Karen Keith’s campaign in particular has been a source of contention this local election cycle.
It is important to remember the more state-specific and local elections taking place on election day as Nov. 5 quickly approaches. As mentioned in previous issues of The Collegian, hundreds of seats are for the taking across the country. This includes congressional House and Senate seats as the entirety of the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate is up for election or re-election every two years. Races such as Tulsa’s mayoral race has gotten significant attention with the two candidates partaking in three debates—one of which occurred last month at The University of Tulsa.
It is natural that the Tulsa mayoral race receives attention from the Tulsa World and local news stations. However, there is more to it such as controversies surrounding the race.
For instance on Sept. 5, the Oklahoma Democratic Party denied registered Democrat Karen Keith access to the Democratic party’s voting lists and voter turnout operations. This is a database it grants to Democratic candidates including her opponent Monroe Nichols. Yet while she was denied access, Nichols was able to retain his. Keith’s campaign release a statement following the vote to deny Keith access to the database in which her campaign claimed that she was being “ostracized” by the Democratic party for her “commitment to bipartisanship.” The statement further called participants in the meeting out for “shar[ing] an extreme anti-democracy agenda” during the meeting. According to Oklahoma Democratic Party Chair Alicia Andrews, the party voted to rescind her access due to their worry that the data of Democratic voters could potentially find its way into Republican hands.
Additionally in October, Keith’s campaign, known more formally as “Karen Keith for Tulsa Mayor 2024, sent a text to potential voters in which the campaign called Monroe “No Show Monroe.” There is also a website paid for by Keith’s campaign called noshowmonroe.com that is dedicated to this statement. The website calls him a “job hopper” and “chronically absent” as well as accuses him of wanting the position of mayor of Tulsa as a stepping stone in his political career instead of using it as a platform to benefit the people of Tulsa. The campaign provided no real evidence behind accusing him of wanting the job solely for his own political benefit rather than the benefit of Tulsans when making this claim on the website. This tactic involved a direct attack on Monroe as her campaign did not criticize his platform, policies or methods but rather hurled insults at him in this “No Show Monroe” claim.
While the presidential candidates have been able to get away with this, as was the case of those affiliated with the Harris campaign with Kamala Harris herself calling her opposition “weird,” in a local non-partisan race, this should not be the norm. Tulsa is not supposed to be entrenched in the polarization of national politics and insults lead to unnecessary friction between whoever it is that becomes the next individual who is meant to serve Tulsa and the people he or she is meant to uplift. This makes the “No Show Monroe” tactic in bad faith.
