owasso, Berryhill, and Catoosa school districts.

Adding to the confusion: A municipality can annex skinny strips of land known as fence lines to protect unincorporated territory for future expansion by itself and against it being grabbed by a rival city. In the meantime, the city doesn't have to provide services to the surrounded land and the property owners aren't subject to city ordinances or taxes. Tulsa has a fence line that encompasses land between Red Fork and the Gilcrease Turnpike, some land in Osage County, Turley, the Cherokee Industrial Park, a corridor around US 75 south of 126th Street North, and the Tulsa Port of Catoosa. State law allows a city to annex any land it surrounds on three sides or more without the consent of the landowners.

Screenshot from INCOG Tulsa area municipal boundaries interactive map showing Tulsa's northern fence line, outlined in cyan, adopted in 1973 with some adjustments since. The fence line is continuous; the visible discontinuities are an artifact of the map rendering software.

When our family moved to the Tulsa area in 1969, we bought a house in Rolling Hills, a geographically confusing place where we had a Tulsa address, paid the City of Tulsa for water, went to Catoosa schools, had a Catoosa phone number, but we were (at that time) in unincorporated Wagoner County. We had no police protection, the sheriff was an hour's drive away, there was a volunteer fire department, and roads were "maintained" by our Wagoner County Commissioner. There were a couple of failed annexation attempts in the 1970s. We moved a mile west into the City of Tulsa in 1978. Rolling Hills was annexed by Catoosa in 1997. (An extended reminiscence about Rolling Hills when it was "No Man's Land" will appear in a separate article.)

Screenshot from INCOG Tulsa area municipal boundaries interactive map showing the junction of I-44, US 412, and OK 66. Tulsa is green, Catoosa is blue, Fair Oaks is purple. Rolling Hills is the southernmost blue area, surrounded by green to the west, south, and east.

All that to say, I appreciate the confusion that people may feel. To address the specific situations my readers raised:

District 1 and Osage County: The City of Tulsa was entirely located in Tulsa County until 1959, when the city annexed several near-downtown subdivisions in Osage County, along with the Tulsa Country Club. A new master-planned community, Gilcrease Hills, opened in 1971. Tulsa annexed a fence-line around the development in 1973, protecting Gilcrease Hills against annexation by Sand Springs, and then annexed the development itself in 1978. Both the incumbent and the challenger for the District 1 Council seat live in Gilcrease Hills. From 1973-1991, Gilcrease Hills had its own K-8 school district, Academy Central. 3,619 City of Tulsa voters live in Osage County, 73% of them Democrats. 1,167 voted in the mayor's race, 794 for Nichols, 291 for Keith, 66 for VanNorman, 16 for other candidates.

Rogers County: Tulsa's 1973 fence line annexation also looped around the Port of Catoosa and 26 square miles, but was reduced in extent in January 1974, to appease Rogers County officials. For the last 50 years, Tulsa has had a 70'-wide fence line that extends into Rogers County along the south side of 66th Street North, around the Port of Catoosa (owned by a joint City of Tulsa and Rogers County authority), then along State Highway 266 back to the Tulsa County line at 145th East Avenue. While the fence line encompasses 10 square miles, no one lives in the 70-foot strip itself, so there are no eligible Tulsa voters in Rogers County. Nevertheless, the Rogers County Election Board opened and staffed the four precincts through which the fence line runs -- 660020, 660021, 660120, 660200 -- even though there were no eligible voters for any elections in those precincts. Thus, the zero vote results in the mayor's race and the District 3 Council race.

Screenshot from INCOG Tulsa area municipal boundaries interactive map showing Tulsa's fence line (green, outlined in cyan) surrounding the Port of Catoosa. Owasso is yellow, Verdigris is orange, Catoosa is blue. Note that Stone Canyon development is unincorporated but partly within Tulsa's fence line, partly within Owasso's, and partly within neither.

News reports from 1973 and 1974 indicate that the fence line was continuous, but modern maps are confusing. The INCOG interactive map shows a continuous fence line, but as a separate object from the rest of Tulsa, which is different from the way other area cities are depicted. The City of Tulsa's interactive council district map shows the Gilcrease Turnpike fence line near Berryhill, but not the northern fence line; ditto for the OU Center for Spatial Analysis data set. The City of Tulsa redistricting commission's proposed district map from 2021 showed the northern fence line, but with a gap along the southern and southwestern sides of the Port property. Google Maps shows the fence line reaching the Port property but stopping there. Rogers County GIS map shows a continuous fence line.

Wagoner County: On November 8, 2001, the City of Tulsa annexed 13 square miles of land in a fourth county, Wagoner County, most of it formerly in the sparsely populated town of Fair Oaks. There are 22 registered voters in the Wagoner County portion of Tulsa; 7 of them voted in the mayoral election -- 4 for VanNorman, 2 for Keith, 1 for Nichols.

Tulsa metro inset from 1974 Oklahoma state highway map, showing municipal boundaries, including part of Fair Oaks in Wagoner and Rogers Counties. Broken Arrow and Sand Springs fence lines are marked and labeled, but not Tulsa's.

Screenshot from INCOG Tulsa area municipal boundaries interactive map showing Tulsa's Wagoner County area, in green, with the remnant of Fair Oaks in purple.

Turley: A company incorporated in 1906 to develop Turley, and Turley townsite's plat was filed in 1910, but it doesn't appear that the town ever incorporated as a municipality. It was four or five miles away from Tulsa's northern border at the time of its founding. New subdivisions nearby were annexed by Tulsa in the 1950s, and Turley was considered for annexation, but a sanitary sewer bond issue complicated the process. The City of Tulsa would had to have assumed the sewer debt, but would not have been allowed to charge Turley residents more for water and sewer than other Tulsa residents. So despite Tulsa street names and Tulsa water and Tulsa public schools, despite being surrounded by the Tulsa fence line, Turley remains an unincorporated community with the Tulsa County sheriff handling law enforcement, the District 1 County Commissioner responsible for roads, and a volunteer fire department. Turley community is in precincts 720026 and 720326, neither of which has any voters in Tulsa. It's puzzling that the precincts didn't open anyway, because of the fence line, while the similarly situated Rogers County precincts did open.

Screenshot from INCOG Tulsa area municipal boundaries interactive map showing Turley, O'Brien Park, and surrounding areas. Note that Suburban Acres and Northgate are within Tulsa's city limits (green), but not Turley or any other neighborhood north of 56th Street North. Tulsa's fence line is green outlined in cyan.

A 1977 state law prevents new municipal incorporations within five miles of large cities (over 200,000) or three miles from small cities and towns, but it was amended in 2004, 2006, and 2007 to allow incorporation of territory "that has historically been identified as a community of people residing in compact form." Berryhill may incorporate under these terms, despite being sandwiched between Tulsa and Sand Springs, and it appears that Turley could as well.

Some encouraging results in Tuesday's Republican runoffs; a heartbreaking near-miss in the Tulsa general election.

Grassroots candidates defeated three RINO incumbent legislators:

In Senate District 3, Julie McIntosh defeated incumbent Blake Cowboy Stephens by 61% to 39%. Corey DeAngelis, a leader in the national school choice movement celebrated the result, noting that Stephens was proud of being the teachers' union's Legislator of the Week.

In House District 32, Kevin Wallace, chairman of the House Appropriations and Budget Committee (a role that is a magnet for lobbyist money -- Wallace had almost three-quarters of a million dollars to spend) was defeated by Jim Shaw, 54% to 46%. Wallace's voting record received a failing grade from multiple conservative organizations. Wallace also lost support for his use of human manure ("biosolids") as fertilizer on his farmland and over concerns about wind and solar arrays displacing privately-owned farms and ranches in rural Oklahoma.

Gabe Woolley defeated House District 98 incumbent Dean Davis, whose arrest for public drunkenness made national news last year and had received a deferred sentence in 2019 after pleading nolo contendere to charges of a 2nd Offense DUI, speeding, and obstructing an officer.

Grassroots conservatives also fared well in open-seat runoffs. Lisa Standridge, wife of term-limited conservative stalwart Rob Standridge, has won her runoff in Senate District 15 by 51 votes of about 5,000 cast. Stacy Jo Adams in House 50 and Kelly Hines in Senate 47 each beat a better financed opponent 60% to 40%.

The closest race of the night was the two-vote victory of Jonathan Wilk over Mike Whaley in House 20, 1,668 to 1,666.

One of CAMP's few wins this season was in the Tulsa County Commission District 2 Republican runoff, with former State Rep. Lonnie Sims defeating Melissa Myers. Sadly, Josh Turley, running this year as an independent, has chosen to withdraw from the race. The general election will be between Sims and leftist activist Sarah Gray, who defeated former City Councilor Maria Barnes for the Democrat nomination.

City of Tulsa results were heartbreaking. Brent VanNorman, the only Republican with a significant campaign, finished just shy of making the runoff. Our choices in November (barring a change due to the recount that VanNorman has requested) will be Left and Lefter -- Democrat Karen Keith and Democrat Monroe Nichols.

The difference between 2nd & 3rd place was 438 votes, about 2.7 votes for each of Tulsa's 163 precincts. You can't help but wonder what would have happened if VanNorman had switched to the mayoral race a few weeks earlier, or if prominent Republicans like Gov. Kevin Stitt had endorsed early enough for TV ads and mail pieces. The key obstacle VanNorman faced was communicating to Republican voters that he was the candidate Republicans should support. That message had to be strong enough to stick with voters all the way into the voting booth, since the ballots carry no party labels.

Stitt's election eve endorsement came too late to communicate to the voters except by stickers on campaign signs election morning. I noticed that somehow, in their joint appearance at the Women for Tulsa meeting, no one managed to get a picture of Stitt and VanNorman together -- just an oversight, or purposeful on Stitt's part? Did the Governor want credit with the base for the last minute endorsement while not upsetting the people who really matter to him by making the endorsement so late and quiet as to make no difference? Stitt managed to find time to knock doors for Kevin "Humanure" Wallace and record a video attacking the supporters of Jim Shaw as "political animals." What if he had invested as much into helping a conservative Republican get elected as mayor of Oklahoma's second largest city?

And what if a long-time Tulsa Republican with a track record had run? State Sen. and former TU football coach Dave Rader, former AG Scott Pruitt, former AG John O'Connor, former Congressmen John Sullivan and Jim Bridenstine, former DA Tim Harris are just a few names that come to mind.

Keith's survival is thanks to early mail-in absentee ballots, presumably cast before her campaign began to sink. 53.4% of mail-in ballots were for Keith, 1,638 of 3,066 cast, giving her a 1,067 vote lead over Brent VanNorman. Keith and her CAMPaign team squandered a strong lead and positive name recognition. Many people had expected Keith to win without a runoff.

Election day ballots alone had Nichols at 33.2% (17,033), VanNorman at 33.0% (16,964), and Keith at 31.3% (16,082). Monroe Nichols won early voting at the Tulsa County Election Board, 975 to 801 for Keith and 492 for VanNorman.

VanNorman finished first in Districts 2 (43.4%), 6 (41.5%), 7 (40.8%), and 8 (47.5%), but turnout in 2 and 6 was particularly bad. Keith led only in District 9 (34.7%), but that had the highest turnout of any district. Although the districts were drawn to have nearly equal population, District 9 was 18.7% of the election day turnout. Districts 4, 8, and 9 combined for 54.0% of election day votes. Nichols dominated District 1 (66.4%) and District 4 (45.3%), and he finished slightly ahead in low-turnout District 3 (33.1% to 33.0% for Keith and 30.5% for VanNorman) and District 5 (34.5% Nichols, 31.4% VanNorman, 31.1% Keith).

The only bright spot in the city elections was the District 7 Council race, where Republican Eddie Huff made it to a November runoff against incumbent Democrat Lori Decter Wright, 43.7% to 48.6%. Decter Wright had only a 50-vote margin on election day, but she had a 204-vote lead from mail-in and early votes. This is a winnable race for Huff in November, but he will need volunteers and funds to reach Republican voters in the midst of a noisy general election season.

There will also be runoffs in Districts 2 and 9, and in both cases one candidate is above 40% with 2nd place trailing far behind. In District 2, Anthony Archie will face Stephanie Reisdorph, and in District 9, former State Rep. Carol Bush will face incumbent Jayme Fowler. Fowler spent several months running for mayor before deciding his run wasn't viable. He decided to file for re-election instead, although the other candidates had been campaigning under the assumption that this would be an open seat.

In District 2, as in the mayor's race, instant runoff voting might have produced a different top 2, as minor candidates would have been eliminated and had their votes redistributed to each voter's second choice.

On Tuesday, August 27, 2024, Oklahoma Republicans and Democrats have a partisan primary runoff election in a number of legislative and county races, and the City of Tulsa will conduct a non-partisan citywide general election, including races for Mayor, all nine City Council seats, as well as two charter-change propositions. There are a smattering of other school, municipal, and county propositions across Oklahoma. Here is the Oklahoma State Election Board's list of all races and propositions on the August 27, 2024, ballot.

In-person absentee voting will be available on Thursday, August 22, 2024, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., on Friday, August 23, 2024, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and (in most counties) on Saturday, August 24, 2024, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. For most counties, in-person absentee voting takes place at the county election board, but there are a few exceptions; click here for the full list of early-voting locations. Wagoner County will have a locations at NSU-BA and First Baptist Church in Wagoner. Polls will be open Tuesday, August 27, 2024, from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.

NOTE: Precinct boundaries, voting locations, and district boundaries were changed, in some cases dramatically, in 2022. Enter your name and date of birth on the Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter portal and you will see where to vote and your sample ballot.

In response to popular demand, I have assembled the guidance detailed below into a downloadable, printable, single-page PDF.

Here are the candidates I'm recommending and (if in the district) voting for in the Oklahoma Republican runoff election and City of Tulsa general election on August 27, 2024. (This entry may change as I decide to add more detail, link previous articles, or discuss additional races between now and election day. The entry is post-dated to keep it at the top.)

Many readers have asked for a summary of my recommendations. My most enthusiastic choices are in bold. The hyperlink on the name of the office will take you to the article where I discuss that race.

Republican primary runoff:

The State Senate 33 runoff was a hard call: While I would be happy with either candidate (and have concerns about each), Christi Gillespie has earned the support of courageous conservative stalwarts like Sen. Dana Prieto, outgoing Sen. Nathan Dahm, and Tulsa school board member E'Lena Ashley, and I believe her experience as a member of the Broken Arrow City Council will help her be effective in navigating the legislative process. Shelley Gwartney was endorsed by primary opponent, Bill Bickerstaff, someone I greatly respect. That said, if I were Gillespie I wouldn't brag about Tulsa Regional Chamber and Oklahoma State Chamber endorsements, but I suspect they jumped aboard the bandwagon in light of her primary finish above 40%. (Please read my 2016 article "Chambers of Horrors" to understand why social and fiscal conservatives, opponents of cronyism, and supporters of historic preservation should find Chamber endorsements problematic.)

• Tulsa County Commissioner District 2: Melissa Myers
• State Senate 3: Julie McIntosh
• State Senate 15: Lisa Standridge
• State Senate 33: Christi Gillespie
• State Senate 47: Kelly Hines
• State House 20: Jonathan Wilk
• State House 32: Jim Shaw
• State House 50: Stacy Jo Adams
• State House 53: Nick Pokorny
• State House 60: Ron Lynch
• State House 98: Gabe Woolley

City of Tulsa general election:

For City of Tulsa races, if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, there will be a runoff coincident with the state/federal general election in November. All of the candidates listed are registered Republican voters, except Angela Chambers (a Democrat running against a Democrat incumbent) and Aaron Griffith (an independent running against a Democrat incumbent).

Tulsa Mayor: Brent VanNorman

Tulsa City Council:

• District 1: Angela Chambers
• District 2: Aaron Bisogno
• District 3: Susan Frederick
• District 4: Aaron Griffith
• District 5: Karen Gilbert (very reluctantly)
• District 6: Christian Bengel (unenthusiastically)
• District 7: Eddie Huff
• District 8: Chris Cone
• District 9: Jayme Fowler

Tulsa charter amendments:

• Proposition 1: YES
• Proposition 2: YES

MORE INFORMATION:

OFFICIAL INFORMATION:

• Oklahoma State Election Board
• Tulsa County Election Board
• Oklahoma Ethics Commission Guardian campaign finance database

OTHER CONSERVATIVE VOICES:

Here are some blogs, endorsement lists, candidate questionnaires, and sources of information for your consideration.

• Muskogee Politico news and analysis
• Oklahoma Constitution Index: Scores incumbent legislators on voting record
• iVoterGuide surveys of Oklahoma statewide, federal, and legislative candidates
• City Elders Tulsa speakers' videos, including candidate speeches
• Oklahomans for Life candidate surveys
• Oklahomans for the 2nd Amendment (OK2A) endorsements
• NRA-PVF endorsements (NOTE: NRA typically endorses an incumbent over a challenger, even if both have similar views
• Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights (OKHPR) endorsements

If you appreciate the many hours of research that went into this guide and into the rest of my election coverage, and if you'd like to help keep this site online, you can contribute to BatesLine's upkeep via PayPal. In addition to keeping me caffeinated, donated funds pay for web hosting, subscriptions, and paid databases I use for research. Many thanks to those generous readers who have already contributed.

UPDATE 2024/08/26 Election Eve: Governor Kevin Stitt appeared tonight with Brent VanNorman at a Women for Tulsa meeting and endorsed VanNorman for Mayor.

The Republican Party of Tulsa County has officially endorsed Brent VanNorman for Mayor of Tulsa in the Tuesday, August 27, 2024, election. So have a number of Republican elected officials and leaders, but other prominent Republican voices have remained silent.

On Wednesday, August 21, the Tulsa County GOP issued the following statement

Mayoral Endorsement Brent VanNorman

The municipal elections in Tulsa are fast approaching, with less than a week remaining. Many inquiries have been made about the Republican candidates in the mayoral race and the preferred candidate of the Tulsa County Republican Party.

In recent months, Brent VanNorman has demonstrated remarkable commitment and effort in his campaign to become Tulsa's next mayor. He has been working relentlessly to increase his visibility and share his vision for the city, achieving considerable success in his endeavors.

After discussions with the other active Republican candidate, we have concluded that uniting behind a single candidate will maximize our chances of success in the Tulsa mayoral race on August 27th. With his encouragement, we are pleased to direct our support to Brent VanNorman.

The Republican Party of Tulsa County urges our fellow Republicans to cast their vote for Brent VanNorman for Tulsa Mayor on August 27th.

Of the three Republican campaigns, only Brent VanNorman and Casey Bradford filed a Statement of Organization with the City Clerk's office, as required by law for raising and spending more than $1,000, but only VanNorman has filed the required campaign contribution and expenditure reports, which show him receiving maximum contributions on a nearly daily basis.

On Friday, voters received a mailer from the Brent VanNorman campaign listing endorsements from:

• Congressman Kevin Hern
• Former Attorney General John O'Connor
• Former Tulsa Police Chief Dave Been
• State Senator Dana Prieto
• State Representative Mark Tedford
• State Representative Chris Banning
• State Representative-elect Rob Hall
• Bama chairman/CEO Paula Marshall

The mailer quotes Congressman Hern: "Brent's commitment to Tulsa values and his real-world experience are unmatched. He will bring the fresh, new leadership Tulsa needs." Former AG John O'Connor writes: "Brent is a true family man and business leader. He's the only Republican running with a bold plan to put Tulsans first and ensure a bright future. "

But many prominent Republican officials with Tulsa ties are still silent and on the sidelines. Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell, Insurance Commissioner Glen Mulready, State Senator (and beloved former TU football coach) Dave Rader, Sheriff Vic Regalado, County Clerk Michael Willis, and County Court Clerk Don Newberry all reside in the City of Tulsa. (Gov. Kevin Stitt is registered to vote at the Governor's Mansion in Oklahoma City, but before he was elected, he lived in the Tulsa city limits.)

Why are these Republicans remaining on the sidelines? Some of them have a history of backing one Republican against others in past City of Tulsa elections. This time, they aren't backing someone other than VanNorman; they're just staying very quiet.

The number one reason is likely that VanNorman is so new to Tulsa. While we've had a relatively new Tulsan serve as mayor (Dick Crawford moved to Tulsa in 1978 and was elected mayor in 1986), it's an unusual circumstance. VanNorman's late entry into the mayor's race, switching just before filing from running for Council District 2, as Jayme Fowler dropped back to running for his old council seat, may be another eyebrow-raiser, although that looks like a pragmatic reaction to Fowler's failure to catch fire as a mayoral candidate and VanNorman's resources for a citywide campaign. Only recently has VanNorman campaign material reached mailboxes, radio, TV, and social media, so these GOP leaders may have been wondering if VanNorman's campaign was in earnest.

Elected officials are naturally focused on the preservation and extension of their own political careers, and an endorsement poses a risk to their own reputations. Some may be hoping that the problem will resolve itself after Tuesday -- either VanNorman is the lone Republican against a Democrat, making an endorsement in the November runoff straightforward, or else he's out and Tulsa voters choose between two Democrats in November.

I have to wonder, too, if some officials are deterred by their working relationships with either Democrat Karen Keith or her campaign consultants, who often represent Republicans.

While staying on the sidelines is understandable, these officials ought to expect a share of the blame from Republican voters in future elections if VanNorman fails to make the runoff by a slim margin while they remained silent.

I would think Gov. Stitt in particular would be glad to have the mayor of Oklahoma's second largest city on the same side of his fight for one system of laws and justice for all Oklahomans.

The latest poll released by VanNorman's campaign has the race tightening, with Karen Keith dropping to 25%, VanNorman rising to 23%, and Monroe Nichols slipping to 19%. Unsure is at 30% and other candidates are at 3% combined. But the margin of error is 7%, with only 227 responses, due to what the poll press release calls "response fatigue due to overpolling by many political races." The poll seems to indicate positive momentum for VanNorman, but at that MOE, any two of the three candidates could end up in the November runoff. The Get Out the Vote (GOTV) effort will decide whether the November runoff includes a conservative Republican or is a choice between two left-of-center Democrats.

The key will be getting Republican voters to (1) turn up at the polls with an awareness that (2) VanNorman is the only conservative Republican running a well-funded campaign and (3) Karen Keith and Monroe Nichols a liberal Democrat. News coverage of trusted Republican voices endorsing VanNorman and robocall reminders from these officials to drive election-day turnout could have an impact. Even shifting a few hundred votes could be enough to make the difference in such a close race.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.

Tulsa voters will see two proposed amendments to the City Charter on the August 27, 2024, city general election ballot. Both are worth approving.

Proposition 1 amends Article II, Section 2, to change a city councilor's salary from a fixed $24,000 per year to $32,000 per year, with biennial adjustments up or down based on cost-of-living. Here is the current text:

Each member of the Council shall receive a salary of twenty-four thousand dollars ($24,000.00) per year, commencing December 1, 2014, payable as employees of the city are paid. The City Council shall have no power to change its salary by its own vote. Councilors may be reimbursed for expenses incurred in the performance of their duties.

Here is the proposed replacement text, with new text underlined:

Each member of the Council shall receive a salary of thirty-two thousand dollars ($32,000.00) per year, commencing December 2, 2024, payable as employees of the City are paid. Thereafter any adjustment to City Council members' annual salaries shall be as certified by the City Treasurer to the City Council. Any adjustment, up or down, certified by the City Treasurer shall coincide with the start of a new City Council term. The salary certified by the City Treasurer shall be commensurate with the most local consumer price index for all urban consumers (CPI-U) published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, over the immediately preceding two-year period. The City Council shall have no power to change its salary by its own vote. Councilors may be reimbursed for expenses incurred in the performance of their duties.

The original councilor's salary in the 1989 charter was $12,000. Although the Council had the power to vote for a salary increase to take effect after the next election, this was only done once, in 2002, increasing the salary to $18,000. In 2013, voters approved the current charter language, increasing the salary to $24,000 but removing the Council's power to adjust its salary.

While I like the idea of indexing the salary to inflation, and the method prescribed seems reasonable, I have a couple of concerns. City Treasurer is an office defined by the City Charter, but the method of appointment is not explicitly stated. If the City Treasurer is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the Mayor, there's a separation-of-powers problem. It could be a means for the Mayor to punish a Council he doesn't like.

The definition of the price index in the "escalator clause" also requires some interpretation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly CPI-U release includes "Table 4: Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U): Selected areas, all items index." CPI-U is calculated monthly for the four standard statistical regions and nine statistical areas and the three largest metropolises (NYC, LA, Chicago), then every two months for 20 large and notably expensive metropolitan areas, like Boston, Atlanta, Washington, and Urban Hawaii. The number that appears to meet the definition of "most local consumer price index" is the West South Central CPI-U, which increased by 2.5% between July 2023 and July 2024. A note on the spreadsheet cautions against relying on local area numbers (emphasis added):

NOTE: Local area indexes are byproducts of the national CPI program. Each local index has a smaller sample size than the national index and is, therefore, subject to substantially more sampling and other measurement error. As a result, local area indexes show greater volatility than the national index, although their long-term trends are similar. Therefore, the Bureau of Labor Statistics strongly urges users to consider adopting the national average CPI for use in their escalator clauses.

Proposition No. 2 would increase the ratio used to calculate the City Auditor's salary from the Mayor's salary. The current language, in Article IV, Section 2:

The salary of the City Auditor shall be seventy percent (70%) of the salary of the Mayor payable as employees of the city are paid.

The proposed replacement would say:

The salary of the City Auditor shall be seventy-five percent (75%) of the salary of the Mayor, payable as employees of the City are paid.

Currently, the Mayor's salary is $105,000, so the Auditor's pay would increase from $73,500 to $78,750. These salaries haven't changed since 2002. Barely six figures is not the money you pay the CEO of a billion-dollar corporation. Mid-five figures is not what you pay the auditor of a billion-dollar corporation.

Of course, we've never had a CEO in the Mayor's office under the 1989 "strong mayor" charter. We've had schmoozers and ribbon cutters. The people with the necessary skills to keep city departments running get paid much more than the mayor. (Before 1989, city departments were under elected commissioners who also served as the city's legislative body.) Most "strong" mayors have hired a Chief Administrative Officer and/or Chief Operating Officer to coordinate the department heads and leave Hizzonner free to schmooze. Republican Brent VanNorman is the only mayoral candidate this year with the experience to enable him to act as city government's CEO.

In theory, keeping salaries low compared to private-sector salaries for similar levels of responsibility should filter out those who are just in politics for the money. In reality, to run for a full-time office and serve, you'd either have to be independently wealthy, retired, or young enough for the pay to be a step up. Of you could be well-connected enough that the Powers That Be give your spouse a well-paid, no-show job, with the promise of a cushy sinecure for yourself when your time in office is over. Professionals in mid-career without those connections would have to put their careers on hold and take a huge pay cut. Their families would endure a lifestyle cut along with the absence of a parent and the massive disruption to family life that holding office entails.

City Council is even worse. Done right, it's a full-time job with part-time pay. You can make that work as a retiree (e.g. Jim Mautino, Roscoe Turner), with a solo professional practice (e.g., attorneys John Eagleton and Rick Westcott, although serving on the Council would have cut into their availability for legal work), or perhaps as a business owner with employees who can manage the business while you go to council meetings (e.g. Bill Martinson, Chris Trail).

If you're a non-profit executive, being a councilor is just an extension of your day job, so there's no need to take paid time off to attend council meetings. You're not there to represent your constituents, you're there to do the bidding of the philanthropocrats who fund or employ you. Any salary for being a rubber-stamp at council meetings is just icing on a very rich cake.

I'll be voting yes on both propositions as a step in a better direction, but there are consequences to the small amounts we pay our city officials.

The only valuable member of the current Tulsa City Council, the only councilor who was more than a rubber stamp, decided at the last minute not to run for re-election. District 5's Grant Miller had planned to run for a second term, but Tulsa's establishment (what I've called the Cockroach Caucus) made it clear that they were determined to ruin his life unless he went away.

Miller had the temerity to think for himself. He wisely opposed the Improve Our Tulsa 3 package, which was rushed to the ballot two years early and included $75 million for some magical, undefined solution for homelessness.

When Miller caught the Mean Girls Clique -- Vanessa Hall Harper, Laura Bellis, Lori Decter Wright -- texting each other during a public meeting of the Council's Urban and Economic Development Committee, in violation of the Oklahoma Open Meetings Act, he exposed their catty messages through an Open Records request. They were privately discussing the agenda item and ridiculing Miller's ideas, rather than using facts and reason to debate Miller's ideas publicly.

The Mean Girls Clique got their revenge with the help of the Meanest Girl of All, Mayor G. T. Bynum IV. Councilor Miller had completed his law degree at the University of Tulsa, had passed his bar exam, and had applied for admission to the Oklahoma bar. Bynum, Hall Harper, Bellis, and Decter Wright communicated "concerns" about Miller to the Oklahoma Board of Bar Examiners, who denied him the right to practice law in Oklahoma. The Bynum Mean Girls Clique, with other accomplices, punished Miller for his politics by preventing him from earning a living in the profession for which he had been expensively educated.

(And that brings us back to this question: Why is conservative Oklahoma allowing a left-leaning, Commie-supporting private club to serve as gatekeeper to the legal profession and the judiciary in Oklahoma?)

On top of all that, just as Tulsans began to read about the clearly political reasons for Miller's exclusion from the bar, a bogus charge of domestic assault and battery, called in two days after the event from someone a thousand miles away from Tulsa, resulted in an arrest and headlines. Miller was quickly cleared, and he intended to continue his campaign for re-election, but his plans were changed by the realities of needing to care for two children, including a young son with autism, while, he told KRMG in May, his wife was hospitalized for alcohol-induced pancreatitis.

This is the System, the Cockroach Caucus, making an example of someone who dared to think critically and independently. No wonder it's hard to find good candidates to run for City Council.

A few months ago, I was at an event where several council candidates spoke. Julie Dunbar, running in District 9, spoke in a way that was touchingly naive about her hopes for serving on the council. This is paraphrasing from memory, but she was looking forward to exchanging and discussing different ideas for improving the city with her council colleagues. Ms. Dunbar is a social worker who specializes in "Relationship Issues, Trauma and PTSD, and Life Coaching," so you'd think she would be able to recognize organizations blighted by narcissism and toxicity. Her husband, Todd Huston, served a term as a city councilor, and the same forces that helped him win election in 2000 recruited an opponent to defeat him in 2002, because he didn't endorse the "It's Tulsa's Time" tax increase on the November 2000 ballot. You'd think Huston might have been able to communicate to his wife that the Tulsa establishment doesn't welcome a diversity of ideas.

A couple of years ago, Tina Nettles, a Tulsa friend who raises chickens in her backyard, discovered that the commission rewriting the animal welfare ordinance was completely uninterested in hearing from citizens who are knowledgeable on the subject.

If you're serving on the City Council or on a board or commission, you might think you're there to propose creative solutions to the problems on the agenda. In 1998, District 4 City Councilor Anna Falling believed she had found a less expensive way to meet the city's recycling goals. While her proposal may have met the requirements of the stated agenda of city leaders, it apparently didn't also meet the real, hidden agenda. And so the Mayor and a compliant news media set out to end her service on the City Council. We could go on to talk about what was done to Jim Mautino, Chris Medlock, and Roscoe Turner in the mid-2000s and the lawfare targeting councilors circa 2009.

What's the hidden agenda of the Powers That Be? It might include making sure that "our friends at this non-profit and our friends who own a heavy construction company and our friends the bond attorneys and bond bankers all get a piece of the pie while those guys over there who aren't beholden to us at all get nothing." A solution that doesn't involve massive spending is worse than no solution at all, from their perspective. An alternate, simpler, less expensive solution to the stated agenda might capture the imagination of the public and make the plan that satisfies the hidden agenda politically impossible.

In the immortal words of Sal Tessio:

Sally's stated agenda (protecting the boss in a meeting with his rival) didn't line up with his hidden agenda (setting up the boss to be assassinated). His angry reaction to the proposal of a different plan to meet the stated agenda exposed the treacherous hidden agenda. The future Fish was taken away to sleep with the fishes.

Which brings us to the August 27, 2024, City of Tulsa general election. For a start, we need to defeat these three harpies, the Mean Girls Clique, who carried out this attack on Miller on behalf of the Cockroach Caucus. We also recall Vanessa Hall Harper's racist verbal attack on Republican Sen. Tim Scott and Laura Bellis's obscenity-saturated speech at a fundraiser for Lori Decter Wright claiming Republican City Council candidates were "actual fascists," sentiments praised by Decter Wright.

Fortunately, each of those three districts has a better alternative on the ballot: