Blog of Billy

The mayoral election for Oklahoma City is coming up on February 24th, and there is almost no coverage to speak of in the major and obvious press. It used to be that if you could name all of the Democratic candidates for the nomination, that meant that you were on top of your game politically. These days, though, the trivia question that nobody knows is "Who are the candidates for OKC's mayor?" The answer, after much googling, is Mick Cornett, Jim Tolbert, Frosty Peak, and Marcus Hayes. Mick Cornett is the hand-picked successor to the incumbent compassionless conservative Kirk Humphreys. No thank you. Marcus Hayes is almost invisible; there is no webpage and very few reporters have been able to get in touch with him for interviews. Frosty Peak has a similar invisiblility problem, but really, with a name like that, there's no way he'll get elected. It would be like electing a vegan president (sorry Dennis). That leaves Jim Tolbert. Jim has an MBA from Stanford, and as such is pretty business oriented, but I'm willing to overlook his more capitalist connections, and see that he really is the most liberal, reasonable candidate. My biggest problem so far is that he is against unionization of state employees. He recognizes, though that most of them are already covered by AFSCME, but that's still a little concerning. The $10 quote for me, though, was from an interview with OSBN, "...I think that it is important to build on the momentum that we have and build a broader unity in the community. I think Kirk just didn’t have time to be quite as inclusive as I think we need to be." I don't think I'll be forgiving Kirk Humphreys for his whole shenanigans with the banners for the Cimarron Alliance a few years back. That's also the closest thing to a criticism of the issue to come out of any of the candidates' mouthes. That little 2AR snippit gets him my vote.

Other interviews are few and far between. Only one candidate appears even to have an official web site.

The biggest problem with all of this unawareness of the election issue is that the mayor of this million-person city will probably be elected by less than 1% of the actual vote. Oh, well. The best drama on TV reminds us that "decisions are made by those who show up." A good thing to remember.