Karl Ahlgren, smear merchant, and his toady, Tom Mansur

Karl Ahlgren's vocation is taking money from political special interests in exchange for smearing people who are obstacles to the special interests's goals. He's done it again today, with a mail piece on behalf of Tom Mansur smearing Steven Roemerman.

Contrary to Mansur's claim, Steven Roemerman has not been endorsed by the AFL-CIO or by any AFL-CIO-affiliated organization. He has not received any money from political action committees. Steven Roemerman's funding comes mainly from family members and long-time friends who believe in Steven's integrity and intelligence.

On the contrary, it's Tom Mansur who received campaign money from major Obama fundraiser George Kaiser, a liberal Democrat. Mansur's contributors are Money Belt types who are giving to multiple candidates in an apparent bid to buy control of the City Council: John Brock (founding father of Save Our Tulsa), Joseph "Jody" Parker Jr., Tom Snyder, Stacy Schusterman, TulsaBizPac, Kent Dunbar, and, of course, SOT member Tobias "Ben" Latham and council-suer Burt Holmes.

We don't know who else may have given money to Tom Mansur after the deadline. While Steven Roemerman has posted up-to-date information on contributions on his website, Tom Mansur refused the campaign finance transparency challenge. Remember that Mansur's consultant, Karl Ahlgren, ran Chris Trail's race which brought in maximum contributions from out-of-state business associates of then-Mayor Kathy Taylor's husband, too late for the public to know before the primary. It's reasonable to think that Mansur and Ahlgren are hiding something this year, as well.

A small group of wealthy Tulsans want total control of city government. They don't want thoughtful citizens on the City Council who will ask direct questions or who will stand firm against special-interest manipulation. They want a City Council full of well-trained monkeys who will vote on command. They exist under various names -- TulsaBizPac, Coalition for Responsible Government, Tulsans for Better Government, Save Our Tulsa -- I call them the Cockroach Caucus. They've used unsubstantiated claims of "bickering" and "ward politics" to discredit the councilors we've elected to represent us.

These are the people, the Cockroach Caucus, who created a year of turmoil with their 2004-2005 attempt to recall two city councilors over policy differences. For all the whining and complaining they do about "Council bickering," they dragged the city through a divisive year of attacks and smears, all because they didn't like the results of an election, and they refused to work harmoniously with the councilors that the people of Tulsa had elected.

These are the people who led us into the Great Plains Airlines mess. They promised us openly that the taxpayers were at no financial risk, while they were secretly promising financiers that the taxpayers would pick up the tab if their wacky airline idea failed. It failed, state taxpayers coughed up $30 million in transferable tax credits with nothing to show for it, and Tulsa taxpayers got saddled with $7.1 million, which we're paying for with higher property taxes.

These are the Midtown Money Belt people who don't like the councilors that east and west and south and north Tulsa elect to represent our interests at City Hall. Middle-class and working-class Tulsans want more cops on the beat, city pools that open in the summer, streets that don't tear our cars to pieces, zoning that protects our neighborhoods against shoddy redevelopment, and economic policies that attract and keep growing businesses. The Midtown Money Belt types want taxpayers to subsidize their entertainment -- islands in the river, expensive concerts at the arena, WNBA. They want us to subsidize the success of their investments in suburban real estate, at the expense of growth within the city limits to help fund public safety and infrastructure.

So because they don't like the fact that the rest of us elect councilors focused on efficient basic city services, these people propose charter changes to dilute geographical representation on the City Council. They yearn for the days when you could drive a golf ball from the Mayor's midtown backyard into the yards of the other city commissioners. They want to pack the council with at-large councilors who have to be wealthy enough to afford a city-wide race or beholden to those who are.

These people have decided to back a group of candidates so they can take back control of the City Council. They don't care if their candidates are well-informed, and they don't want candidates with the backbone to oppose special interests who want to misuse city resources for their own benefit.

These people wanted to foist Nancy Rothman on the citizens of Tulsa. Nancy Rothman plotted, with her close personal friend, a psychic, to plant child pornography on her ex-husband and to alienate her sons from their father. Nancy Rothman blew through a generous divorce settlement, worth well over a million dollars, refinancing and taking equity out of her house before declaring bankruptcy. From her public statements, it's apparent that Nancy Rothman still refuses to take responsibility for her irresponsible and destructive behavior and believes, against all reason, that she can bring peace and harmony to City Hall.

Karl Ahlgren was proud to claim Nancy Rothman as a client before all this came to light. The guys who hired him -- Tobias "Ben" Latham and Burt Holmes -- were happy to give money to Nancy Rothman's campaign. Did they know about the way she wrecked her family relationships and her personal finances? Did they bother to vet her background? Or were they content to dump any old wacko on the City Council, as long as they could pull her strings?

What does this say about the other candidates Ahlgren, Latham, Holmes, and their buddies are backing? Did they fail to investigate their backgrounds, too? What do we really know about these people?

Karl Ahlgren and his firm smeared District Attorney Tim Harris, promoted sales tax increases for entertainment facilities, lied about Mark Perkins' stand on 2nd amendment rights, nearly wrecked the credibility of the Republican majority in the legislature with Speaker Lance Cargill and what some called a "pay-to-play" setup, and lobbied for changes to state law which would allow the state to overrule Tulsa's locally enacted and very modest historic preservation measures.

Ahlgren's firm AH Strategies and the associated firm Majority Designs were hired by Oklahoma City moguls and millionaires -- a secretive group called "Momentum" -- for a successful takeover of the Oklahoma City Council earlier this year. One of the Momentum-backed Council majority's first acts was to exclude Councilor Ed Shadid, the only councilor to succeed in beating a Momentum candidate, from decisions about the implementation of MAPS 3 projects. This is the kind of "harmony" and "cooperation" Ahlgren and his clients want to see in Tulsa -- shut up and do what we say, or you don't get a seat at the table.

To sum it all up, these same people, the Cockroach Caucus, want you to elect Tom Mansur. By allowing this smear and distortion to go out under his name, Tom Mansur has shown himself to be exactly the kind of weak-willed and easily manipulated rubber-stamp the Cockroach Caucus wants on the City Council.

Tulsa needs a strong council filled with intelligent people of good will. District 7 citizens need to reject the Cockroach Caucus's attempt to buy the City Council and elect Steven Roemerman.