Cornett heads into rural, Lamb counties
FAIRVIEW — People here pride themselves on being progressive.
They wanted new parks, an aquatic center, a refurbished movie theater, an updated nursing home and an events center at the fairgrounds. So they raised their sales tax to pay for those and other improvements.
“We’ve done a lot out here,’’ said Melissa Mainord, a CPA and community leader in this Major County town of 2,700. “We really have.”
On Tuesday, Mainord came to a popular store in town to meet Mick Cornett, the former Oklahoma City mayor running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Though the town has proved it's not waiting for help from the state Capitol, residents also don't want to be ignored.
Mainord’s message to Cornett, she said, was: “Don’t forget that we’re out here.”
Scott Neufeld, an area farmer, said he wanted to meet Cornett to get his perspective on some agriculture issues, including whether he would protect the sales tax exemption for agriculture. Cornett assured him it was safe.
Cornett made stops in four northwest Oklahoma counties — Major, Alfalfa, Woods and Woodward — on Tuesday that were won by Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb in the June 26 primary. Lamb, who finished third and out of the runoff, was the strong favorite of the Oklahoma Farm Bureau and a champion of rural interests.
Cornett, who finished second in the four counties, said he was confident he could win them in
the Aug. 28 runoff against Tulsa businessman Kevin Stitt. Cornett said Lamb had built strong relationships in the region, which made it harder for him to attract attention when Lamb was in the race.
But now people are scrutinizing him more closely and wondering whether Cornett, who served 14 years as Oklahoma City mayor before stepping aside in April, cares about their concerns, his long family history of wheat farmers notwithstanding.
“I was very aware that being the mayor of Oklahoma City is not going to be everyone’s first instinct of what we need to be the next governor,” Cornett told a group of 40 people who turned out to see him at a steakhouse in Woodward Tuesday evening.
Cornett said he and his wife, Terri, met with business leaders in rural areas and in Tulsa to gauge how open they were to an Oklahoma City mayor running for governor. The people they met were encouraging, but Cornett wanted to make sure they weren’t just telling him what he wanted to hear.
“So we did what politicians do: We polled,” Cornett said in Woodward.
“We asked 600 likely Republican voters an open-ended question: Would you consider the mayor of Oklahoma City for statewide office?”
He said none of those polled objected to the idea. He was astonished, he said. He had already told himself not to be insulted by the responses.
“But we needed to know what type of hurdle we were facing if we got in the race being the mayor of Oklahoma City,” Cornett said.
Past losses
Cornett’s concern was understandable, given what happened the last two times an Oklahoma City mayor ran for statewide office.
In 1980, little-known state legislator Don Nickles, a Republican, beat Oklahoma City Mayor Andy Coats, a Democrat, for an open U.S. Senate seat. In 2004, Republican Tom Coburn beat Cornett’s predecessor as mayor, Kirk Humphries, and other contenders in a primary to succeed Nickles in the U.S. Senate.
Meeting with voters in Weatherford two weeks ago, Stitt seemed to be testing a message when he said, "I don't think we need the mayor of Oklahoma City to be the next governor. We don't need a governor of Oklahoma City for sure. We
need a governor for all four million Oklahomans."
It is not clear whether Stitt will make that an emphasis.
Stitt's first television ad of the runoff campaign, launched this week, features the candidate's wife, Sarah, speaking about Stitt’s religious faith and his promise to bring new leadership to state government.
Stitt, in Weatherford earlier this month, also questioned how much influence Cornett had in the rebirth of downtown Oklahoma City.
Without mentioning Stitt, Cornett addressed that point in Woodward on Tuesday, saying that Oklahoma City turned itself around with major capital investments, that his predecessors "did a lot of the heavy lifting" and that the city has had "a series of mayors who did what they said they were going to do."
The investments made before he became mayor in 2004, he said, allowed him "to get out and sell Oklahoma City" and make it known for something other than the 1995 bombing.
"That’s when I started going to the offices of the NBA and the NHL in New York trying to figure out if there’s a way we could get an NHL or NBA team so our name would be associated with something positive," Cornett said.
"And ultimately that turned out to lead us to a permanent franchise," the Thunder, an NBA team.
Cornett said he considers the praise he receives from Oklahoma City residents to be expressions of pride in the progress the city has made.
"People in Oklahoma City are very proud of how far the city has come," he said.
Cornett, 60, won by big margins in the counties in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area on his way to finishing first in the June 26 primary. Stitt, 45, won Tulsa County, but Cornett surprised some with a strong secondplace finish there.
Democrats chose their gubernatorial nominee, Drew Edmondson, 71, in the June 26 primary.