Polls are open today until 7 p.m. The Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter tool will let you know where to vote and will show you a sample of the ballot you'll see. Click to download a printable version of the BatesLine ballot card Click the link above to...
Pat Campbell with Daryl Simmons and Jarrin Jackson, on Election Day 2020. Photo from TalkRadio1170.com Introduced by Aerosmith's "Back in the Saddle," Pat Campbell, long-time morning host on Talk Radio 1170 KFAQ, was back on the air this morning after a four-week absence. He was in studio for the full...
Two out-of-state Leftist organizations contributed a total of $6,336,852.36 in support of State Question 805, the proposed constitutional amendment that will allow temporarily inconvenienced career criminals to return more rapidly to their vocation of victimizing their neighbors. The two organizations, the ACLU and FWD.US, combined to provide 87% of the...
On Thursday, October 29, 2020, a large group of state officials, law enforcement leaders, domestic violence survivors, and community leaders gathered for a press conference to urge Oklahomans to vote NO on SQ805. Speakers included Lt. Governor Matt Pinnell, Attorney General Mike Hunter, former First Lady Cathy Keating, Oklahoma FOP...
The 2020 Oklahoma general election ballot has retention votes for three State Supreme Court justices, two judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals, and three judges on the Court of Civil Appeals. These are yes-no votes, unlike the district judge elections that occur in gubernatorial election years. If "no" prevails...
Oklahoma State Question 805 would insert a new article into the Oklahoma Constitution to ban longer sentences for repeat felony offenders. The question arises from an initiative petition. (UPDATE: On October 30, 2020, I spoke with Jeremie Poplin, filling in for Pat Campbell on Talk Radio 1170 KFAQ, about both...
Only two state questions are on the ballot in November, which seems like a record low. Of the 12 attempts this year at putting a question on a ballot via initiative petitions, two made it two the ballot (802 and 805), two (involving marijuana) are in process, and the remainder...
Former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating has written an op-ed for the Daily Oklahoman opposing State Question 805, a ballot proposition that would add an amendment to the Constitution of Oklahoma forbidding sentence enhancements for repeat offenders for many heinous albeit technically non-violent crime. SQ 805 will be on the November...
What looked like a sleepy re-election run, for Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum IV as recently as the beginning of May, with one declared opponent and a perennial candidate in jail, turned into a free-for-all. As soon as he had some tough decisions to make, the smiley guy that everyone...
Back on August 12, I sent the three eligible candidates for City Council District 4 a questionnaire using the email addresses provided in their declarations of candidacy or on their websites. The questionnaire included the 18 questions I asked the mayoral candidates, plus a question about neighborhood conservation districts and...
Last Wednesday, BatesLine sent a questionnaire to the six serious candidates for Mayor of Tulsa, using the email addresses provided in their declarations of candidacy or on their websites. We sent two reminders. We received replies from three candidates: Craig Immel, Ken Reddick, and Ty Walker. The survey consists of...
A memorial tribute to Charles G. Hill, Oklahoma's best-loved and most-enduring blogger, who died in September 8, 2019.
A stormwater detention pond planned by the City of Tulsa is displacing owners of historic homes, affecting Paul Harvey's childhood neighborhood.
Here are my recommended votes in the Tulsa County special election on April 5, 2016, for the unexpired term for Tulsa County Sheriff and county and municipal sales tax propositions. Links lead to more detailed information or earlier blog entries. (This entry may change as I decide to add...
Because the Tulsa City Council's website throws a roadblock in the path of search engines indexing past agendas and minutes, I'm posting direct, static links to each meeting agenda. I obtained these by searching manually for agendas from each month in sequence, then copying and pasting the results. I'm hopeful...
I received an email Monday containing an anonymous ethics complaint that had been filed against Tulsa District 9 City Councilor G. T. Bynum. The text of that complaint, with links to relevant documentation added by me, can be found on the jump page for this article. (For your reference, here...
Getting caught up: Early last month (best defined as the very cold windy period between the big Christmas snowstorm and the big late January ice storm), I had two back-to-back business trips, both involving graveyard-shift hours, separated by less than a day at home. The first trip was to Altus...
BREAKING NEWS: Gov. Brad Henry has vetoed HB 2246, the initiative petition reform bill to which Rick Carpenter alludes in the essay below, despite near unanimous support from the legislature. According to an e-mail press release from Oklahomans for Responsible Government late last night, "[Henry] claims that the provision that...
A reminiscence from Pastor Ray Pritchard: Legendary radio broadcaster Paul Harvey died today at the age of 90. Besides virtually creating his own medium that combined reporting with news commentary, he also knew how to tell a story. He gave the tease, paused, told a bit more, paused, let the...
On Wednesday, July 23, District Judge Linda Morrissey denied motions by the Islamic Society of Tulsa, Mujib Cheema, and the North American Islamic Trust to dismiss Jamal Miftah's lawsuit against them. Miftah is suing Cheema, IST, and NAIT, as well as several other individual leaders in IST for assault and...
If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all future entries matching 'SQ 805'. [What is this?]