Tom McCay for Mayor of Tulsa

Back last November and again in April during filing for candidates for city offices, I begged for a principled conservative to throw his hat in the ring for Mayor of Tulsa, so we wouldn't be left with a Hobson's choice between Tweedledee Jr and Tweedledum IV, both of whom have embraced a failed understanding of what makes for a livable, lovable city. After two days of filing, the only alternatives were two perennial candidates with problems of their own.

On the final day of filing, Tom McCay answered the call, and he has my support and my vote to become Mayor of Tulsa.

McCay's reason for getting into the race: "I kept waiting for someone in office to represent me, my family and my neighbors. When I realized that wasn't going to happen, I became that someone." He notes, "There is no real difference between GT Bynum & Dewey Bartlett, who have virtually identical platforms."

Tom McCay and his wife, Lisa, have been married for 30 years, and they have five children -- two daughters who are working as professionals, a son in college at OSU, and two more daughters still at home. McCay is a designer and creator of jewelry. Many years ago he founded and directed Tulsa's first improvisational comedy group, the Obnoxious Party Guests. The McCays are active members of Christ the King Parish (Catholic). The McCays live near 31st and Mingo, and if Tom is elected, he would be the first mayor of Tulsa in 28 years who doesn't live in the Midtown Money Belt.

McCay's vision of city government is one that focuses on its core mission, while reducing the obstacles to the formation and growth of small business. One of his ideas is to lengthen the terms of the city licenses and permits so that small businesses don't have to deal with the direct and indirect costs of licenses and permits as often. The overall fiscal impact to the city is small, but it can make a big difference to an individual business.

It's fair to say that McCay, like most Tulsans, isn't intimately familiar with the nuts and bolts of city government. That's OK. Since the switch to a mayor-council form of government in 1990, every mayor has handed off the day-to-day responsibilities for city government functions to a city manager under various titles -- Chief Administrative Officer, Chief Operating Officer, to name a couple. (Before 1990, the functions of city government fell to the separately elected commissioners for water and sewer, streets and public property, police and fire, and finance.)

The important thing is to have a mayor with the right vision and guiding principles. The leading candidates are both under the misapprehension that a city's growth and prosperity depends on an activist government commissioning the right big projects and offering the right incentives to lure big companies to town. Tom McCay is a conservative who believes in American exceptionalism and free-market capitalism. He understands that government's role in fostering prosperity consists in performing its basic functions and getting out of the way of individual creativity.

Tom McCay wisely opposed the ill-considered Vision Tulsa tax increase, while the two Money Belt candidates both supported it.

Tweedledee IV and Tweedledum Jr are both enthusiastic supporters of using city government force to impose acceptance of the philosophy and mores of the Sexual Revolution, following the oppressive examples of Charlotte and Houston. McCay would allow Tulsans the freedom to exercise their own judgment in deciding whether to make a distinction between actual women and men who claim to be women, between natural marriages grounded in the biological facts of life and same-sex pseudogamy that seeks the honor due to marriage, the freedom to decide how to handle these challenging issues in the context of their families, churches, schools, civic organizations, and businesses.

I am grateful to Tom McCay and his family for leaving their comfort zone and running for office, because it means we have the opportunity on June 28 to cast our vote, not for the lesser of two evils, but for an honorable Christian gentleman who shares our values and our philosophy of government.