Tulsa Election 2024 runoff

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.