Tulsa mayoral election August 27
Co-governance, my endorsement, Council District 3
I’ve posted a bunch of commentary over the last 10 days, most of it about the City of Tulsa election on August 27, 2024, a week from Tuesday. This is the city’s general election; anyone getting more than 50% of the vote on August 27 will be elected, and this includes all two candidate races. There are a handful of races with three or more candidates that may go to a November runoff, but the August 27 election will decide which two candidates advance. If you wait until November to vote, you may not get to vote at all for mayor and city council.
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This morning at church, I was asked: Is there a candidate for Tulsa mayor that conservatives can feel good about voting for? There is indeed. In my mayoral endorsement I explain the electoral calculus and discuss the ideology and records of the three candidates with significant support: Democrats Karen Keith and Monroe Nichols and Republican Brent VanNorman. Don’t miss the discussion of Keith’s bullying of the only homeowner-friendly planning commissioner on the TMAPC.
The danger of tribal co-governance needed an entire article on its own. Monroe Nichols celebrates the idea, but Tulsa needs a mayor who will defend democracy and equal rights for the 90% in Federal court.
You may not be aware that Jimcy McGirt, the child molester who is the basis for tribal territorial sovereignty claims, is now a free man. At the end of the article on co-governance, I explain how that happened, and how his victim had to relive her trauma. Many felons who were freed by the McGirt ruling could not be retried because the statute of limitations had expires. Tribal officials’ lust for power was more important than keeping child molesters and other violent criminals locked up.
The first non-Patrick election for Tulsa City Council District 3 in 30 years was my topic earlier in the month. I discuss the backgrounds of the two candidates, one Republican and one Democrat (although those labels will not be on the ballot), and make an endorsement.
Several candidates on the August ballot have been trashed for serving on the board of INCOG, the regional council of governments for the Tulsa metro area. There are claims that INCOG is a front for WEF-backed globalists. I explain what INCOG is and what that says about the municipal officials who participate.
Keep your eye on BatesLine.com early this week: I will have a summary of the Tulsa City Council races, an analysis of the pre-election contribution reports (which are due Monday, August 19, at 5 p.m.), and my traditional pre-election ballot card. In the meantime, you’ll find a summary of August 27 endorsements here.
A couple of non-election pieces:
August 9 was the 50th anniversary of the only presidential resignation in American history. I remember where I was when I heard that President Nixon would resign, and where I was when he spoke to the nation. That link has Richard Nixon’s speeches to the nation and his staff, his recollections a decade later, and the recent recollections of eyewitnesses to Nixon’s final days and later years.
The Mormons are building a temple in southeast Tulsa. I explore the zoning of the proposed site and link to some zoning and planning controversies elsewhere involving new Mormon temples.
From the archives:
As I research new stories, I often come across articles in the BatesLine archive that are worth revisiting for historical perspective on Tulsa’s character.
Tired old thinking is hard to shake: In June 2003, the Tulsa Whirled’s editorial board threw a hissy fit over the possibility that the arena would not be included in the county sales tax package that would be known as Vision 2025, reflecting their archaic and discredited views on downtown revitalization.
Down with the gummint! Some insight into the omerta that governs Tulsa’s insiders, the fear that keeps them from disagreeing publicly with bad ideas from their own class. The essay is an email I wrote to my fellow TulsaNow board members in 2003, as they were debating whether or not to endorse Vision 2025. A snippet from a Pogo comic book story was the perfect illustration.
On another website: TulsaTVMemories is a time-capsule of Tulsa pop culture of the 1970s and 1980s, as seen on TV and remembered by Boomers and early Gen-Xers. A page is devoted to KGCT 41, the 1981 experiment in news-talk television, described by KTUL meteorologist Don Woods as “a telethon without a disease.” I had a one-month internship there, where I first met Karen Keith, and my memories are included on the page.