Rick Westcott for District Judge

Three candidates have filed for Judicial District 14, Office 12, to replace retiring District Judge Doris Fransein. All three will be on the ballot in Tulsa County only on the June 26, 2018, primary, and then the top two will advance to the November 6, 2018, general election ballot in Tulsa and Pawnee counties, even if one candidate receives a majority of the primary vote. The candidates are Rick Westcott (Rick Dalton Westcott, Republican, 64), Martha Rupp Carter (independent, 63), and Stephen Clark (Stephen Robert Clark, Republican, 71)

I'll be voting for Rick Westcott. I got to know Rick principally through his civic involvement. Westcott served from 2006 to 2011 as a Tulsa City Councilor representing District 2, including a stint as Council Chairman. Prior to being a councilor, Westcott served on the City's Sales Tax Overview Committee, and when the city establishment (aka the Cockroach Caucus) used recall elections to target two city councilors who were not toeing the establishment line, Rick Westcott headed Tulsans for Election Integrity, the organization that successfully defeated the recall elections.

Westcott is a rare case of an attorney who has both a long career in law (nearly 25 years) as well as a breadth of experience in other professions. He served as a Tulsa Police officer, worked 20 years in radio, worked as a loan officer a bank, and taught government and pre-law courses at ORU, his undergraduate alma mater, for 14 years, writing the curriculum for the Pre-Law program, serving as Coordinator of the Government Department, teaching Criminal Procedure, American Constitutional Law, American Jurisprudence, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, American Government, and American History. He is a private pilot, and he has been actively involved in trying to secure regular passenger rail service between Tulsa and Oklahoma City. He grew up along the Sand Springs Line, west of downtown Tulsa, graduating from Tulsa's Central High School.

On the council, Westcott was a stalwart looking out for the interests of his own often-neglected constituents and neighbors in West Tulsa, and the interests of homeowners and taxpayers generally, and holding the executive branch of city government accountable, through the mayoral terms of both Kathy Taylor and Dewey Bartlett Jr. Most impartial observers regarded Westcott as fair-minded and even-tempered, but no good deed goes unpunished in Tulsa politics, and he and the rest of the council were smeared and sued by allies of the Mayor and the Cockroach Caucus. Westcott would have been drawn out of his district by the 2011 Bartlett-Ahlgren gerrymander, but when he opted not to run for re-election, the old boundaries were restored.

During his council service, Westcott often wrote and published detailed rationales for his decisions. While I didn't always agree with his conclusions, his reasoning was always fact-based, thorough, and careful.

Back when Westcott was first running for office in 2006, I wrote a piece for Urban Tulsa Weekly about the connection between faith and political courage, and asked others to contribute their own thoughts on the subject. Rick Westcott had this to say on the subject:

I also think that a person's faith gives them a sense of identity which helps ground them in times of trouble. Because I know who I am in Christ, who God made me, because I know He has a plan for me, it gives me a sense of identity that isn't shaken by those who might attack me. I don't need the external validation that some seek from others.

A judge who knows his Creator and is secure in his relationship with God will not be swayed by power or money or political clout.

Westcott's two opponents for the open seat are both currently special judges. One of them, Martha Rupp Carter, was City Attorney, appointed by Democrat Mayor Susan Savage and continuing to serve under Republican Mayor Bill LaFortune, before resigning under a cloud of controversy over a number of decisions that were very costly to Tulsa taxpayers.

At the time of Rupp Carter's resignation in 2004, I wrote:

The list of [Martha Rupp Carter] decisions which either got the City sued or could have is a long one: handling of outside legal support in the Black Officers' lawsuit, the 71st & Harvard ruling against the neighborhood's protest petition, allowing ex-Councilor David Patrick to remain in office despite the fact that he had not been lawfully elected to a new term, speaking to the press about election allegations against Councilor Roscoe Turner. The City Attorney's office under her direction always seemed to be working in the interests of some person or persons other than the ordinary citizens of this city.

I also wrote that it would be a mistake to let Rupp Carter leave office quietly without holding her fully accountable for her poor decisions:

So many Tulsans were relieved to see Susan Savage apparently leave public life, only to be appalled by her resurrection as Secretary of State. It would be a shame if, by failing to drive a stake through the career of Savage's jogging buddy, city officials allow her to "fail up" into a more prominent and influential position, after her legal advice cost the city and its taxpayers so much.

Rupp Carter's campaign ethics reports shows support from a large number of left-wing
and powerful Tulsa establishment figures, including former Democrat Mayor Kathy Taylor, former Democrat Corporation Commissioner Norma Eagleton, former Tulsa County Democratic Party Chairman John Nicks (husband of District Judge Linda Morrissey), failed judicial candidate Jill Webb, and George Kaiser Family Foundation president Frederick Dorwart and members of his law firm, which represents GKFF, Bank of Oklahoma and its sister banks, and other branches of the far-reaching Kaiser network. While I've heard positive evaluations of her performance as a special judge, her history as city attorney and the list of her backers are not reassuring.

I have known Rick Westcott for over 15 years, and I've consistently observed his diligence to determine facts, his careful reasoning, his clarity of expression, and his fairness to all. It would be a blessing to have Rick Westcott serving as our District Judge. I urge you to join me in voting for Rick Westcott on June 26.

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Rick Westcott was profiled in the June 2015 issue of Tulsa People.