2024 Tulsa Mayor's race: Fowler out; VanNorman in?

UPDATE 2024/05/29: Brent VanNorman has announced that he is running for mayor and will be holding a campaign kickoff Thursday evening, May 30, 2024. And see below for his comment regarding his business and ESG.

This past Wednesday, Jayme Fowler, 65, City Councilor for District 9, announced his withdrawal from the race for Mayor of Tulsa. Fowler is a registered Republican who entered the race last September. In an interview with KRMG, Fowler cited polling data and difficulty raising money and said that he didn't see a path to victory.

Fowler plans to complete his term but will not switch to running for re-election to his council seat. Former state representative Carol Bush and Julie Dunbar have both filed campaign contribution and expenditure reports for the District 9 seat with the Tulsa City Clerk. Dunbar is the wife of former Tulsa District 8 City Councilor Todd Huston. Both candidates are registered Republicans.

In his first quarter campaign filings, Fowler reported raising $126,865 through March 31, 2024, lending $119,500 to his own campaign, and carrying over $29,585 that he had lent his previous city council campaign, and spending $145,230 to that date on his mayoral campaign. Maximum donors in his latest report included Robert Zinke, Aaron Dillard of First Pryority Bank, Sanjay Meshri, Tom Bloomfield, and Robert Austin.

Unusually, Fowler had actually paid himself back $45,500 of his September 10, 2023, $50,000 loan to the campaign, making repayments through December 28, 2023. The typical pattern is that an unsuccessful candidate never gets paid back, while a successful candidate expects to raise money after the election from donors who hope to get into his good graces.

Fowler spent his campaign funds with Tomahawk Strategies ($61,141.92) for campaign management and consulting, Jacob Parra ($12,884.85) for campaign management, Zack Lissau ($6,000) for social media management, Patriot Reporting ($4,750) for campaign treasury services.

By contrast, Democrat County Commissioner Karen Keith raised $522,173 through March 31, but had only spent $137,043.96. Her major campaign vendors are James Martin Co ($43,997.59) for fundraising consulting, Campaign Advocacy Management Professionals LLC (CAMP) ($28,726.34) for strategic consulting, printing, website, and social media, CMA Strategies ($25,700.00) for polling, and Corey Abernathy ($16,000.00) as campaign manager.

Democrat state representative Monroe Nichols, 40, raised $318,097.19 through the 1st Quarter, and spent $278,381.83. Major vendors include Management Personnel Xchange LLC of Merrifield VA ($100,470.39) for campaign management, New Blue Interactive of Bethesda MD ($50,192.50) for digital fundraising, William H. Blanton, Jr., ($34,674.00) for fundraising consulting), Interak Corporation ($7,200.00) for office rent, Campaign Technology Professionals ($4,380.00) for bookkeeping & ethics compliance), HIT Strategies of Washington DC ($5,575.00) for polling services.

Two candidates have not been in the race long enough to have filed campaign contributions and expenditures reports.

Casey Bradford, 32, Army veteran and owner of Shady Keys Dueling Piano Bar,
entered the race in late April. He registered to vote in Tulsa County in May 2023 and is registered at an address in Sun Meadow that, according to Tulsa County Assessor records, is owned by Affluent Allianz Realty and does not have a homestead exemption.

Bradford is a member of PPE Supplies, LLC, which was formed on March 23, 2020, and contracted with the Oklahoma State Department of Health to supply N95 masks. In April 2021, the state sued Bradford and PPE Supplies. According to filings in the case, OSDH paid PPE Supplies a deposit of $2.125 million for purchase orders totaling 1.9 million masks; PPE Supplies only supplied 10,000 masks, and reimbursed the state $300,000, claiming that the remaining funds had been paid to vendors and was due to be reimbursed. Bradford and PPE Supplies filed a third-party petition against companies based in Kuwait, Cambodia, China, and Washington State, with documents showing that $1.74 million had been wired by PPE Supplies to these companies. Documents attached to the third-party suit indicate that PPE Supplies learned on May 6, 2020, that the promised masks had instead been sent to Mongolia, and PPE Supplies began to work through its attorney to recover the funds from the international suppliers. The COVID-19 March 2020 panic led many states to go outside of their normal purchasing processes to acquire N95 masks, ventilators, and other medical and protective equipment. An order by U. S. District Judge Claire Eagan in a related federal case contains a narrative of the controversy and sheds some light on the connections between the parties.

Brent VanNorman, 63, who had previously declared for District 2 City Council, is expected to announce a switch to run for mayor. Although he registered as a Republican voter in Tulsa County in September 2021, he is president of TriLinc Global, an investment company based in Manhattan Beach, California, which uses Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) screening for its investments. Leftists have used ESG investing to place financial pressure on oil and gas companies and manufacturers of personal firearms and ammunition and to force companies to adopt woke approaches to hiring and promotion. Where leftists have failed to get laws and regulations passed to enforce their agenda, they have had some success with pressure via large institutional investors pushing ESG. Basically, ESG is an indirect way for the Left to attack access to affordable energy and the freedom of movement that goes with it and our exercise of our Second Amendment rights.

UPDATE 2024/05/29: Brent VanNorman reached out with this information on his company: "I can assure you I am a solid conservative. The ESG that TriLinc uses is nothing similar to the likes of BlackRock. We simply use it as a negative screen to ensure that we are not investing in companies that are involved in pornography, gambling, illegal drugs, child labor, etc. TriLinc was founded and is run by people that are very conservative."

VanNorman's voter registration address as of 2022 was at an apartment at The Enclave at Brookside. His current address is near Tulsa Hills, which, according to Tulsa County Assessor records, was sold to the VanNorman Revocable Trust on March 1, 2023; no homestead exemption is shown.

Candidates for mayor, all 9 city council seats, and city auditor will formally file to be on the 2024 ballot Monday, June 10, through Wednesday, June 12, at the Tulsa County Election Board, 555 N. Denver Ave. For races that draw more than two candidates, a primary will be held concurrent with the Oklahoma primary runoff election on August 2024; the city general election will coincide with the federal and state general election on November 5, 2024.