UTW Column Archive: November 2006 Archives

An edited version of this piece was published in the November 15, 2006, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is no longer online. Posted here May 25, 2026.

About Last Tuesday
By Michael D. Bates

"We did not just lose our majority, we lost our way." - Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana).

It was a strange day, Election Day, particularly for conservative Republicans.

On the one hand, there was a significant shift in both houses of Congress - 30 seats in the House, 7 seats in the Senate, giving control of both houses to the Democrats for the first time in 12 years. And in Oklahoma, Democrats nearly swept statewide offices. Only the three Corporation Commission seats remain in Republican hands.

But on the other hand, Republicans had a one-seat net-loss but retained their majority in the Oklahoma House, and gained two seats in the Senate, resulting in a 24-24 tie, the first time in state history that the Democrats haven't had a majority in that body. And the Tulsa County Courthouse is now 100% Republican for the first time in history as the lone Democrat, Wilbert Collins, lost his seat on the County Commission to State Rep. John Smaligo.

It would be easy for victorious legislative and local Republicans to blame the national disaster on national issues, but the issue that brought about regime change on Capitol Hill this year is one that divides the Republican Party at every level of government.

It's the ongoing struggle between the "fair dealers" and the "wheeler dealers." In the first group, you have those who believe government should provide efficient basic services and fairly-applied laws for the benefit of all Americans. It's a view of government that generates passionate support and can attract voters across the partisan divide. On the other side you have those who see government as an exercise in mutual back scratching: You do special favors for special people, and they arrange for the funds to keep you in power.

Should government provide a fair foundation for all or should it be, in Jack Abramoff's famous phrase, a "favor factory" for a favored few?

Exit polls showed corruption as the number one reason that voters rejected Republican control of Congress. One congressman went to jail, another had been indicted, the House majority leader was arrested, and countless more were tarred with the appearance of granting access, earmarking Federal contracts, and pushing special-interest legislation in return for campaign cash, all of it taking place with the implied consent of the House leadership.

It helped that the 2006 model Democratic congressional candidate bore no resemblance to Michael Dukakis in a tank. In key districts, Democrats ran candidates with military records, candidates who dissented from the Democratic party line on issues like abortion, gay rights, and gun control, candidates who seemed at ease talking about their personal faith or holding a hunting rifle.

In the past, Republican campaigns could motivate their own activists and some voters to defeat that sort of moderate Democrat with this argument: "The local Democratic candidate may be a good guy, but we can't afford to turn over Congress to the left-wingers who would control the committees." This year, the apparent capitulation of Republican leadership to the seduction of power neutralized that argument. Republican promises that bold government reform was just beyond the next election were no longer credible.

Not only did corruption and greasy power-mongering turn off swing voters, it demoralized loyal grassroots Republicans. I've heard the same story from many conservative activist friends: They gladly took time off work and away from family pursuits to help out in 2004, but this year they just couldn't get excited about it.

Two years ago, they were motivated to buttonhole friends and knock on neighbors' doors to urge them to vote for principled conservatives like Tom Coburn. This year, the same people, wearied of trying to defend the indefensible, found better things to do. That hurt Republicans up and down the ballot. It even hurt good guys like Mark Liotta, the state rep from eastern north Tulsa who lost his seat despite his leadership in doubling the state roads budget without raising taxes.

I noticed the same lack of energy on the World Wide Web. In 2004, conservative bloggers took great joy in taking apart Democratic talking points on a daily basis. This year the same bloggers tended to weigh in late in the game, if at all.

It comes down to this observation from the political genius who beat a sitting president with a 91% approval rating. Bill Clinton told a Democratic fundraising dinner before the election, anticipating victory a few days later, "The reason we [Democrats] are at this moment is that they [Republicans] do not represent faithfully the Republicans and the more conservative independents in the country."

The seed of redemption for congressional Republicans is that it was Republicans who helped expose the problem. In the House, Arizona's Jeff Flake forced his colleagues to vote up or down on individual egregious examples of pork barrel spending. (Tulsa's John Sullivan was one of about 60 congressmen to support Flake's efforts at fiscal restraint.) In the Senate, Oklahoma's own Tom Coburn pushed for and passed a bill to open earmarks up to public scrutiny. The success or failure of budget hawk Mike Pence's bid for House Republican leader will be an early indication whether the surviving congressional Republicans are serious about reform.

But there are worrisome signs that Republicans in the Oklahoma legislature are about to travel the same perilous path as their congressional counterparts.

Last Thursday the newly-elected House Republican Caucus reaffirmed Lance Cargill of Harrah as their nominee for Speaker of the House, choosing Cargill over Oklahoma City Rep. Mike Reynolds. Some Republican capitol insiders are worried about the result, seeing the potential for an Oklahoma version of the corrupt "favor factory" that brought down the Republican majority in Congress.

A series of articles in the Oklahoma Gazette earlier this year explored lobbyist complaints that Cargill was running a "pay for play" system via his leadership PAC, Republican PAC to the Future. Cargill, as House majority leader, controlled the flow of legislation, and the message came through loud and clear that if a lobbyist wanted his client's bill heard, he'd have to bring in some contributions to Cargill's PAC. Cargill was dumped as majority leader in March. Behind the scenes, it's said that his abrasive leadership style and fundraising tactics were the reasons for the ouster.

Once freed from leadership responsibilities, Cargill, I am told, worked on using his accumulated PAC cash to win friends in the caucus. In June he won an election for speaker-designate, an election marked by irregularities and arm-twisting. Legislators feared losing important committee assignments or drawing a primary opponent in the next election if they openly opposed Cargill.

Already in the last legislature we saw questionable bills - special deals for special people, not sound policy - find their way through the process. There was the attempt to craft tax credits like those used for Great Plains Airlines to benefit someone who wants to redevelop Shangri-La resort. There were attempts by developers to use state law to override local zoning and planning ordinances.

These dodgy bills made it through most of the legislative process before they were discovered by citizens and stopped. They got as far as they did, winning cosponsors and floor votes, because legislators believed their colleagues, who told them, "Don't worry, this is nothing controversial." It took a last-minute bipartisan public outcry to stop the bills.

The most amazing result of the night was Ernest Istook's drubbing at the hands of Governor Brad Henry. You'd expect a sacrificial lamb or a perennial also-ran to get 33% of the vote, not a respectable veteran congressman from the state's largest city. Istook lagged every other statewide candidate, even Bill "Kevlar textbooks" Crozier.

But Brad Henry governed as a moderate, signed some Republican legislation, and benefited from higher state revenues from high oil prices. Fairly or not, Bob Sullivan succeeded in tying Istook to Abramoff, pork barrel, and insider deals in Washington. Most grassroots activists backed Sullivan and James Williamson in the primary and weren't as enthused about helping Istook in the fall campaign.

Given that the Abramoff scandal centered around Indian gaming, it's interesting that voters didn't connect the dots between Henry's support for casinos and tribal cigarette compacts and the large tribal-related campaign contributions he received in 2002. Only Treasurer candidate Dan Keating made it an issue.

Here in Tulsa County, we saw several wins for fair-dealing Republicans and an end to the cozy insider deals that have characterized the County Commission over the last four years. Bob Dick, long the dominant figure in county government and the driving force behind most of those deals, has been replaced by Fred Perry. Wilbert Collins, who served as Dick's right-hand man, was replaced by John Smaligo.

Perry and Smaligo both ran on a back-to-basics platform, refocusing county government on its core functions: road maintenance and law enforcement in unincorporated areas, record keeping, and operation of the courthouse and jail. Voters may be pleased with Vision 2025 and 4-to-Fix-the-County, but they sent a message that they're ready for a County Commission that will finish what's underway, instead of launching a new and massive taxpayer-funded project.

While former Democratic County Assessor Jack Gordon deserves praise for his tough stand against questionable out-of-state "non-profits" who were letting their tax-exempt apartment complexes rot, County Assessor Ken Yazel won bipartisan respect for fairly assessing all properties, even those owned by the very wealthy and very powerful. Yazel cut his own department's budget, which in turn cut costs to local school districts, and as a member of the County Budget Board, he helped find savings in other departments as well.

Republicans won Congress in 1994 by presenting a clear and positive reform agenda, promising to bring an end to the insider deals and perquisites that had brought Congress into disrepute. The Republican leadership lost Congress in 2006 because they abandoned their reform agenda and embraced the questionable practices of the past, choosing power over principle. It falls to those of us who are active in state and county Republican Party organizations to police our own, to expose and root out bad governance by our own people before the Democrats have the chance.

An edited version of this column was published in the November 2-8, 2006, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Here's my blog entry linking to the article. Posted October 25, 2022.

Judicious voting
By Michael D. Bates

Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgment is God's. - Deuteronomy 1:17

Justice is often depicted in art as a blindfolded figure, symbolizing the commitment carved above the entrance to the U. S. Supreme Court: "Equal Justice under Law." From ancient Israel to the present day, civilization has honored the ideal that the Law should not be a respecter of persons - perhaps more often in the breach than the observance.

The impartial administration of justice is what separates civilized societies, where disputes are settled in courtrooms and at the ballot box, from those lands where might makes right. The security of life, liberty, and property under law is an essential element of American prosperity. Human and economic capital flees lands where one's home, business, and very existence can be taken at the whim of a tyrant. (Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe is only the latest example.)

Whether partiality is motivated by bribery or fear of retribution, when a judge bends the law to please the wealthy or powerful, that judge needs to go. Thankfully, Oklahomans have an opportunity every four years to review a judge's performance and to remove or replace him. District judges face competitive elections; voters choose whether to retain or dismiss appellate judges and justices of the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

Next Tuesday, Oklahoma voters should dismiss Court of Civil Appeals Judge Jane Wiseman and Supreme Court Justices Steven W. Taylor, Tom Colbert, James E. Edmondson, and Yvonne Kauger on the grounds of partiality in judgment.

In 2005, Tulsa County District Judge Jane Wiseman was appointed by Governor Brad Henry to the Court of Civil Appeals. During her tenure at the local court, she issued two contradictory rulings on high-profile cases involving sales tax elections and the Oklahoma Constitution's "single subject" rule.

Article 5, Section 57 of the state constitution bans logrolling, the practice of lumping together a number of unrelated items in the same piece of legislation or the same ballot initiative. Logrolling forces voters to accept the unacceptable in order to obtain the desirable. The aim of the logrolling prohibition is to give voters a clear choice. Earlier this year, the State Supreme Court used this provision to disqualify an initiative petition restricting the use of eminent domain, because it also provided for compensation to landowners adversely affected by zoning changes.

In the summer of 1995, Tulsa County's Commissioners sent to the voters a proposal for a ½-cent temporary sales tax to pay for construction of a new jail and to pay for early intervention and delinquency programs. A citizen sued to stop the election, and Judge Wiseman ruled that the combination of the two items, although somewhat related under the broad topic of crime prevention, was nevertheless unconstitutional logrolling.

The County Commissioners regrouped and within a few days approved a restructured tax proposal, this time with the early intervention programs as a separate ballot item. The jail construction tax passed in September 1995, but the 1/12th of a cent for early intervention failed. (By the way, that missing 1/12th is why we have such a strange sales tax rate.) The voters were allowed to express clear preferences for one item and not the other.

Fast-forward to 2003. Tulsa County's Commissioners sent a four-part sales tax ballot to the voters. Proposition 3 included funding for university facilities, a medical clinic, Expo Square improvements, public school teaching materials, convention center upgrades, and a downtown sports arena, lumped together under the vague heading of "economic development."

As recently as 2000, voters had approved a sales tax measure with Expo Square funding and at the same election turned down a sales tax to fund a new arena, so there was reason to believe that, given a free choice, voters would approve some of those items but not others.

The 1995 precedent raised the possibility that the County Commissioners might once again be forced to go back to the drawing board and give voters a clear choice. But an attorney friend warned me that it would all depend on who brought the lawsuit. If the plaintiff were a senator or congressman, someone who could further or frustrate a judge's career ambitions, the suit would have a chance, but otherwise the logrolled ballot would go forward. There was too much social and financial pressure on the other side. A $200 million construction project was much higher stakes than $5 million a year for social programs.

The plaintiff was Todd Huston, a controversial one-term City Councilor who had been targeted for defeat by the Tulsa World. Mr. Huston had exactly zero clout over federal and state judicial appointments.

When I learned that Jane Wiseman had been assigned the case, I was hopeful. If Wiseman applied the same principles that she used in the logrolled jail vote, the voters would have to be given a standalone vote on the arena. Surely Wiseman wouldn't contradict her earlier ruling.

But she did. The day of the hearing, the courtroom was packed with the Great and the Good, many of whom had a financial interest in the arena project going forward. Wiseman ruled that the collection of disparate projects did not violate the single-subject rule, because they could all be justified as related to "economic development." Wiseman's ruling nullified the constitutional protection against logrolling.

Why did Jane Wiseman contradict herself? Perhaps she feared ostracism - her name turns up from time to time in the society column. Perhaps she feared a well-funded challenger at her next re-election, or that she'd be passed over for a higher judicial appointment. Whatever the motive, she demonstrated unacceptable partiality. Two years later she was elevated by the Governor to the Court of Civil Appeals. Next Tuesday is our first opportunity as voters to retire Jane Wiseman and her partiality for the powerful and wealthy.

Four of the five Supreme Court justices on Tuesday's ballot - everyone but Marian Opala - need to be sent off as well, for nullifying the right of Oklahomans to initiative and referendum. In July, the Supreme Court voted to strike down the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR) petition for an inadequate number of signatures.

Although TABOR's backers gathered 80,000 more signatures than were required, the Court's referee claimed that 81,000 signatures were gathered by circulators who were not "qualified electors," a term that refers to any adult residing in the state of Oklahoma, whether registered to vote or not. The Supreme Court affirmed the referee's assertions without hearing oral arguments from the petition's supporters.

Whether a professional circulator living in a motel room should count as a qualified elector is a matter for the Legislature to address. The law doesn't specify a requirement for length of residency or quality of housing. Whether TABOR is a good idea or not, the Supreme Court should have taken up the issue and heard arguments for both sides, rather than letting a referee make the decision. Only Marian Opala, out of the nine justices, insisted that the proponents of the petition be given their day in court.

The decision is suspicious in light of the fact that the same company, National Voter Outreach, had circulated nearly every successful initiative petition in Oklahoma in recent years, including anti-cockfighting and gasoline tax initiatives. NVO's procedures had never before been invalidated. The Court effectively changed the rules in the middle of the game.

The difference, in this case, is that the same powerful business groups who supported the gas tax hike oppose TABOR. The right to initiative petition was enshrined in our state constitution to allow the voters to bypass a legislature in thrall to entrenched special interests. This ruling sends the message to the 300,000 Oklahoma voters who signed the TABOR petition is that you have that right only as long as the entrenched special interests don't object.

As our only resort against this trampling of the state constitution, Oklahomans should vote to keep Justice Marian Opala and to get rid of the rest.

District Judges:

Tulsa County voters will decide five contested District Court seats and choose an Associate District Judge. Space doesn't permit a detailed treatment of each race; three deserve special mention.

Deirdre Dexter (dexterforjudge.com) is widely praised for her term as Associate District Judge and has been endorsed by ten former county bar association presidents, state legislators and city councilors of both parties, former district attorneys of both parties, and the immediate past chairmen of the local Republican and Democratic parties. As I wrote before the primary, "I have yet to encounter someone who speaks ill of [Dexter's] character, work ethic, or tenure as judge." Dexter skillfully handled some very challenging felony cases, and she ought to be returned to service.

In contrast, the performance of Caroline Wall (judgecarolinewall.com), the judge who replaced her, elicits widespread dismay. Attorneys say Wall doesn't keep up with her docket. Wall's leniency is another cause for concern - there's a long list of cases in which Wall reduced or completely suspended jail terms for convicted murderers and sexual predators. Her opponent, Dana Kuehn (danaforjudge.com), resigned a position as assistant DA to run for the seat, and has support across the political spectrum.

Voters in north Tulsa County and east Tulsa will choose between Collinsville municipal judge James Caputo (judgecaputo.com) and special district judge Daman Cantrell (cantrellforjudge.org) to fill David Peterson's vacant bench. Caputo was a Tulsa County sheriff's deputy prior to getting his law degree, has been Collinsville's municipal judge since 2001, and attorneys I know praise him as intelligent, efficient, and someone who will rule according to the law, not try to legislate from the bench.

Elsewhere in this issue, you'll find my tête-à-tête with former Democratic chairman Elaine Dodd on statewide, legislative, and county races. For more analysis and late-breaking news between now and Election Day, visit batesline.com.