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Oklahoma 2022 judicial retention
A few notes on the four Oklahoma Supreme Court justices and five Court of Civil Appeals judges on the retention ballot this year. None of the five members of the Court of Criminal Appeals are up for retention this year. Judges in Oklahoma's appellate system are up for retention every...
Shawnee to Sapulpa by electric interurban
Another interesting map find. This Rand McNally Vest Pocket Map of Oklahoma from 1910 appears to be an earlier map, overprinted in red to show numbers indexed to railway names and parcel companies and to show electric railway lines. The U. S. Post Office did not deliver parcels until January...
Randy Brogdon for Oklahoma Republican Chairman
UPDATE: Jamison Faught reports on Twitter that on the first ballot Brogdon finished first but short of a majority, and incumbent chairman Weston was eliminated -- Brogdon 47.45, Pollard 29.11, Weston 23.43. Brogdon won the second ballot over Pollard, 53.35% to 46.65%. Estela Hernandez was elected vice chairman with 58.12%...
Oklahoma Election 2014: judicial retention ballot
Three justices of the State Supreme Court (Reif, Colbert, Watt), one justice of the Court of Criminal Appeals (Lumpkin), and five justices of the Court of Civil Appeals (Goodman, Wiseman, Barnes, Rapp, Goree) will be on Tuesday's ballot. Oklahoma has a two-path appellate system: Criminal cases are appealed to the...
Randy Brogdon for U. S. Senator
Seven candidates have filed to complete the final two years of U. S. Senator Tom Coburn's term, but if you were to follow the news coverage you might think there were only two candidates in the race. Three of the seven have been elected officials: Former State Sen. Randy Brogdon,...
Tulsa school board: For Bruce Niemi
Although two Tulsa school board seats are expiring, only one has a contested election next Tuesday, February 14, 2012. That's in School Board Office 5, where former State Rep. Bruce Niemi faces Leigh Goodson in a contest to replace incumbent Brian Hunt, who chose not to run for re-election. Election...
Oklahoma SQ 754: A closer look
I may have been wrong about 754. I made the mistake of believing the ballot title, which appears to be Ayatollah Drew Edmondson's valedictory middle finger to Oklahoma conservative voters. The retiring attorney general, a Democrat, is notable for having three political consultants involved with the popular Taxpayer Bill of...
Justice Marian Opala, RIP
Marian Opala, associate justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, has died at the age of 89. He will be missed. Opala was born in Poland, fought against Germany in the Polish Army and the Resistance, captured in the Warsaw Uprising, and imprisoned in Flossenburg Concentration Camp. After the camp was...
Brogdon blitz, Saturday, July 10, 2010 -- and the bystander effect
The Randy Brogdon for Governor campaign is calling on supporters to volunteer their time on Saturday morning, July 10, 2010, to get his message out to voters in Tulsa-area neighborhoods. There are only 17 days left until the July 27 primary election. Where: Meet at 4444 E. 66th, Suite 100E,...
Oklahoma gets a C+ on initiative & referendum rights
The Citizens in Charge Foundation has issued its 2010 report card on voter initiative rights in each of the states. (The full state-by-state report is an 8.2 MB PDF. The flag pictures are pretty -- I always like to see the old-fashioned font, with the arched A, used for OKLAHOMA,...
Rick Carpenter: Surviving a Grand Jury Indictment
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...
Top ten Tulsa stories for 2007
Monday morning on 1170 KFAQ, Gwen Freeman and I talked about top stories at the state and local level. These were my top 10 local stories, in no particular order: Defeat of the proposed Tulsa County sales tax for Arkansas River projects ORU: Professors' wrongful termination lawsuit and resignation of...
Judging the judge's judger
Since my column came out on Wednesday, I've had several phone calls and e-mails from friends and even from a sitting judge politely taking issue with my picks in the district judge races. It's interesting that I have yet to hear any dissent to my call to vote against retention...
Judicious voting
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...
At-large petition dead; LaFortune forms Citizens' Commission
An edited version of this column was published in the December 14, 2005, edition of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is still online, courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Here's my blog entry linking to the article. Posted October 28, 2017. The at-large councilor petition appears to be...
The County's fixed already
This week in Urban Tulsa Weekly, an up-close look at next Tuesday's Tulsa County sales tax election. (You can find an earlier column about this tax proposal here, and here's a column about Tulsa County Commissioners' aversion to competitive bidding. G. W. Schulz has a lengthy profile of Ray and...
A look inside the petition industry
The good news is that Tulsans for Badder Government has decided to drop its petition effort for dismembering three Tulsa City Council districts and replacing them with three elected city-wide. The bad news is that, word has it, Mayor Bill LaFortune is going to set up a blue-ribbon panel to...
Bogus signature collection?
Know what you're signing. There are reports that Tulsans for Badder Government, the elite bunch pushing for diluting representative democracy in Tulsa, are obtaining petition signatures under false pretenses: A person went to the post office and a petition was presented for him/her to sign. The top petition page was...
RINOs undercut abortion safety legislation
Some people object to applying the label "pro-abortion" to anyone. "Pro-choice" is preferred, "pro-abortion-rights" is acceptable, but even the head of the local Planned Parenthood chapter back in Tulsa told me with a straight face that she considers herself "pro-life." All she and her allies want is to ensure that...
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