Oklahoma’s political history has been defined by one-party control by either Democrats or Republicans. But the state’s future could become more evenly matched.

Standing above a small cluster of red tulips on the north side of OU’s campus, the highest-ranking politician Oklahoma voters ever sent to Washington is immortalized in bronze.

The statue of former Oklahoma Representative and Speaker of the House Carl Albert, a famous and powerful Democrat, now stands in a state as deep red as the tulips surrounding him.

As Oklahoma’s congressional delegation consists entirely of Republicans, it’s hard for most Oklahomans to remember a time when the Democratic Party was a vast and unstoppable majority in the state that wielded control over the Republicans.

However, the concept of one-party control of the state government is something Oklahomans are familiar with.

Oklahoma went from being a state controlled by Democrats for decades to being a state deeply in support of Republicans following changes in national trends during the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Among the politicians and political operatives who lived through this previous shift, though, there is a recognition that the tides have a chance of turning again, perhaps sooner rather than later.

Deep blue: Democratic control in the ‘60s and ‘70s

“Solidly Democrat.”

There wasn’t a question in Joe Foote’s mind about what the political landscape looked like in Oklahoma when he left for Washington, D.C., in 1972.

Foote was a political reporter for KSEO radio and also served as press secretary for Albert years before becoming dean of OU’s Gaylord College, a position he held for a decade. The state his boss represented during the 1960s and 1970s looked very different from the one Foote lives in now.

“There were five Democrats and one Republican representative — Oklahoma had six congressmen at that time and also had two Democratic senators,” Foote said of 1972’s political environment. “And today, no Democrats in the Oklahoma delegation, so that’s quite a change.”

Joe Foote (left) speaks with congressman and Speaker of the House Carl Albert (center) before the Democratic response to the President’s State of the Union message.

provided by Joe Foote

Foote sees Oklahoma’s ties to the Democratic Party as linked to the political climate the state was born into in 1907: a time when populist politicians ruled farm country like Oklahoma.

“Back in the 1930s, a very strong populist movement, one of the most vigorous in the United States, came out of Oklahoma,” Foote said. “It was more of a left-wing populism, an agrarian-based populism, so those strings have been here since the beginning of the state.”

Foote said since the rise of the New Deal Coalition started by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, the Democrats’ hold on rural states became impeccably strong. But that didn’t stop Foote from recognizing the deeply conservative side of Oklahomans waiting just below the surface, as evidenced by the general acceptance of segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace in the late ‘60s.

“It was the time George Wallace ran for president. And he had developed a real following in southeastern Oklahoma with his populist agenda,” Foote said. “Carl Albert in (an) interview got really upset with me for even bringing this up — you could tell it was a sore point that, even then, you could see the underbelly of the state was heavily Democratic in a sense but very Republican in another sense.”

But this period was not impossible for Republicans — successful GOP candidates thrived as the environment became more competitive.

Oklahoma voter registration between 1960 – 2018 

source: Oklahoma State Election Board 

Purple: The rise of the Oklahoma Republican political machine in the ‘80s and ‘90s

“Extraordinarily difficult.”

That’s how Tom Cole described his career as a Republican campaign operative in the ‘70s and ‘80s living under Democratic rule. And he wanted things to change. In 1986, in what was a bad year for Republicans in national elections but a good year for Oklahoma Republicans, Cole saw his chance.

“Inside the counties we won, the voter groups that we mobilized, against well-funded and talented Democrats in what was a bad year for Republicans, I said, ‘Gosh, if we can do this, we can become the actual governing majority,’” Cole said. “We just needed more candidates to compete in more places.”

For present-day Oklahoma Democrats, the strategy of finding better candidates to compete in places they haven’t typically won is a familiar one, and between 1986 and 1994 that strategy won the Republicans power they hadn’t known for nearly half a century.

In 1994, two prominent Democrats in Oklahoma’s congressional delegation retired: Glenn English, a representative, and current OU President David Boren, a senator. Cole said Boren’s departure marked a new era for Oklahoma Republicans, making the ‘90s a competitive time for both parties in the legislature and statewide.

“Oklahomans slowly felt increasingly abandoned by national Democrats, and that was particularly true when (English and Boren) retired, that was the same year the congressional delegation flipped to become Republican,” Cole said. “Their departure denied the Democrats a lot of infrastructure and, frankly, a lot of credibility. People used to say ‘I’m a Boren Democrat’ to distinguish themselves from the national Democratic party.”

The “Boren Democrats” represent, in Cole’s eyes, the old order of conservative Democrats that ruled Oklahoma for so long, and they were being left behind by the national party as it moved further left on the political spectrum in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Though Cole is currently a nearly eight-term congressman representing Oklahoma’s 4th Congressional District, he was known in the ‘80s and ‘90s for his political campaign abilities. Cole was the person to call if you were a Republican who wanted to get elected in Oklahoma.

That same year, as some longtime Democrats were on their way out, Cole led former U.S. Attorney Frank Keating to the governor’s mansion, and even further success in the state legislature gave Republicans something they hadn’t seen in generations: the ability for a Republican governor to veto legislation without being overridden by Democrats. Keating would go on to veto 302 bills during his time in office.

“You began really to see Republican governance take shape — what would it look like, what would it do and what would be different? In a lot of ways, it was fundamentally different. It was frankly much less corrupt and much more energetic,” Cole said.

But Keating’s campaign and his subsequent administration meant a lot more for Oklahoma Republicans than just executive control; it was a hotbed for Republican talent that would go on to shape state politics. Cole and current Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin would serve in Keating’s administration. Current Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter and current gubernatorial candidate Todd Lamb also worked with Keating during this time.

“When I first got elected, several people said the real governor was Tom Cole. And I said, ‘Well, I’m the real governor, but Tom is an indispensable partner in everything we’re doing.’ But I was not offended by that,” Keating said of his gubernatorial staff. “A lot of political leaders want to be the smartest guy in the room — not me. I want to be listening to the smartest people in the room.”

But Keating, one of the veritable godfathers of present-day Oklahoma Republican politics, recognizes no majority lasts forever, and Republicans must be adaptive to remain in control.

“Heraclitus, I think, said when you dip your foot in a stream, the water is always different. In politics, and in life, that’s absolutely right,” Keating said. “Republicans have been successful in the recent past, and if they don’t address the problems facing the state, they will lose. People are not naturally Republicans or naturally Democrats.”

Deep red: Present-day Oklahoma and hope for Democrats

“It’s majority rule.”

When Joe Dorman, the 2014 Democratic nominee for governor, was in the state legislature, he faced a dominant and unwavering Republican majority. Dorman said the Democrats in the legislature are at the whim of the Republicans and have been for years.

“When you’re in power and office, you have to appeal to your own caucus to maintain control. Sometimes the members of your caucus don’t like it if you reach out to the other side of the caucus too much,” Dorman said. “That makes it difficult for the leadership in the majority, and that makes it difficult in turn for the minority, because oftentimes when they speak up on issues they’re going to alienate members of the majority, and it’s going to be harder to pass legislation.”

Oklahoma is back to being a one-party state, with Republican control of all three branches of government and an unstoppable majority in the state legislature. Republicans have also controlled the congressional delegation since David Boren’s son Dan Boren, a conservative Democrat, chose not to run again in 2012, and the last blue corner of Oklahoma turned red.

However, Cindy Rosenthal, director of OU’s Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center, said longtime control doesn’t always work out very well for the party in power.

“What happens oftentimes when you get large party majorities — whether they be Democrat or Republican — when you get large party majorities that institute an agenda that causes, suddenly, people to say, ‘Whoa wait a minute, you’ve gone too far.’ Then there is a backlash or some sort of swing to the other party,” Rosenthal said.

There’s some evidence to show 2018 will bode well for the Democrats, after a year of successful special elections in 2017, and a climate ripe for change in the state legislature following statewide teacher walkouts and public disapproval over state education policy.

Congressman Tom Cole speaks with reporters during fall 2017.

Though Cole said he believes Oklahomans will always be conservatives, he said he had to admit the environment looks good for Democrats in 2018.

“I think there’s a lot of energy on the Democratic side, but I expect a good Democratic year. They have a real chance of winning the governor’s race, but I don’t think they’ll win much else,” Cole said. “I don’t think any of the federal seats are endangered, but it could be a comeback year.”

Rosenthal said the state government could benefit from a more evenly divided legislature, as evidenced by the teacher walkouts.

“What I think is interesting about this teacher walkout is it’s a movement that really advanced, for a lot of people, that we’ve gone too far and we need to swing back,” Rosenthal said. “The pendulum needs to swing back to the middle. States that don’t have these lopsided majorities and have more competitive parties oftentimes are forced by the nature of that close competition to find more common ground, to pave a more moderate path forward.”

With record numbers of Oklahomans filing to run for office in the 2018 elections, the Oklahoma winds may blow in a new direction as competitive party politics could be on the horizon once again.

“The polling numbers are really showing the campaign for governor is a real horse race right now,” Dorman said. “In Oklahoma, certainly anything is possible.”