State your name
On Friday, I went to the Tulsa County Republican Men's Club luncheon to hear various county, legislative, and judicial candidates introduce themselves. (I attended, but didn't buy lunch, because the meeting is still at the Radisson, which is run by Jon Davidson, who chaired the recall effort against Republican City Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock.)
Each candidate had two minutes to speak. We heard from most of the candidates for Judicial District 14 (Tulsa and Pawnee Counties), Offices 4 (north Tulsa County and a bit of the City of Tulsa) and 10 (the whole district). We heard from candidates to replace Sen. Scott Pruitt in Senate District 36 and Rep. Fred Perry in House District 69. Nearly all of the candidates for County Commission Districts 1 and 3 were there.
Most of the candidates made the most basic political mistake: They forgot to say who they were and what they were running for. The MC briefly mentioned each candidate by name to call him or her up to the podium, but by the time the candidate had finished speaking, I had forgotten who it was. The judicial candidates were especially bad about this. Lots of pronouns -- I did this, my career, my family -- but no names. The political candidates usually remembered to work in their name and office at least once at the beginning and once at the end of their two minutes.
Another curious omission came from House District 69 candidate Darrell Gwartney. Gwartney mentioned spending most of his career in public school administration, mentioning being an administrator in the Broken Arrow school system, but he never mentioned his lengthy and most recent assignment as superintendent of Catoosa Public Schools, from 1992 to 2003. He was assistant superintendent at Catoosa from 1990 to 1992.
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You should have bought lunch to support the poor schlubs who live below the poverty line and have to labor in a crummy joint like the Rad. They probably don't vote, but, they have families to support too. We don't always state our names because we are so full of ourselves that we reckon EVERYBODY and his dog knows us. As a celebrity of sorts yourself, you don't really need a self-introduction either. Quite an astute observation on Gwartney and the missing Catoosa schools stint.
how tough can it be to say "i'm ????????? and i'm running for the office of.....". maybe the rookies felt the two minutes was too short.
I've taken down Bob's comment. Gwartney phoned me to deny Bob's hearsay report, asserting that his retirement from Catoosa was in accordance with a long-standing plan. He also told me that he didn't mention his tenure at Catoosa because he assumed it was well known.
I will take this opportunity to remind readers that the opinions expressed in the comments are those of the commenters.
is there another forum like this one in the future. it sounds like a good information source. is it open to the genreal public?
The Democrat Tulsa World newspaper gave a front page story to a married couple that are running for office -- something the couple decided to do together on their 31st wedding anniversary -- the husband, an auto worker is running for State Senate 36. So far they don't have any campaign money but with the help of the Tulsa World newspaper helping democrats trying to gain seats in the State Senate and House, the Tulsa World will help give free p.r. front page news.
The picture of your little boy is so cute! Happy Father's Day!