Stan Geiger

A Vote of No Confidence

Tulsa’s city election is over---thank God. About one more day’s worth of those mayoral ads would have prompted me to throw my TV out the window.

Meanwhile, the outcome of the vote was interesting. A not-too-subtle message was sent by voters. The message is this: People are not happy with what they’ve been getting out of city government.

Three incumbent councilors lost. As I recall, one incumbent had already been defeated in a primary. Nearly half the City Council was ousted in a single election year.

I guess that won’t be possible in the future, since council terms will be lengthened and elections staggered due to a charter change. I’m not sure I like that idea.

City Auditor Phil Wood, holder of the job for 21 years, was pummeled.

The incumbent mayor, Kat Taylor, chose not to seek a second term. Her announcement led to a lot of speculation. I think she quit rather than risk suffering the embarrassment of being fired.

Two reasonably prominent and well-funded party candidates sought the mayor’s job. The Republican, Dewey Bartlett, won. I heard a morning newscast refer to his win as “decisive.” Was it?

Bartlett failed to get 50 percent of the vote. In fact, he came up well short of 50 percent. He captured but 45 percent. His vote total came up short of 30,000. Something on the order of 8 percent of the city’s population saw fit to mark a ballot for him. Bartlett is hardly riding into office with a grand endorsement from the citizenry.

Independent Mark Perkins got 18 percent of the vote. When an Independent can go against two reasonably prominent and well-funded major party nominees and get 18 percent of the vote it speaks volumes.

Yesterday’s vote was quite clearly a vote of no confidence. It remains to be seen if the incoming politicians are bright enough to pick up on that.

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