March 2024 Archives

Monday, March 25, 2024, was the deadline for candidates for school board in the April 2 election to file their pre-election contributions and expenditures report with the clerk of Tulsa Public Schools. While the Tulsa City Clerk automatically posts received ethics reports, the school board clerk does not do this. One must file an Open Records Request through the tulsaschools.org website and then hope for a timely response. My request was filed on Monday, March 25, 2024, at 11:43 a.m.:

Records requested

All campaign ethics reports filed by Candidate Committees from March 31, 2023, to the present, to include:
* Statements of Organization
* Contributions and Expenditures Quarterly Reports
* Contributions and Expenditures Pre-Election Reports
* Continuing Reports of Contributions

All campaign ethics reports filed by Political Committees from March 31, 2023, to the present, to include:
* Statements of Organization
* Contributions and Expenditures Quarterly Reports
* Electioneering Communications and Independent Expenditures Report

Reason for the request

For a published report to voters and the general public in advance of the April 2 election. Because early voting begins on March 28, it is essential to have these records no later than close of business March 26. PDFs by email are preferred.

I received an automated acknowledgement but no further communication. I sent a follow up email to TPS Clerk Sarah Bozone on Thursday, March 28, at 3:28 p.m.

Dear Ms. Bozone:

I have yet to receive a reply to a time-sensitive open records request for pre-election campaign filings. Attached below is the automated acknowledgement of my request from Monday.

State law establishes a deadline of 8 days before an election for filing reports of campaign contributions and expenditures. This deadline exists so that voters inform themselves about the people and organizations seeking to influence an election. Failure to make these filings readily available to public scrutiny may be interpreted as bad faith on the part of TPS administration. Early voting is already underway.

Thank you,
Michael Bates
BatesLine.com

I received a reply with the requested information later that day at 8:24 p.m., with an 18.7 MB zip file attached.

The zip file contained one PDF for each candidate in Tuesday's election. There were no reports for Political Committees. I ran each PDF through optical character recognition and optimization. John Croisant's filing is large, because it was filled in sloppily in almost illegible handwriting. Below you will find the original zip file, unmodified, followed by the OCRed and optimized PDFs:

• Original zip file of campaign reports for 2024 Tulsa Public Schools board candidates in response to open records request
• District 2: Calvin Moniz (I) campaign contribution and expenditure reports
• District 2: KanDee Washington (I) campaign committee statement of organization. (She did not file a contribution and expenditure report, possibly an indication of not raising or spending more than the minimum threshold.)
• District 5: John Croisant (D, incumbent) campaign contribution and expenditure reports
• District 5: Teresa Peña (R) campaign contribution and expenditure reports
• District 6: Maria Seidler (R) campaign contribution and expenditure reports
• District 6: Sarah Smith (D) campaign contribution and expenditure reports

I have not had the opportunity, and I don't have time right now, to do a full analysis. I did notice that the insider candidates -- Croisant, Moniz, Smith -- are much better funded than the grassroots candidates, that each are using Democrat fundraising systems (ActBlue), Democrat consultants (Little Giant), and have received hefty donations from big Democrat donors. If someone feels like transcribing Croisant's reports or organizing the contributions in descending order of amount, or if you just notice something interesting, you can email your findings to blog at batesline dot com. I may post some of that here and will give you credit (unless you would prefer to be anonymous).

Major and noteworthy donors:

Calvin Moniz, District 2, establishment: major donor to Democrats George Krumme, $3,300; philanthropocrat Lynn Schusterman, $2,900; Carolyn Wheeler, $1,000; major donor to Democrats and polo player Reed Oppenheimer, $1,000; developer John Bumgarner, $250; former Democrat mayor Kathy Taylor, $250; Chapter of the Oklahoma Federation of Democratic Women, $250. (Moniz filed only the schedules, but not the required reports which summarize receipts and expenditures.)

John Croisant, District 5, establishment: Major donor to Democrats Burt Holmes, $3,300; major donor to Democrats George Krumme, $3,300; philanthropocrat Lynn Schusterman, $2,900; Steve Mitchell, CEO of Argonaut Private Equity (George Kaiser's private equity firm), $1,000; former Tulsa World publisher Robert and Roxana Lorton, $1,000; former Democrat mayor Susan Savage, $750; former Democrat State Rep. Judy Eason McIntire, $600; American Federation of Teachers Oklahoma (union), $500; Tulsa Chapter of the Oklahoma Federation of Democratic Women (Heart of the Party), $250; developer Bruce Bolzle, $250; former Democrat county chairman and congressional candidate Tim Gilpin, $250; Educare executive director Cindy Decker, $250; Democrat state representative John Waldron, $100.

Teresa Peña, District 5, reform: Alan Staab, $3,300; Fran Fleming, $3,300; Republican state representative Mark Tedford, $500; former Republican Oklahoma Attorney General John O'Connor, $250; former Republican state representative Carol Bush, $100;

Sarah Smith, District 6, establishment: Major donor to Democrats Burt Holmes, $3,300; Ross Swimmer, $3,300; major donor to Democrats George Krumme, $3,300; philanthropocrat Lynn Schusterman, $2,900; George Kaiser-affiliated attorney Frederic Dorwart, $1,000; major donor to Democrats and polo player Reed Oppenheimer, $1,000; former Democrat county chairman Keith McArtor, $500; former Democrat State Rep. Judy Eason McIntire, $500; Tulsa Forward PAC, $250; Democrat state representative Suzanne Schreiber, $250; former Democrat mayor Kathy Taylor, $250; developer John Bumgarner, $250; Tulsa Chapter of the Oklahoma Federation of Democratic Women (Heart of the Party), $250; Schusterman Interests program officer Randee Charney, $250; former Democrat congressional candidate Doug Dodd, $250.

Maria Seidler, District 6, reform: Christie Glesener, $3,250; Dan Hicks, $1,365. (Both of these were in-kind contributions of campaign mailers.)

Significant expenditures:

Calvin Moniz, District 2, establishment: Little Giant Consulting, $6,000; DemLaunch (campaign lists), $76.37; Gibson Universal LLC (campaign mailings), Henrico VA, $2,745.13; ActBlue (fundraising platform), $131.03.

John Croisant, District 5, establishment: Camelot Consulting (retainer, mail, digital ads) $26,110.24; Little Giant Consulting; Hardesty Press.

Teresa Peña, District 5, reform: Marcus & Company (campaign consulting), $5,620; Phame Marketing (billboard), $4,200; Tulsa Direct Mail, $3,836.41; Edge One Signs (yard signs), $1,115.31.

Sarah Smith, District 6, establishment: Calculated Strategies (campaign services compliance reporting), Bethany, OK, $4,450; Little Giant Consulting (fundraising service), $4,000; A. R. Clinton (campaign management), $1,500; Signs on the Cheap, Austin TX, $1,450.21; ActBlue (fundraising platform), $659.14.

Previous items on the 2024 Tulsa school board election:

• Links to 2024 Tulsa school board candidate websites and social media profiles
• Overview of 2024 Tulsa school board election with map of districts and recommendations
• ACTION Tulsa, the Alinskyite-leftist organization seeking to influence the election under a non-partisan guise

On Twitter (X), a random reply from a "Progressive Democrat, native born Oklahoman. ELCA Lutheran" condemned my endorsement of KanDee Washington in the Tulsa Public Schools District 2 election, because she didn't attend ACTION Tulsa's "Accountability Session":

KanDee Washington is the only candidate not to accept ACTION Tulsa's invitation to it's Accountability Session. What does she have to hide. The other two candidates you support showed at the session that they are wrong for TPS.

Who is ACTION Tulsa and why is it a good thing for a school board candidate to disagree with them?

ACTION stands for Allied Communities of Tulsa Inspiring Our Neighborhoods. The website lists the following member institutions, most of which are left-wing "churches," which long ago abandoned a Biblical worldview and Biblical standards of morality.

• All Souls Unitarian Church
• Church of the Restoration Unitarian Universalist
• Church of St. Mary - Outreach Program
• Dan Allen Center for Social Justice
• Fellowship Congregational United Church of Christ
• Hope Unitarian Church
• Kansas Oklahoma Conference - United Church of Christ
• Saint Aidan's Episcopal Church
• St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church
• Together Oklahoma
• Tulsa Lutherans in Action
• ACTION United Tenants of Tulsa

Together Oklahoma is another innocuously named left-wing group, a branch of Oklahoma Policy Institute, a big-government and higher-taxes think tank. Tulsa Lutherans in Action is connected with Fellowship Lutheran Church, a congregation of the liberal ELCA, another shrinking mainline denomination that has abandoned its commitment to Biblical truth.

ACTION Tulsa is an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), which was founded in 1940 by Saul Alinsky, notorious for his book Rules for Radicals, which was formative in the community organizing career of Barack Obama.

Shamefully, mainstream media reports on the "Accountability Session" held on January 27 ignored these radical leftist connections and took at face value ACTION Tulsa's claims to be "non-partisan" and just concerned about good schools. The Facebook event posting says that the group "will ask candidates to make public commitments to work with us on specific, actionable requests" but that list of requests does not appear anywhere on their website or Facebook page. ACTION Tulsa wants pledges of obedience but doesn't want public scrutiny of its agenda.

Groups like ACTION Tulsa hide behind neutral language because they know their true aims and values would be rejected by the voters. It's a badge of honor that KanDee Washington had the sense not to show up to their accountability session and that Teresa Pena and Maria Seidler were willing to voice their dissent from ACTION Tulsa's agenda.

UPDATE: I was sent a copy of ACTION Tulsa's demands (ACTION TPS Acountability Session Candidate Packet FINAL.pdf). It's a nice touch to misspell accountability.

As we have indicated previously, ACTION leaders will ask you to respond to the ACTION Agenda of Issues which we have developed through meetings in the community. We organize within institutions to develop an agenda of issues and work to ensure political capacity is marshaled to successfully resolve community concerns. At this session the organization will launch its nonpartisan GOTV efforts....

There were 5 questions, and candidates were told to give only Yes or No answers. They were limited to 3 minutes and 15 seconds total to cover all five answers. This was not an invitation to discuss weigh one priority against another, to discuss the costs and benefits of any particular policy. ACTION Tulsa was asking one question of each candidate: Will you be our female dog? Croisant, Moniz, and Smith all answered, "Yes!"

Conservative candidates would be wise to refuse any involvement with this group.

Published February 29, 2024. Postdated to keep it at the top of the page until the polls close.

Tuesday, March 5, 2024, is Oklahoma's presidential primary. On election day, polls are open from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. You'll be able to cast an early ballot at one or more locations in each county at the following times, which includes Saturday as it's a federal election:

• Thursday, February 29, 2024: 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
• Friday, March 1, 2024: 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
• Saturday, March 2, 2024: 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Tulsa County will have early voting at Fair Meadows, 4609 E. 21st Street. This is a brand new location for early voting. Wagoner County, which will be voting on eight propositions affecting a total of 1.8 cents in county sales tax as well as a 5% lodging tax, has two early-voting locations: NSU Broken Arrow Campus, 3100 E New Orleans St., and First Baptist Church, Wagoner, 401 NE 2nd Street.

If you need help finding your polling place, or if you'd like to study a sample ballot before you go, the Oklahoma State Election Board has a one-stop-shop online voter tool. Put in your name and date of birth, and they'll look you up in the database, find your polling place and show you a photo of it and a map, will let you see a printable sample ballot, and, if you're voting absentee, it will show you when your ballot arrived at your county election board. Many precinct boundaries have changed since the last presidential cycle, and precinct locations may have changed very recently, so double-check before you head for the polls, and don't forget to bring your photo ID.

The presidential preference primary is the only thing on the ballot in Tulsa County. Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians all have a presidential primary, and Democrats have invited independent voters to vote in their primary.

By party in order of filing:

Republican:

• Donald J. Trump, 77, Palm Beach, FL, former President
• Nikki Haley, 51, Kiawah Island, SC, former Governor of South Carolina and Ambassador to the United Nations
• Ron DeSantis, 45, Tallahassee, FL, Governor of Florida and former congressman
• Chris Christie, 61, Mendham, NJ, former Governor of New Jersey
• Ryan L. Binkley, 56, Dallas, TX, pastor and entrepreneur
• David Stuckenberg, 42, Tampa, FL, founder and CEO of tech company
• Asa Hutchinson, 73, Rogers, AR, former Governor of Arkansas
• Vivek Ramaswamy, 38, Columbus, OH, pharmaceutical company founder

Democrat:

• Dean Phillips, 54, Wayzata, MN, congressman
• Joseph R Biden Jr, 81, Wilmington, DE, current resident of the White House
• Armando Mando Perez-Serrato, 47, Orange, CA. Mando doesn't say much about himself, but has strong opinions about his Democratic opponents.
• Marianne Williamson, 71, Washington, DC, novelist
• Stephen Lyons, 62, Damascus, MD, plumbing company owner
• Cenk Uygur, 53, Los Angeles, CA, blogger and podcaster

Libertarian:

Jacob Hornberger, 73, Broadlands, VA, lawyer, president of the Future of Freedom Foundation
Chase Oliver, 38, Atlanta, GA, self-described activist

Joseph "Joe Exotic Tiger King" Maldonado is running for president as a Democrat from federal prison in Texas, but he is not on the Oklahoma ballot.

The Green Papers has the nitty-gritty of delegate allocation rules for Oklahoma Republicans and Democrats. In a nutshell, Democrat delegates are allocated proportionally for each congressional district and statewide, but a candidate must have at least 15% of the vote to receive any delegates. Republicans use a semi-proportional method in each congressional district (3 delegates each): If a candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, he gets all the delegates in that jurisdiction. If two candidates get more than 15%, the one with the most votes gets 2 delegates and 2nd place gets 1. If three candidates get more than 15% all three get a delegate. The 28 statewide at-large delegates are allocated proportionally among candidates who have at least 15% of the vote, but if any candidate gets more than 15% of the vote, he gets all 28. It's possible, if a big enough proportion of the vote goes to candidates with less than 15% of the vote, for some number of uncommitted delegates to be allocated.

I will be voting for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Republican presidential primary. More about that in another entry. I encourage Wagoner County voters to defeat the eight tax proposals on their ballot and demand that their county commissioners consult with the public before putting a massive tax increase on the ballot.

In my pre-presidential primary post, I provide a detailed explanation of the delegate allocation process for Oklahoma. As I mentioned in the same post, I am voting for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the 2024 Oklahoma Republican Primary.

A BatesLine reader asked me why the names of so many candidates are still going to be on the ballot, even though some dropped out weeks ago. The ballot was set in stone shortly after the end of the filing period in early December. It takes time to design and print ballots and to program ballot scanners to correctly tabulate that ballot design. Absentee ballots have to go out early, particularly for Oklahomans serving in the military. There's no time to reprint ballots. Ever year we've had a presidential primary, we've had no-longer active candidates on the ballot, and we often have barely- or never-active candidates running for city, county, and state offices. Even if a candidate isn't sending mail pieces or doing robocalls, you're still allowed to vote for him or her.

You might think that all this is moot. We appear to be headed for a Trump-Biden rematch. All but three of the Republican candidates (Trump, Haley, Stuckenburg) have suspended their campaigns. There hasn't been a serious primary challenge to an incumbent president since 1992, and only in the unusual circumstances of 1976, with an unelected incumbent, did a challenge have a real shot at succeeding. The Oklahoma County Republican Party is hosting an Official Trump Victory Party tomorrow night, a significant departure from the mandatory neutrality expected of party organizations during an active primary campaign.

But in the grand sweep of American history, the idea that you must actively campaign for president is a relative novelty. In 1952, within living memory, Dwight D. Eisenhower didn't give his first campaign speech until June 4, after the last primary had already been held. Eisenhower couldn't engage in partisan political activity until then; he was still on active duty as commander of NATO forces in Europe until May 31.

Democratic Party rule changes after 1968 began the movement toward binding primaries that put a premium on expensive mass media spending, but it wasn't until the advent of Super Tuesday in 1988 that the weight of the nominating process shifted definitively from caucuses and conventions to primaries. It was not unreasonable, as recently as 1968, for the incumbent president not to bother filing for primaries or to actively campaign.

Recently, Tara Ross wrote of the reluctance with which George Washington accepted his election to the presidency. Electors were elected in some states by popular vote and were appointed by the legislature in others, and each elector, at that time, cast two ballots. Every elector cast one of his ballots for Washington, with John Adams winning a majority of the remaining ballots, scattered among 11 candidates. None of the candidates actively campaigned for office. Electors cast their ballots for Washington not knowing if he would accept.

The vision of the Framers of the Constitution was that citizens would choose a trusted and knowledgeable neighbor from their city or region to represent them in the Electoral College, and that electors from each state would deliberate and cast ballots for the public servant best equipped to head serve as Chief Executive of the federal government. No campaigning would be necessary, because the electors would have the solemn obligation and privilege to research possible candidates, their successes and failures, their strengths and flaws. Ideally, ambition-driven campaigning would be viewed as unseemly and disqualifying.

But now presidential candidates must raise tens of millions of dollars and begin campaign efforts as soon as the midterm elections are over. To win the nomination, you must win primaries, which means you must reach a vast number of primary voters who are barely paying attention, and to get their attention you need money for TV ads, direct mail, robocalls and robotexts, and people to manage all of that, plus the ground game. Underperforming expectations in an early state means the money dries up; donors are no longer willing to invest in your future prospects.

In 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis managed to win re-election by 20 percentage points in what had been a purple state (remember 2000?), while the expected "Red Wave" failed to materialize anywhere else. DeSantis used his power as governor effectively to accomplish a conservative agenda, removing two Soros-backed district attorneys who refused to prosecute crimes, dismantling DEI bureaucracies at the state's universities, re-creating the state's New College as a classical liberal arts college with a governing board filled with conservative thinkers like anti-woke campaigner Christopher Rufo, and defied the mighty Disney Corporation. While Trump was celebrating the vaccine he fast-tracked, DeSantis's appointed state Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, issued a caution for young men because of a higher risk of heart-related adverse effects.

At the heart of all of these DeSantis successes was a focus on results: understanding and wielding the authority that the voters had granted him to accomplish the priorities that he had promised the voters, hiring and appointing people with the intelligence, diligence, and character to accomplish the goals he set. You do not hear DeSantis or his fans making excuses for failure, mainly because he hasn't had many failures; DeSantis just gets things done.

DeSantis's polling lead began to disappear as partisan prosecutors began filing case after case attempting to put former president Donald Trump in prison or at least off of the ballot. Understandably but mistakenly, many Republican voters felt that the only way to defy politically motivated misuses of the justice system was to rally behind Trump. Trump and his allies attacked DeSantis's admirable record, minimizing his achievements and even making wild and ridiculous false claims (e.g., the guy who ousted two Soros DAs is somehow Soros's puppet). Trump ran to DeSantis's left on abortion, transgenderism, and woke Disney.

Trump and his followers asserted that Trump did not need to earn the 2024 GOP nomination but was owed it. DeSantis was accused of what seems to be the greatest crime in the opinion of too many: Being disloyal to Trump. To these people, it doesn't matter who would be the most effective Republican nominee and conservative chief executive: Loyalty, not to principle, not even to a party, but to one man, is the supreme virtue and disloyalty the unforgivable sin.

I rarely take time to watch movies -- I tend to unwind with a classic sitcom episode -- but a couple of months ago during a business trip, I took the time to re-watch a film I had seen and enjoyed, The Death of Stalin, Armando Ianucci's dark comedy about the power struggle around the demise of the murderous Soviet leader, starring Jeffrey Tambour as Gyorgy Malenkov and Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev. I followed it up with Downfall, a German-language dramatization of the final days of Hitler in his Berlin bunker, based in part on the account of the young woman who was the genocidal dictator's personal secretary.

Shortly after the latter film was released, there was a frequently recurring video meme that repurposed the scene where Hitler has a conniption after the generals tell him that the remaining armies are unable to come to the rescue; new subtitles were added to adapt the scene to imagine various famous people reacting to bad news, for example, Hillary Clinton learning that she is about to lose the 2008 Democratic nomination for president to Barack Obama (language warning). Hilarious adaptations aside, Downfall is an enthralling, thought-provoking film.

The common element in the two movies is that, despite the terminal weakness of Dear Leader -- Stalin has had a stroke and lost control of his bladder and bowels, Hitler reigns over less than a square mile of territory and will soon kill himself -- his minions fall all over themselves to affirm their loyalty. These appear to be men of intelligence and leadership, they see that Dear Leader is leading the nation to disaster, there are enough of them to band together and push him out of power -- and yet they cannot break free. In Death of Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov (played by Michael Palin) loudly denounces his wife for crimes against the state and justifies dead Stalin's decision to imprison and presumably execute her, right until the moment she walks back through the door of their flat.

Now, Donald Trump is no genocidal autocrat, and he did a great deal of good during his term of office, but these movies brought to mind the cult of personality that has surrounded him and which he actively encourages. Nothing Trump does is ever a mistake. It may seem like a mistake that he appointed numerous cabinet members whom he now denounces as disloyal idiots, but really he is playing 10-dimensional chess and only seeming to fail in order to expose the swamp. Elected officials, hoping for a share of the public adulation Trump enjoys, fall all over themselves to praise Trump, to claim his endorsement, and to make excuses for him. Trump made many unforced errors, but he does not show any indication of having learned from his mistakes to become a more strategic, focused, and self-disciplined leader.

The November election may very well end up as a rematch between Trump and Biden (or more likely, the Democrats will replace Biden after Trump is officially nominated by the Republican National Convention), but for now we have a much better choice on tomorrow's primary ballot.

If enough of us who understand that Ron DeSantis is the best choice vote for him, he can win delegates to the national convention. Maybe God will bless us, as He has blessed Florida, with better leadership than we deserve.