October 2024 Archives

I've already published my picks for all the races, but here's a quick discussion of Oklahoma's statewide and legislative seats on the November 5, 2024, ballot:

Corporation Commission: I'm voting for Libertarian nominee Chad Williams. As I wrote in June, a vote for Brian Bingman, the Republican nominee and former State Senate President Pro Tempore, is a vote for total regulatory capture. Oklahomans, sadly, must assume that, as a corporation commissioner, Bingman will do what he did in the State Senate -- take care of the lobbyists who got him elected and not the consumers who depend on the Corporation Commission to protect our interests from the monopoly utility companies. It's basic public-choice theory: Concentrated benefits vs. diffuse costs. The companies that stand to make a financial killing from favorable Corporation Commission decisions have an incentive to pour money into the race to get their man elected. Chad Williams, the Libertarian nominee, served as a city councilor in Choctaw and has served as the state chairman of the Libertarian Party. Here are Williams's priorities, as listed on his Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey:

I am not running for office as a stepping stone to higher political ambitions. My commitment is to serve and address the immediate needs and concerns of Oklahomans. I am here to make a tangible difference in the present, not to use this position as a mere launching pad for personal advancement. My focus is on effective governance and real results, not on climbing the political ladder.

I would like to see a shift towards performance-based regulation (PBR) where utilities are rewarded for meeting specific performance metrics such as service quality, efficiency improvements, and customer satisfaction, rather than merely reimbursing costs. This can incentivize utilities to innovate and improve service delivery.

As we continue to advance technologically, it becomes increasingly imperative to reevaluate and update our regulatory frameworks to reflect the current state of technology and market dynamics. Older technologies, like landlines and cotton gins, once pivotal in shaping our industrial and communication landscapes, now operate in vastly different contexts. It is time to consider the deregulation of these sectors to foster innovation, reduce unnecessary bureaucratic overhead, and better allocate resources to more current and emerging technologies. By reducing the regulatory burden on these older technologies, we can encourage more efficient and competitive market conditions, ultimately benefiting both the economy and consumers.

Elsewhere, Williams has pointed out that Oklahoma's overregulation of cotton gins sends cotton producers in southwest Oklahoma over the border to Texas to process their crops. Williams's answers are thoughtful and creative, showing a willingness to balance the benefits of deregulation against the need to keep monopoly utility companies in check.

State Senate and State House:

In general, I've endorsed the Republican nominee, but there are 10 State House races where I made no recommendation at all because the incumbent's ratings by the conservative, free-market sources are dismal, and yet there wasn't a better alternative on the ballot. I hate to give a liberal Democrat any kind of a foothold on the political ladder, but the House Republican Caucus might be better off without some of these people. There is no danger of the Republican Party losing its overwhelming House majority. In two other races, although I disagree with them on a number of issues, Libertarian candidates Victoria Lawhorn (House 1) and Richard Prawdzienski (House 39) would add a couple of principled opponents to corporate welfare to the House ranks in place of some unimpressive RINO incumbents.

While Republicans are doing well statewide, we are seeing once reliable Republican districts in the City of Tulsa turning into swing districts or worse. Several of these districts didn't even draw Republican candidates. Seven City of Tulsa House seats, covering all of Tulsa north of 71st Street between the Arkansas River, Gilcrease Museum Road, and US 169, are represented by Democrats. That's all of midtown and all of north Tulsa.

We have a good shot at retaking two midtown and southeast Tulsa seats that used to be reliably Republican but are now in liberal Democrat hands. Both of these involve rematches, where the Republican nominees, Brad Banks in District 70 and Paul Hassink in District 79, are making a second attempt with the help of lessons learned from 2022 and a presidential race that should boost Republican turnout. Both men are engineers (Banks is a civil engineer, Hassink an electrical engineer), and Oklahoma needs legislators with an engineer's analytical skills and experience in building things that work.

Republican nominee Brad Banks, 41, is a civil engineer and the married father of four young children. He served in the US Marine Corps for five years, serving in the Western Pacific with 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, and then in Marine Security Guard Batallion in Lagos, Nigeria, and at the US embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark. After his honorable discharge as a sergeant, he obtained a degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Texas-San Antonio, working in infrastructure design and management. From 2013 to 2018, Banks was Manager of Operations for the City of Tulsa-Rogers County Port Authority at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa. He worked with legislators to pass bills that would facilitate ground transportation of cargo coming to or from barges at the port. He is now in private practice with his civil engineering firm, Bridgewater Engineering, and his construction firm, Eagle Eye Construction, which specializes in concrete, drainage, grading, and fencing work.... Banks has been is strongly pro-life, supportive of the right to keep and bear arms, and opposed to medical mandates and oppressive lockdowns. Banks has been endorsed by OK2A and OKHPR.

Republican challenger Paul Hassink is an electrical engineer with degrees from Georgia Tech and Purdue and has special concern for the security and resilience of Oklahoma's power grid. Hassink has the endorsement of OK2A and OKHPR -- [incumbent] Provenzano has F grades from both of those organizations. Republican Paul Hassink's background in engineering and his consistent conservative principles will make him a great asset for Oklahomans in the Legislature.

The two Democrat incumbents both work in the non-profit sector, and both are heavily funded by political action committees, both labor unions and chambercrats, and by progressive plutocrat George Kaiser and his network.

On the Senate side, Senate District 39 Republican incumbent Dave Rader, running for his final term, is getting battered by dark-money pro-abortion ads. Sen. Rader has not been as conservative as I would like, but he's pro-life, and he's far better than the alternative, and we should not lose a south Tulsa seat to the Democrats. Dean Martin is attempting to recover Senate 35, a long-time GOP seat that was won by liberal Democrat Jo Anna Dossett after a bitter Republican primary in 2020. Martin had no primary this year but has been running hard since the beginning of the year. I endorsed him in his 2012 run for Tulsa County Clerk and am happy to have the chance to vote for him again. The redrawing of district lines has turned two elongated N-S districts (35 along the river, 39 between Harvard and Sheridan) into two compact E-W districts, with 35 covering midtown Tulsa between the river and Memorial north of I-44.

Republican candidates for open Senate seats in suburban south Tulsa County should have an easy time of it: Christie Gillespie in Senate 33 (Broken Arrow), Brian Guthrie in Senate 25 (Bixby and far south Tulsa), and Aaron Reinhardt (west Tulsa and Jenks). Reinhardt defeated a Republican incumbent in the primary and has only an independent opponent in the general.

Out of eleven City of Tulsa offices up for election this year, one was settled during filing (new City Auditor Nathan Pickard), six were settled in the August general election, and four remain for the runoff.

Two of my general election endorsees have survived to the runoff: Eddie Huff in District 7 and Jayme Fowler in District 9. These two men are the only City of Tulsa candidates on the November 5 ballot that actually submitted their required pre-election campaign finance reports by the October 28, 5 p.m., deadline.

Earlier this year I wrote about Eddie Huff, my favorite City Council candidate:

In District 7, radio host and insurance agent Eddie Huff is the Republican candidate. I was excited to learn that he had filed to run. Eddie was co-host of the KFAQ Morning Show with Pat Campbell for several years, and these days operates his own podcast, Fresh Black Coffee. He has been endorsed by Congressman Kevin Hern.... Huff's issues are public safety, streets, and cooperation with suburbs. (District 7 borders Broken Arrow and Bixby.) Eddie has been a thoughtful commentator on politics and policy for many years and will be unafraid to ask hard questions and propose better solutions.

Replacing... Decter Wright [the incumbent] would have the salutary side-effect of reducing the City Council's entanglement with the local philanthropocracy. We have too many councilors from the non-profit sector, yacht guests dependent on the good will of the big foundations. We need more entrepreneurs and independent professionals, who understand what it is to create value, build things, and meet customer requirements, and who aren't financially and socially obliged to the city's puppet-masters.

I also endorsed current District 9 Councilor Jayme Fowler:

District 9 City Councilor Jayme Fowler dropped out of the mayor's race and filed for re-election.... RINO former State Representative Carol Bush is the Establishment's candidate.... Jayme Fowler has been too willing to go with the flow and too hesitant to make waves, even though (as he has often mentioned) he worked with contrarian economist Arthur Laffer.

My hope is that Fowler's abandonment by the Establishment will motivate him to be a contrarian on the City Council, to confront and expose the Leftists on the Council.

Carol Bush's 2016 interview with Barry Friedman exposed her RINO credentials and got her into hot water with her colleagues in the House Republican Caucus.

In District 2, both remaining candidates have resumes loaded with non-profit jobs. Anthony Archie finished with more than 40% of the vote in a crowded field, while Stephanie Reisdorph didn't break 20% and edged out the third-place finisher by only 76 votes. Both are now registered Republicans but Reisdorph has been a registered Republican at least since 2016 (as far back as the records I have readily available), while Archie was a registered independent as recently as April 2023, changing his registration sometime between then and last December, and his wife is a registered Democrat. Archie has a lot of endorsements that are negative indicators -- Tulsa World, Karen Keith, the Tulsa Chamber's TulsaBizPAC -- and he seems poised to fall in line with Phil Lakin and the rest of the establishment uniparty at City Hall. In March 2023, Archie called for passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a Federal bill, backed by the Democrats, that would have nationalized Blue city policies that make police officers hesitant to be pro-active, resulting in an explosion of crime and disorder.

If I lived in District 2, I would lean toward voting for the candidate more likely to be an outsider, and more likely to be a genuine conservative, and that looks like Stephanie Reisdorph.

Runoff for mayor is between two Democrats who haven't bothered to reach out to the 30% of the electorate who voted for a Republican in the August general. Both will be bad for Tulsa, but my sense from their public statements is that Karen Keith would be bad in a conventional, survivable, chambercrat way, while Monroe Nichols would be bad in a slippery-slope-to-Blue-City-hell way. Progressive Democrats have strongly lined up behind Nichols, including former Democrat mayors Susan Savage and Kathy Taylor. I don't believe Keith, endorsed by the FOP, would impose a Citizen Oversight Panel on the Tulsa Police Department. At 71, I don't expect Keith to serve more than one term, and I can't imagine her planning to run for higher office. The presence of chambercrat Republicans in her campaign suggests that she won't be much worse than her old boss Bill LaFortune. Nichols's explicit call for tribal co-governance indicates he would pre-emptively surrender the city's legal position, no matter the damage. Keith's pals in the development industry would likely restrain her from any substantive change that would complicate land-use regulation and taxation, even if she makes a few symbolic gestures in the direction of the tribes.

Oklahoma has no U. S. Senate races this year -- Markwayne Mullin will face the voters in 2026, James Lankford in 2028 -- but four of our five House seats have general election contests. District 3 Congressman Frank Lucas drew only Republican opponents and won re-election in the June primary.

For me as a conservative voter, the best possible outcome of the November congressional elections is a Republican majority with members of the House Freedom Caucus holding the balance of power and able to hold House leadership accountable to conservative principles. With the House so narrowly divided, Republicans can't afford to lose any of what ought to be safe seats, like the five in Oklahoma. So I urge my readers to vote to re-elect Kevin Hern, Josh Brecheen (a Freedom Caucus member), Tom Cole, and Stephanie Bice.

Quite apart from the calculus of party control, Kevin Hern and Josh Brecheen deserve another term for effectively upholding Oklahoma values in the House.

2nd District Congressman Josh Brecheen is finishing his first term. Conservative groups give him the highest rating of any Federal legislator in the state, with 100% from CPAC Foundation and 98% from Heritage Action for America. As a newly sworn-in House member, Brecheen was part of a small group who used their leverage over Kevin McCarthy's re-election as speaker to force McCarthy to agree to rules changes in favor of transparency and the empowerment of individual members. Brecheen was a field representative for Sen. Tom Coburn prior to his own election to the Oklahoma State Senate and has demonstrated a Coburn-like courage to resist peer pressure and stand for fiscal sanity.

Kevin Hern has been an effective conservative legislator who has gained the respect of his peers. He has ratings of 96% from CPAC Foundation and 91% from Heritage Action. He is the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the conservative congressional policy group within the House Republican caucus, and he was nominated for Speaker twice in 2023. Beyond his official duties, Hern and his family have been generous donors to Tulsa Classical Academy, Oklahoma's first classical charter school. (Disclosure: I serve on the board of Tulsa Classical Academy.) Hern has been a stalwart supporter of freedom of speech and religious liberty, effective border security, and 2nd Amendment rights.

Hern has two general election opponents, Democrat Dennis Baker and independent Mark Sanders. Baker is a former FBI agent who proudly announces his support for two of the worst Supreme Court decisions in American history: Roe v. Wade and McGirt v. Oklahoma. Sanders is an attorney originally from Tulsa who returned to practice here with Gable Gotwals after many years in Connecticut.

I have known Mark Sanders since high school. He was a couple of years ahead of me at Holland Hall, and he and I were part of a morning prayer group that met before the school day began. Since his return to Tulsa, we've had a number of good conversations on urban issues and local history. When he told me he was running for Congress, I thought it was a shame that he wasn't running for mayor instead. (This was before Brent Van Norman entered the race.)

I was surprised that Sanders opted to run for Congress as an independent. Legislative bodies larger than, say, three members will form factions, and with more than a few dozen members, there will be party caucuses, with the majority party in control of the flow of legislation and the organization and leadership of committees. Forty years ago, a blue-collar, pro-life Boston voter might choose Republican Ronald Reagan for President and Democrat Tip O'Neill for Congress, because, as O'Neill said, "All politics is local." A mere ten years later, Republicans under Newt Gingrich successfully nationalized the mid-term elections with the Contract with America, producing the first Republican House majority since the Eisenhower Administration. This year more than ever, I believe voters are going to vote not merely for the person who will represent them in the U. S. House but for the party who will control the House. It's not a good year to be an independent candidate.

Although there are four independents in the Senate -- Krysten Sinema of Arizona, Angus King of Maine, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia -- all four caucus with the Democrats, all four are up for re-election this year, and two, Sinema and Manchin, are not seeking re-election. Individual Senators have prerogatives that are not dependent on party caucus standing, but this is not the case in the House. The House currently has no independents. The only true case of a House member elected as an independent in my lifetime is Bernie Sanders.

Much of Mark Sanders's platform would not be out of place in the Democrat Party. He supports a cap-and-trade carbon tax to combat global warming, abolition of partisan congressional elections, an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, six weeks paid family leave per year, single-payer health care, and a "steeply graduated" wealth tax to replace the income tax. He wants a constitutional amendment to overturn the Valeo and Citizens United decisions, permitting greater restrictions on visible flows of money in politics.

Sanders takes some more conservative and Trump-aligned positions as well. He would ban social media accounts for children under 18 and require strict 18+ age verification for access to pornographic websites. He wants a negotiated end to the Ukraine conflict. He supports tariffs to "repatriate our industrial base." He supports term limits of 6 years -- three terms in the House and one term in the Senate.

Sanders rightly acknowledges the mess created by McGirt, but his solution is to convene a summit. (The straightforward solution is to have Congress disestablish, in a idiot-Gorsuch-proof way, the reservations that Congress had disestablished 117 years ago, as everyone at the time -- federal, state, and tribal officials alike -- understood. But that would require a degree of courage, given the amount of casino money tribal governments have to offer politicians and their potential opponents.)

As of the end of September, Sanders had raised $48,198.51 and spent $30,776.51. By comparison, Hern had over a million dollars cash on hand, and Baker had raised $261,393.97 and spent $149,527.88. Sanders's major donors include Robin Flint Ballenger, City-Council-suer Burt Holmes, and Frederic Dorwart, the attorney to the Kaiser System. Sanders's wife, Sarah Poston, is an attorney with Dorwart's firm, and several other Dorwart attorneys are donors as well.

Tulsa County voters have one county-wide race and one county commission seat on the November 5, 2024, ballot. In both races, the Republican is the better candidate.

The County Clerk is responsible for record keeping for the county, including deeds, liens, mortgages, and other records pertaining to real property, agendas and minutes of authorities, boards, and commissions, and financial records for all county offices. Tulsa County Clerk office has five divisions: Accounting, Administration and Support, Budget and Finance, Payroll, and Real Estate Services, plus the executive staff. It's a large office with a lot of responsibility.

Incumbent Tulsa County Clerk Michael Willis, the Republican nominee, has improved that office by leaps and bounds in his eight years as clerk, making more information easily accessible to the public on the Tulsa County Clerk website. As someone who delves into local history, I appreciate the easy access to subdivision plats and historic deed indexes. The one aspect that could be improved is access to backup materials that are provided to public officials in connection with agenda items. Often it is impossible to tell what an agenda item is really all about in the absence of backup materials. The City of Tulsa does a fairly good job of this, as do public records in other states; Tulsa County could do better.

Many Republicans, including myself, were disappointed in Willis's choice to stay silent during the Tulsa mayoral primary, in which conservative Republican Brent Van Norman fell just short of making the runoff. As a consequence, Tulsa Republicans have a Hobson's choice between two Democrats, one of whom is Willis's old boss, Karen Keith. Willis has endorsed Keith over Monroe Nichols in the runoff; a Keith mailer this week features endorsements from Willis, former County Commissioner John Smaligo, County Treasurer John Fothergill, and Fred Davis, campaign commercial producer and nephew of Jim Inhofe. (The other side of this mailer uses of a photo of the late Sen. Jim Inhofe with Keith, inscribed, "You Karen Keith are not only my favorite Democrat but my hero.")

Nevertheless, Michael Willis has done a great job as county clerk, and I'd like him to continue serving in that role.

In Oklahoma, every county has three commissioners, elected by district to serve four-year terms, with elections for District 1 and 3 commissioners in gubernatorial election years and for District 2 commissioners in presidential election years. Tulsa County District 2 includes the western arm of the county, midtown Tulsa, Tulsa west of the river, and the City of Jenks. A County Commissioner is responsible for maintaining the county road network in his district and also sits on boards overseeing general county government.

This is a ticket-splitting district. Of the 83,782 registered voters who have gone to the polls in the last four years, 37,836 are Republican, 31,130 are Democrat, 14,132 are Independent, 684 are Libertarian. Of the 14,145 who have registered since November 2022 but have never voted, 5,613 are Independent, 4,846 are Republican, 3,422 are Democrat, and 264 are Libertarian.

In the 2022 election, Democrat governor nominee Joy Hofmeister got 54% of the District 2 vote over Kevin Stitt, but Republican Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell got 58%. Congressman Kevin Hern had 53% over Adam Martin. Jena Nelson Sen. Lankford got 50% to 46% for Madison Horn in Lankford's bid for re-election, but Kendra Horn edged out Markwayne Mullin, 48.6% to 48.0%. Democrat State Superintendent candidate Jena Nelson had 54% over Ryan Walters, but the district supported Republican Todd Russ for State Treasurer and Leslie Osborn for Labor Commissioner.

The 16-year Democrat incumbent Tulsa County Commissioner Karen Keith is running for Mayor of Tulsa, leaving an open seat. State Rep. Lonnie Sims won a hard-fought runoff to become the Republican nominee. Sims's current State House District 68 overlaps with a large section of District 2. I am underwhelmed by his legislative voting record, as rated by conservative organizations, including his co-authorship of what became SQ 833, and I endorsed his opponent Melissa Myers in the primary and runoff, and he's using the same campaign consulting firm as Democrat Karen Keith. Nevertheless, Sims is the better choice in the general election. Sims has worked closely with Tulsa County government to fund repair of the Arkansas River levees, which are all within County Commission District 2. He is familiar with the duties of the County Commission and is more conservative than his opponent by a long chalk.

The Democrat nominees in these two county elections are both young women who embrace the usual leftist causes and appear to have no background or knowledge that would qualify them to serve in the offices they seek. My impression is that they are running not to win, but to gain some campaign experience and name recognition and to force Republicans to spend money on these seats that might otherwise go to legislative and local races. They may be able to parlay that experience and exposure into a successful future run for a state legislative or city council seat.

The Democrat nominee for Tulsa County Clerk, Don Nuam, is a newcomer to politics, and a relative newcomer to the United States. Born in Myanmar, she has been a Tulsa resident since 2008, is a graduate of Jenks High School, and is active in Burmese cultural organizations. She is working on a master's degree in psychology. Her LinkedIn profile says that she works as a VITA Specialist for Goodwill; the acronym seems to refer to their Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program. She writes, "While I may not have traditional experience in the role of County Clerk, what I lack in experience, I make up for in enthusiasm, dedication, and a fresh perspective."

The Democrat nominee for District 2 Tulsa County Commissioner is Sarah Gray, who defeated Keith's Chief Deputy Jim Rea in the primary and former Tulsa City Councilor Maria Barnes in the runoff. Gray's website doesn't exhibit much awareness of the responsibilities of the office, although she does have a page summarizing the scandal at the juvenile justice center. Her Ballotpedia profile states, "I work in communications and public relations in Tulsa and throughout Oklahoma - specializing in civic engagement, media relations, and Tribal affairs. I have a B.A. in political science and M.A. in strategic communications."

(Gray's website incorrectly states that Tulsa County overlaps the Osage reservation. The Osage reservation is underground and consists of the mineral rights of Osage County, held by the Osage Nation on behalf of its citizens, who hold headrights in its revenues. Surface rights are not part of the reservation and can be bought and sold freely. The enabling act for Oklahoma statehood required the Osage reservation to be its own county, the largest in the new state.)

Earlier this evening, I sent the following email to Karen Keith and Monroe Nichols, the two Democrats who advanced to the November 5, 2024, runoff for Mayor of Tulsa.

The idea was inspired by conversations I had with the two candidates after last month's forum hosted by Women for Tulsa at the Campbell Hotel. I pointed out to both that the Supreme Court's Castro-Huerta ruling limited the scope of the McGirt ruling and signalled that SCOTUS would likely find in favor of the State of Oklahoma and its political subdivisions should further tribal challenges to their authority reach the High Court. McGirt happened because Neil Gorsuch sided with the four SCOTUS progressives to form a majority of five, but after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by Amy Coney Barrett, Gorsuch and the remaining three progressives only formed a minority of four in the Castro-Huerta case.

For example, say the owner of a restaurant in Tulsa, a tribal citizen, decides not to collect or remit state, county, and city sales taxes. After Oklahoma Tax Commission padlocks the door, this tribal citizen files a federal lawsuit challenging the authority of Oklahoma and its political subdivisions to collect taxes on an Indian-owned enterprise on Indian-owned land in an Indian reservation. If the case were to reach SCOTUS, the High Court as currently constituted would almost certainly uphold the taxing power of state and city, notwithstanding "reservation" status. But that would only happen if the City of Tulsa and State of Oklahoma pursue the case aggressively in the courts, even if district court and appeals court rulings go the other way. When I asked Rep. Nichols if he would defend Tulsa's power to collect sales tax, he indicated that he would, of course! This questionnaire is designed to give him and his opponent the opportunity to say so in writing and to commit themselves publicly on other issues that really ought to be no-brainers.

I will let you know if I hear back from the candidates. I will also be tweeting these questions out on X, to make sure they're seen.

To the surviving candidates for Mayor of Tulsa:

The elimination of all conservative mayoral candidates in the August 27 election has left me and a third of the city's electorate in a quandary. We will show up in large numbers on November 5 to vote for Donald Trump, Kevin Hern, and other Republican candidates, but we don't yet have a compelling reason to vote in the mayor's race. Nevertheless, if one of you is willing to commit publicly to at least some of the actions below and the other is not, it would make a difference in how conservatives vote.

I know you're busy campaigning, so I'll keep this short and simple. Please reply at your earliest convenience to the following yes/no questions. I will post the responses (or lack of response) verbatim on BatesLine.com. You can feel free to explain or elaborate, but I'm looking for a yes or no answer. The heart of each question is "will you pledge?" and the more "yes" answers you can honestly give, the more inclined conservatives will be to vote for you on November 5.

Thank you for your time.

Section A: City authority in light of McGirt

Background for questions 1 - 4: The challenge to the City's authority to tax, regulate land use, and enforce traffic laws is not likely to come from the tribal governments directly, but, as with the McGirt case, tribal citizens will file federal lawsuits seeking exemption from state and local laws, which tribal governments will join as amici curiae.

1. If a tribal citizen sues in Federal court to claim exemption from the City of Tulsa's zoning laws, will you pledge to commit the City's resources to defend in Federal court the City's power to enforce its zoning laws over all property within its municipal limits, pursuing the case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States if necessary?

2. If a tribal citizen sues in Federal court to claim exemption from the City of Tulsa's traffic laws, will you pledge to commit the City's resources to defend in Federal court the City's power to enforce its traffic laws on all drivers within its municipal limits, pursuing the case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States if necessary?

3. If a tribal citizen with a retail business sues in Federal court to claim exemption from collecting and remitting state, county, and city sales taxes, will you pledge to commit the City's resources to defend in Federal court the City's taxing authority within its municipal limits, pursuing the case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States if necessary?

4. If property owner who is a tribal citizen sues in Federal court to claim exemption from paying ad valorem tax, will you pledge to commit the City's resources to defend in Federal court the City's taxing authority within its municipal limits, pursuing the case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States if necessary?

Section B: City involvement in controversial cultural issues

5. The City Council and Mayor Bynum approved the use of Federal COVID relief funds for Amplify Tulsa to survey 15-17 year old children about their "sexual health and well-being." Will you pledge to veto any proposal that gives any funds under the City's control for the purpose of communicating with minors about sexual matters?

6. Mayor Bynum used an executive order to add "gender identity" and "gender expression" to the City's non-discrimination policy. The idea that someone can be "born in the wrong body" or "born the wrong gender" has no basis in science, and it has led vulnerable youth to damage their bodies with cross-sex hormones and surgery. Will you pledge to remove "gender identity" and "gender expression" from the City's non-discrimination policy?

7. Will you pledge to enact and enforce city policies that exclude all biological males (including purported "transwomen" and "non-binary") from private female spaces and activities, such as restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, and city sports leagues?

8. Will you pledge never to require city employees to participate in Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE) training sessions, which have proven to sow mistrust and division among an organization's employees?

Section C: Taxes

9. Improve Our Tulsa 3, passed in 2023, has already obligated our current sales tax and property tax rates beyond 2028. Will you pledge not to put a general obligation bond issue or sales tax proposal before the voters during your four-year term of office?

[I was manually numbering these questions, and left room for another question that I didn't end up writing. Oh, well.]

Section D: Law enforcement

11. Citizen oversight panels have been used in many cities to second-guess the split-second decisions made by police officers in the line of duty. This has reduced proactive policing, causing police officers to hesitate to act decisively against crime, leading to an increase in crime in those cities. Will you pledge to veto any proposal to create a citizen oversight panel for the Tulsa Police Department?

12. In 2020, under activist pressure, Mayor Bynum ended the Tulsa Police Department's relationship with Live PD, which showcased TPD's professionalism in difficult and dangerous circumstances. Will you pledge to authorize TPD to resume cooperation with Live PD and similar network television shows?

13. For many years, the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office has had a 287(g) agreement with ICE. According to the ICE website: "The 287(g) program allows ICE -- through the delegation of specified immigration officer duties -- to enhance collaboration with state and local law enforcement partners to protect the homeland through the arrest and removal of noncitizens who undermine the safety of our nation's communities and the integrity of U.S. immigration laws." Will you pledge to have the Tulsa Police Department participate in the 287(g) program to the fullest extent possible for city governments?

Section E: Homelessness

14. The Housing, Homelessness & Mental Health Task Force, which oversees the $75 million in IOT3 funds set aside to address homelessness in Tulsa, does not include anyone who works directly with homeless people. Will you pledge to add leaders of Christian ministries that serve the homeless (e.g., John 3:16 Mission, City of Hope) to that task force?

15. Will you pledge to enact and enforce ordinances that prohibit camping on public property and panhandling, requiring those convicted to enter a diversion program or else face jail?

Section F: Public health

16. The mandatory closure of businesses, schools, churches, and other gathering places, and the imposition of social distancing requirements during the COVID-19 epidemic proved to be ineffective at preventing the spread of the disease but disastrous to the economic and social well-being of Tulsans. In the event of a similar respiratory pandemic, will you pledge not to seek or use emergency powers to require Tulsa businesses, churches, schools, and other gathering places to close?

17. The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are now known not to prevent the spread of that virus, and its efficacy at mitigating the severity of the virus is questionable, at best short-lived and decreasing with each new variant. Severe adverse effects, including myocarditis and pericarditis in young men, have come to light. Many government workers were faced with a choice of taking the vaccine against their will or losing their jobs. Will you pledge never to mandate a vaccine as a condition of employment with the City of Tulsa?

### END ###

A parting thought: If I were to say that someone like Kevin Stitt should have twice as much say in how Tulsa is run than someone like Monroe Nichols, or that Stitt and Nichols should be treated differently if accused of a crime, because of their respective ancestry, I'd be accused of racism, and rightly so. But that is what tribal co-governance is all about. Stitt had an ancestor on the Dawes Commission roll, Francis Dawson. If I've found the right Dawson, he was enrolled with a blood quantum of 1/16. If that's Stitt's great-great-grandfather, and assuming no other Indian ancestors, that makes Stitt's blood quantum 1/256: One Cherokee ancestor 8 generations ago entitles him to special rights, regardless of the degree of engagement he has with Cherokee culture.

The second and simplest state question on Oklahoma's November 5, 2024, ballot is SQ 834. It would modify the language of Article III, Section 1, of the Oklahoma Constitution:

Subject to such exceptions as the Legislature may prescribe, all only citizens of the United States, who are over the age of eighteen (18) years, and who are bona fide residents of this state, are qualified electors of this state.

If SQ 834 passes, the section will read:

Subject to such exceptions as the Legislature may prescribe, only citizens of the United States who are over the age of eighteen (18) years and who are bona fide residents of this state are qualified electors of this state.

The gist you will see on the ballot is:

This measure amends Section 1 of Article 3 of the Oklahoma Constitution. It clarifies that only citizens of the United States are qualified to vote in this state.

SQ834 began life as SJR 23, with a long list of coauthors. It passed the Senate 37-7 and passed the House 71-11. Among Tulsa Democrats, Reps. Suzanne Schreiber, John Waldron, Meloyde Blancett, and Regina Goodwin, and Sens. Jo Anna Dossett and Kevin Matthews voted no. Reps. Monroe Nichols (candidate for Tulsa mayor), Melissa Provenzano, and Amanda Swope did not vote.

The current language leaves open the possibility that a charter city might allow non-citizens to vote in city elections. Stating that all citizens are qualified electors doesn't exclude the possibility that non-citizens might also be qualified electors. The new language closes off that possibility, unless the Legislature itself permitted it.

I'd rather "subject to such exceptions" spelled out what types of exceptions would be reasonable. I assume those would only be excluding felons from voting. I'd prefer something like: "Subject to such exceptions as the Legislature may prescribe depriving felons of the vote, all citizens of the United States, and only citizens of the United States, who are over the age of eighteen (18) years and who are bona fide residents of this state are qualified electors of this state."

Nevertheless, this is an improvement over the existing language, and I will be voting YES.

Oklahoma has two state questions on the November 5, 2024, ballot. The first and most controversial and confusing is State Question 833. I have this uneasy feeling that the proposal is not so much about solving problems for cities or even for developers as it is about creating a new market for financial services companies. I'm voting NO on SQ 833.

Here is the gist that appears on the ballot:

STATE QUESTION NO. 833 LEGISLATIVE REFERENDUM NO. 376

This measure adds a new section, section 9E, to article 10 of the Oklahoma Constitution. Section 9E will permit the creation of public infrastructure districts to provide support, organization, operation, and maintenance of services. To create such a district, proponents for creating the district must file a petition with the municipality. The petition must include the signatures of one hundred percent of all surface property owners falling within the district's proposed boundaries. The municipality possesses the right to impose limitations on the district's powers prior to approving the district. Once approved, the district will be governed by a board of trustees.

Through the board, the district may issue bonds to pay for all or part of all public improvements implemented by and for the public infrastructure district. The district will be limited to issuing bonds issued for such improvements not exceeding ten (10) mills. For repayment of the bonds, the district, acting through its board of trustees, will levy and assess a special assessment on all property benefiting from the improvements in the district. Section 9E also authorizes the Legislature to enact laws necessary for the implementation of public infrastructure districts.

This question is a legislative referendum, which means the state legislature approved a joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment, which must then be ratified by the voters. SJR 16 was authored by Sen. John Haste, R-Broken Arrow, Rep. Terry O'Donnell, R-Catoosa, and Rep. Lonnie Sims, R-Jenks, who is the Republican nominee for Tulsa County Commission District 2. The resolution passed the Senate 38-7, with most of the consistent conservatives (e.g., Dahm, Deevers, Hamilton, Jett) voting no, and passed the House 66-27, again with most of the consistent conservatives (e.g., Banning, Gann, Olsen) voting against. Some usually reliable conservatives voted yes in both houses (e.g. Prieto, Crosswhite Hader), but I also notice lots of prominent Democrat names on the yes side (e.g., Provenzano, Schreiber, Dossett, Nichols, Blancett).

Here is the language that will be added to Article X of the State Constitution if SQ 833 passes:

Section 9E. A. There are hereby created public infrastructure districts.

B. Municipalities may approve the creation of public infrastructure districts, which may incur indebtedness and issue public infrastructure district bonds to pay for all or part of the cost of public improvements within such districts. The cost of all indebtedness so incurred shall be levied and assessed by the board of trustees of a public infrastructure district on the property benefited by such improvements following the passage and approval of the organization of a public infrastructure district pursuant to subsection C of this section. The board shall collect the special assessments so levied and use the same to reimburse the public infrastructure district for the amount paid or to be paid by it on the bonds issued for such improvements not to exceed ten (10) mills for the purpose of providing funds for the purpose of support, organization, operation, and maintenance of such services.

C. A public infrastructure district shall not be created unless a petition is filed with the municipality that contains the signatures of one hundred percent (100%) of surface property owners within the applicable area consenting to the creation of the public infrastructure district.

D. The municipality may impose limitations on the powers of the public infrastructure district through the governing document presented by the public infrastructure district applicant.

E. The levy shall be in addition to all other levies authorized by this Constitution, and when approved, shall be made for the repayment of public infrastructure district bonds issued by the public infrastructure districts for the public improvements agreed upon by the voters of the district as provided by the governing document.

F. The Legislature shall be authorized to enact such laws as may be necessary in order to implement public infrastructure districts in this state.

Reading between the lines to think through how this would work:

A public infrastructure district (PID) would likely be set up by a single property owner, since the consent of 100% of property owners is required. The property owner would be the proponent and would develop the governing document for the public infrastructure, which would presumably spell out the number, terms, and process for appointment of the trustees.

Only a municipality can approve a public infrastructure district, but nothing in this amendment says that the infrastructure district has to be within that municipality's limits. (That may be implied by other law, but it ought to be spelled out here.) It says the municipality may impose limitations in the district's powers, but the only power authorized in this section is to incur indebtedness and issue bonds. Perhaps a limitation would include capping indebtedness or restricting what improvements could be financed in this way. The limit of 10 mills implies that the assessments must be ad valorem, based on property value, rather than some other measure, such as linear street frontage, land area, or proximity to amenities.

There's nothing in the amendment to specify how trustees should be appointed or how to disband a PID once it has served its purpose.

This would appear to be a way for a private property owner to sell tax-exempt bonds rather than taxable bonds, without having to ask a city or county industrial authority to issue conduit debt on his behalf.

Sen. Haste and Rep. O'Donnell issued a press release after SJR 16 passed the House in April.

"Oklahoma has a housing shortage across the state, and we know one of the most significant barriers to new homes is the need to build the necessary infrastructure to support them," Haste said. "PIDs will help our municipalities finance the infrastructure to handle our state's growth."

It's noteworthy that Haste and O'Donnell's districts overlap in the section of Wagoner County within Tulsa's city limits.

OpenSecrets has not identified any committees supporting or opposing the measure. A search of independent expenditures and state question expenditures on the Oklahoma Ethics Commission's website turns up nothing.

Utah has Public Infrastructure Districts, but they do not appear to be limited to municipalities. Here is a Salt Lake City TV news report on the use of Public Infrastructure Districts by the Utah Inland Port Authority and the website for a pair of PIDs, one residential, one commercial, called ROAM in Morgan County, Utah.

D. A. Davidson, a Denver-based financial services company, has a Special District Group that works with cities and developers to set up PIDs; their presentation, explaining PIDs and providing examples, is included in the minutes for the July 11, 2024, Millville, Utah, City Council meeting. Here is a draft policy statement from the City of Toquerville, Utah, setting out the basis on which PIDs would be established by the city; document metadata indicates it was written by Laci Knowles, a managing director of D. A. Davidson's Special District Group. I found her name on several similar policy statements from other cities.

(By the way, Utah has a website for collecting every public notice issued by every public body in the state, including municipalities. The search engine could be better, but this is a great idea.)

Texas has Public Improvement Districts, which are municipal. Here is an analysis of Public Improvement Districts by John Whitsell, the City Manager of Chandler, Texas; it sounds very similar to what is proposed in SQ833.

I ran searches for Public Infrastructure District and Public Improvement District on the websites of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), two organizations that develop model legislation that state legislators reuse and adapt to local circumstances, and could find no reference to either concept.

The general idea seems to be that a developer would be able to have the city issue bonds on its behalf to fund a new subdivision's streets, sidewalks, sewers, waterlines, and common areas, and then the bonds are paid back by the assessments on the property owner(s) within the PID. This would be in lieu of the developer needing commercial financing for those costs as part of the overall financing for the project. This sort of infrastructure financing has been done with a TIF, but a TIF diverts the additional property tax or sales tax revenue generated by the development (e.g., Tulsa Hills, Jenks Outlet Mall) from taxing entities, while in a PID, the taxing entities would collect the entire millage, even on the increase in value, and the over-and-above PID assessment would go to repay the bonds. Someone buying a lot to build a home in a PID would pay more in property taxes over the years, even after his mortgage is paid off, instead of paying a higher price upfront (the infrastructure cost of the development would be rolled into the initial price).

It would help a lot to know who brought the idea to Sen. Haste and Rep. O'Donnell and who was lobbying for SJR 16. It looks like it would be a moneymaker for bond attorneys and bond underwriters. I did not find any Oklahoma lobbying expenses listing D. A. Davidson as a principal ("principal" is the lobbyist's client), but I could imagine that a financial services company might push to create this type of district to open up an entire state for new business opportunities.

Maybe there is some value to this idea, but the proposal needs more clarity, limitations, and safeguards. I plan to vote NO.

P.S. If you want to induce nausea, go to that Lobbyist Expenditure search page, enter the last name of a current legislator, and then look at the lobbyist column and be appalled and disgusted at the large number of former legislators who are trading on their legislative connections for the benefit of special interest groups. Maybe we'd be better off as a state if we paid departing legislators a big pension while banning them from serving as lobbyists.

UPDATE 2024/10/21: Former State Rep. Jason Murphey writes that SQ 833 creates a moral hazard:

SQ 833, if approved, would create yet another form of special government district. To be known as a Public Infrastructure District (PID) and in a massive giveaway to developers, city government could decide to allow a developer to put his property in a special district, issue large amounts of debt--much to the delight of the high-powered attorneys and bond underwriters who would make bank on this whole deal--and pay off that debt with years of excess property taxation, which would increase costs long after the developer has gotten out from under the development.

He notes the way that TIFs brought special interest money to elections for Logan County Commissioner and predicts that SQ 833 will have a similar effect:

Up to that time, local county commissioner campaigns, in our county, had been mostly free of special interest influence. Commissioners spent little in the way of campaign funds, and that limited money that was spent likely came from the candidate himself or from friends and family. Their election was determined by issues of the county budget, the ability to articulate a plan for improving county roads, and, in the best campaigns, putting forward an encouraging vision of meeting core needs while downsizing the size and scope of government and taxation.

But a few years ago, I took note of the particular deep-pocketed special interest, who had previously shown no interest in these races, dropping significant funds into the county campaign....

In my view, this donor's interest lay in receiving a very special, lucrative benefit: the declaration of a TIF that would raise the value of a property he sought to develop.

Here's the moral hazard:

The developers of the future will be divided into two classes: those who have the political pull to receive the immediate benefit, and those who aren't able or willing to play the political game and who, as a result, will be at a great disadvantage to those who are favored by the politicians.

The principled politicians of the future, subject to this tremendous pressure, will likely become fewer in number. Few will have the bandwidth to understand what is going on; the principle to know that the smallest and simplest government is the government that governs best; and the incredible self-control to not play the game, give in to temptation, and thrive on the role of being big government economic developers, which is no doubt very alluring to the small-time, local-level officeholder who, because of these laws, now gets to play ball with the developers and the powerful of society.

Murphey, who was term-limited in 2018, started a Substack earlier this year. He was one of the few state legislators to refuse any gift from any lobbyist or entity that employs lobbyists. (Rep. Tom Gann, R-Inola, has followed in his footsteps.) He is also one of the most analytical people ever to sit in the Oklahoma legislature, so what he has to say about the degenerate legislative culture at the State Capitol is essential reading. While any piece older than two months is behind a paywall, new pieces are available with a free subscription, and you can read his very first Substack piece, "These Are Not Serious People," as a guest column at the Oklahoma Constitution website.

All Oklahoma voters will have 12 judicial retention questions on the backside of the November 5, 2024, ballot. Unlike district judges, where competitors run in non-partisan elections, justices of the Oklahoma Supreme Court and judges on the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals are appointed, but face a retention ballot every six years. (I think unopposed district judges should also face a retention ballot.)

Oklahoma has two separate appeals systems. Decisions of the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals can be appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, while the Court of Criminal Appeals is the apex of Oklahoma's criminal court system. All of the appeals judges are appointed by the governor; the public has the opportunity to oust them at retention elections every 6 years.

In the 56-year history of Oklahoma's judicial retention elections, no judge or justice has ever been turned out of office by the voters. That may change this year.

The OCPA has produced an Oklahoma judicial scorecard, reachable at oklajudges.com. The nine current Oklahoma Supreme Court justices have been graded based on their ruling in selected cases. A description of OCPA's scoring methodology states:

To score well, a justice will join in opinions which respect their role as the interpreter--not maker--of law. As John Marshall said in Marbury v. Madison, "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." That means it's not the Court's role to say what the law should be. Furthermore, we score justices well who interpret the law based on the text as it was written by the legislature without finding ambiguity where none exists. In sum, we expect judicial officers to decide cases based on the facts and the law--not their own individual preferences.

The three justices on this year's retention ballot, Noma Gurich, Yvonne Kauger, and James Edmondson, have scores of 18%, 18%, and 22% respectively, exceeded only by Douglas Combs's 14%. All three voted in 2020 to override explicit language in the statute and allow absentee ballots to be accepted without notarization. In 2023, Gurich, Kauger, and Edmondson "found" a right to abortion in the emanationes et penumbrae of the Oklahoma Constitution, which nowhere mentions the barbaric practice which state statute prohibits. This year, the three plus Combs were on the anti-speech side of a free-speech case.

James Edmondson is the brother and former law partner of Drew Edmondson, former attorney general and 2018 Democrat nominee for governor. Yvonne Kauger and James Edmondson are the only two remaining justices who participated in the unjust 2006 decision to invalidate the Taxpayer Bill of Rights initiative petition without a hearing.

Governor Stitt's three appointees, Justices Kane, Kuehn, and Rowe, all score 80 or above. Stitt has done well with his judicial appointments, despite the involvement of a left-leaning private club in the nominating process; defeating Gurich, Kauger, and Edmondson would give Stitt three more appointments, leading, we hope, to a Supreme Court majority that applies the law as written.

The judicial scorecard does not extend to the two appellate courts. I plan to vote for all of Governor Stitt's appointments. While my default in the absence of any information is to vote no (to cancel out someone else who reflexively votes yes), I don't want, ignorantly, to turf out a judge who is doing a good job. I've reached out to attorney friends to get their sense on the appellate judges.

Criminal Appeals Judge David B. Lewis was on the wrong side of a 2023 ruling in a case involving an egregious violation of due-process rights in an Oklahoma County District Court murder case. According to the findings of fact in an evidentiary hearing, District Judge Timothy Henderson and Assistant District Attorney Kelly Collins were involved in a secret sexual relationship at the time the case was assigned to Henderson and at the time the first pre-trial hearing was held. District Court Judge Paul Hesse, who conducted the evidentiary hearing, wrote that it was immaterial that the affair had ended before the trial proper had occurred: "An unconstitutional potential for bias existed because Henderson could not have been neutral if he still had romantic feelings for Collins or if he feared that Collins might disclose their relationship out of frustration if she was dissatisfied with a ruling." Henderson was suspended in March 2021 as allegations involving three female attorneys came to light.

(Henderson was also the judge in the Daniel Holtzclaw case; Holtzclaw was accused of the same sort of abuse of power for sexual favors that drove Henderson from office. In 2019, all five judges in the Court of Criminal Appeals concurred in upholding Holtzclaw's conviction; of those five, Lewis, Musseman, and Lumpkin are still on the court, Kuehn is now on the Supreme Court, and Hudson has retired.)

The Criminal Appeals Court agreed with Hesse and by a narrow 3-2 vote remanded the case for a new trial, but Judges David B. Lewis and Gary Lumpkin dissented. In his dissent, Lewis argued that the because the relationship had ended two years before the actual trial was held, "These facts do not establish an especially high degree of risk that the average trial judge in this situation is objectively likely to be biased in favor of the state and against the defendant."

In the tables below I list each judge on the ballot, their current party registration, age, and the governor who appointed them. I also list my recommendation where I have one. For the rest, I am still gathering information.

Oklahoma Supreme Court

Court of Criminal Appeals

Court of Civil Appeals

*NOTE: Judges Rowland and Bell no longer appear to be in the public voter database, presumably having sought protection under one of the Voter Privacy Programs. In the most records available to me, from 2022, both were registered Republican at that time. (UPDATE 2024/10/23: I have been able to confirm that all of the judges in the Courts of Civil Appeals and Criminal Appeals are registered to vote as Republicans.)

In the early 2010s, business travel sometimes took me to northern California, midway between San Francisco and Sacramento. That region has a deep connection to western swing and other traditional American music genres. During the late 1940s, Bob Wills and Texas Playboys recorded their famed Tiffany Transcriptions in San Francisco, broadcast from KGO in Oakland, then moved to Sacramento, broadcasting on KFBK with home base at Wills Point, a dance hall, swimming pool, and recreation center on the east side of the city.

There is still a lot of that kind of music around the region: San Francisco's Golden Gate Park hosts the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in October. HicksWithSticks.com covers bluegrass, folk, rockabilly, western swing, honky tonk, and related genres, listing bands and gigs around the Bay Area.

It was through that website, that I learned about Toshio Hirano, "the Japanese Jimmie Rodgers," and on a couple of occasions went to hear him perform at Amnesia Bar (now closed) in San Francisco's Mission District. It was a simple show, one man with his guitar, singing songs made famous by Rodgers, Hank Williams, and Bob Wills, backed by a standup bass and sometimes a fiddle player. He typically played once a month at Amnesia and once a month at the Rite Spot. He also performed with mandolinist Dave Berry as Mountain Dojo.

Toshio was born in Tokyo in 1951. As a teen in the 1960s, while his peers were wowed by rock'n'roll, Toshio obsessed over American folk music, which led him to old-time country music and one of its earliest stars, Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman. Toshio came to America as a young adult, riding his bicycle through Appalachia, living for a while in Minnesota and Texas before settling in San Francisco.

Toshio retired from his regular gigs in 2015, feeling the effects of arthritis in his hands. He's made a few appearances since then. He gave fans an update on his 73rd birthday in February.

In 2009, filmmaker Oscar Bucher captured Toshio Hirano's journey and music in the multiple-award-winning documentary, Waiting for a Train: The Toshio Hirano Story.

A couple of friends have posted links to an article alleging shenanigans in Oklahoma's voter registration records. The article is on a website known for sensationalistic headlines, but that article linked to an analysis on another site more temperate in tone, but missing important context.

The bottom line: The voter ID number patterns which the analyst found suspicious in the short time he spent with the database have explanations rooted in the history of Oklahoma's voter registration system, specifically the transition to our first statewide registration computer system in 1990 and its replacement with a newer system in 2011.

The headline on The Gateway Pundit screams "Jerome Corsi: Oklahoma Added to the List of States with Irregularities in Board of Election Voter Registration Databases Suspected of Fraud." Corsi gets off to a misleading start:

In a highly suspicious August 27 run-off mayoral election in Tulsa, two relatively inexperienced political operatives with pedigree-quality, radically woke Democratic Party credentials beat a conservative Republican CPA, attorney, businessman, and pastor with a long history of community service, in Oklahoma, by the narrowest possible margins.

It wasn't a run-off -- it was the general election, with a run-off to come in November. Karen Keith, a 16-year county commissioner and 30+ year TV news reporter and anchor endorsed by the police and firefighter unions, and Monroe Nichols, an 8-year state representative endorsed by a former mayor, two former governors, and the daily paper, are hardly inexperienced. Brent VanNorman's long history of community involvement happened in other cities and states. Corsi doesn't appear to know that this election is officially non-partisan, with no party labels on the ballot. VanNorman was one of three registered Republicans running for mayor, but the only information about the party affiliations of the candidates was on websites like this one, not on the ballot. (I wonder who fed Corsi the above characterization of the Tulsa election.)

More about the dynamics of the mayoral race below. It was impressive that VanNorman did as well as he did with so little money, no name recognition, and a standing start with only three months to introduce himself to the voters. I'm not shocked that he failed to make the runoff; I'm amazed he came so close to making the runoff and beating the one-time front-runner, and I'm frustrated with the Republicans who withheld support entirely or until it was too late to matter (Tulsa County GOP, Kevin Stitt).

Corsi quoted a New York State-based analyst named Andrew Paquette, who has been acquiring voter databases from election boards and analyzing them, focusing on patterns in voter identification numbers as a potential indicator of fraud. Corsi goes on:

Paquette has charged that State Board of Elections official voter registration databases may contain cryptographic codes of intelligence agency complexity that enable rogue actors to obtain official state voter ID numbers for non-existent fraudulently created voters in an apparently criminal scheme designed to facilitate the certification of fraudulent mail-in votes.

(I have detected irregularities in Corsi's spelling of Paquette, which he spells "Pacquette" about as often as he spells it correctly.)

The article embeds Paquette's report but doesn't link to it, which is rather dodgy. Here is Paquette's report. Paquette's report is provided on his site as non-OCRed images, which is also rather strange. Here is the beginning of his Oklahoma analysis, which is much more circumspect than Corsi's lurid prose:

I have spent literally one day looking at Oklahoma's voter rolls. Much less if you subtract the time it took to import each county's database into a master database for study. In comparison, it took weeks before the first hints of voter roll algorithms were found in Ohio and New Jersey, and even longer in New York. With the caveat that this is not enough time to yield a definitive response either way, here are a few preliminary observations:

In this entry I'm going to focus on Paquette's suspicions about Oklahoma voter ID numbers and registration dates. He created scatterplots of date of registration on the X axis and was surprised to see that the voter ID numbers don't correlate in any obvious way to registration dates before 1990:

What this plot tells us is that ID numbers generally ascend as registration dates become more recent. There is a large break in CID numbers between about 720,000,000 through 800,000,000 that occurs in 2012. This break is found in all other OK counties. The reason for this is unclear, particularly for a state with a population size that is unlikely to ever exceed the available unused numbers. A close-up of numbers on the left of the plot reveals another break in the numbers in the year 1990, after which they ascend normally. Earlier numbers do not follow a normal ascending pattern, but are found in any year from 1950-1990, regardless of number size. That is, a high number from the series is just as likely to be from 1950 as 1990, but later numbers always ascend with the year. This is different from some counties and bears further investigation (Figure 2).

Had Paquette had more time with Oklahoma's numbers (why the big hurry?) he might have noticed that a large share of voter IDs from a given county begin with the same two digits and those two digits match the sequence of the county name in alphabetical order. Adair is 01, Woodward is 77. Tulsa and Wagoner are 72 and 73, respectively. Osage is 57 and Rogers is 66. Historically, back in the days of handwritten indexes, people sorted names beginning with Mc before all other names beginning with M, because a Mc name (a Celtic patronymic) is sometimes spelled as Mac, so McClain, McCurtain, and McIntosh are 44, 45, and 46, and Major is 47. Precinct numbers are six digits beginning with the two-digit county code. (FIPS county codes follow the same order, but are all odd numbers separated by two, which I suppose allows for a new county to be added in alphabetical order without renumbering the rest.)

So a large share of Tulsa County voter IDs, 155,841 out of 390,753 in the August 8, 2024, download, begin with 72. These were all issued on or before April 18, 2011. The rest of the voter IDs begin with 80, reflecting a move to a new statewide election computer system in 2011. Existing voters kept their ID numbers beginning with a county code, but new voters were registered with numbers beginning with 80, a value that would not conflict with any existing voter ID numbers, because Oklahoma has only 77 counties.

(Here is a January 2011 story announcing selection of a vendor for the new system, an op-ed by Oklahoma State Election Board Paul Ziriax, announcing the new system from Hart InterCivic, which included new ballot scanning machines to replace those that were nearly twenty years old, a July 2011 story mentioning the model names of the old (OPTECH III-P Eagle) and new scanners (Hart InterCivic eScan A/T Paper Based Digital Ballot Scanner), December 2011 article showing the difference in ballot styles between old and new machines.)

So why do voter ID numbers after 1990 increase monotonically with registration date, but are seemingly random until 1990? Because the Oklahoma State Election Board got its first statewide computer system that year. In Tulsa County there is a break in registrations between June 15, 1990, and June 30, 1990. If you sort the Tulsa County voter file by voter ID number and filter for registrations prior to June 15, 1990, you'll find that the names are mostly in alphabetical order. The exceptions to alphabetical order are mainly women; women are more likely to change their last name after they get married, but they keep their voter ID number. For example, near the end of those pre-1990 records, I found someone I know with the last name Werner whose voter ID number falls in sequence with people named Zumwalt, which was her married name in June 1990.

My wife and I are four numbers apart, even though I registered to vote in 1981 after I turned 18, and she registered to vote in Oklahoma eight years later, after we were married in 1989. Even though our first names are close together in alphabetical order, there were once six Michael Bateses registered to vote in Tulsa County, four with different middle names, and one with the same middle name and a date of birth six months earlier in the same year. There's still one other Michael Bates -- Michael S. Bates, the retired City of Tulsa human resources director, who was also registered to vote before the 1990 computer system went online -- his voter ID is after mine and before my wife's.

What is likely is that Tulsa County Election Board took its existing alphabetized voter database and entered them into the new system in that order, from A'Neal to Zyskowski. In the current database, those numbers range from 720000002 to 720300782, and the registration dates range from June 23, 1942, to June 15, 1990. I found only three exceptions in Tulsa County, three voters with ID numbers in that range who registered in October 1990, February 1991, and October 1996. Tulsa County's population in the 1990 census was 505,289; 59.5% seems a reasonable ratio of registered voters to population. Today there are 390,753 voters, and the 2020 population was 670,653 -- 58.3%.

There are only 51,323 voter records in that range of voter ID numbers today. A lot of people die or move away in 34 years. Whoever had 720000001 must fall in one of those categories. In 2016, 77,007 voters had ID numbers in that range.

(Here is an August 1990 Associated Press story about the state's then-new election administration computer system, running on Digital Equipment Corporation computers with software by Andersen Consulting, a branch of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, a May 1990 Okmulgee Daily Times story about election board worker training and reporting that the new system will go into use on July 1, and a July 1990 Oklahoma Press Association story on the new system.)

There are 226 records in the Tulsa County database with no recorded registration date. 189 of these have their addresses redacted with asterisks; among this group I recognize the names of district judges, assistant district attorneys, and others who might be at risk from stalkers. I'm not sure how blanking registration dates helps with security for these people, but there is a correlation. The law authorizing address confidentiality is here; the rules adopted by the State Election Board are here. (30 with redacted addresses have valid registration dates in 2023 or 2024, perhaps reflecting a later tweak to the law or election board procedure.)

Of the remaining 37 with no registration date, they were all born in 1962 or earlier, and all but one are in that initial group of voters entered into the computerized system in 1990. The date may not have been entered on the original record, or perhaps was illegible when the records were entered in 1990.

There are 9 records in the Tulsa County database where the registration date is earlier than the birth date. All 9 are part of the records that were input into the system in 1990. It's reasonable to guess that these were data entry errors when transcribing from cards to computer.

So, excluding the 219 redacted records, that's 46 voters out of 390,534 with blank or impossible voter registration dates, only 12 thousandths of one percent -- 0.012%. Ideally there wouldn't be any, but the county election board would have been wrong, as they entered the existing registration rolls into the computer system in 1990, to drop a duly registered voter for lack of a legible voter registration date.

Not all counties tracked voter registration dates prior to the 1990 computer system. The Osage County roll has only 48 voters with registration dates on or before June 15, 1990. 3,168 registration dates are blank out of 29,442. Wagoner County has only 44 voters with registration dates that pre-date the 1990 computer system, and 3,802 blank registration dates out of 51,987. But Rogers County apparently tracked registration dates before the 1990 computer system: It has only 805 blank registration dates out of 64,776 voter records; 23 of that 805 belong to voters with redacted addresses.

In summary, there's nothing weird about Oklahoma voter ID numbers or registration dates that isn't explained by the history of Oklahoma's computerized election management system. There are a small number of oddities that reflect a reasonable number of clerical errors.

Another concern raised by Paquette is that purged records are not retained in the database. The definition of a purged record is that it has been removed from the database. The State Election Board does, however, provide a separate file containing all records deleted statewide in the last 24 months. I am surprised that Paquette overlooked this data source. The file I downloaded on September 30, 2024, contains 244,388 records, of which 90,381 were removed as a county transfer (removed from the database of the voter's former county), 83,701 were deleted for inactivity, 51,647 as deaths (health department, next of kin, nursing/funeral home, written notice), 7,965 were deleted as duplicates, 3,128 for felony convictions, 2,572 are labeled CONF. NOTICE - STATE or CONF. NOTICE - COUNTY (possibly indicating that a confirmation postcard to the address on record was returned with a change of address out of county or out of state), 2,518 as a state transfer, 2,254 license surrender, 222 mental incapacity. The file includes the date of deletion, ranging from October 3, 2022, to September 29, 2024.

Paquette also complains about possible clones -- records with the same date of birth and first and last name. I haven't checked this yet; that would require looking at the entire state at once, and that involves loading all 77 separate county files into one database. I'll take a look at that at a later date.

On the jump page, I've got more detail regarding the dynamics of Tulsa's mayoral race and why Jerome Corsi's description doesn't fit the facts, on the contents of Oklahoma's voter registration database, and on why I don't trust any headline on The Gateway Pundit.