Youth is served on council

When he takes his seat at the April 9 meeting of the Oklahoma City Council, Mayor David Holt will have plenty of company from millennials. Recent elections have brought wholesale change to the council.

On Tuesday, two youngsters won election — 36-year-old James Cooper, who defeated four others to claim the Ward 2 seat, and 28-year-old JoBeth Hamon in Ward 6. Both will succeed retiring members, Ed Shadid in Ward 2 and Meg Salyer, the council's second-longest tenured member, in Ward 6.

Cooper and Hamon will join Ward 1's James Greiner (he turns 38 next month) and Ward 7's Nikki Nice (38) in the youth movement. With Holt, who turns 40 on March 10, the council in April will have five members 40 and younger — a notable change for a panel whose members have traditionally been closer in age to retirement than to their college graduation.

In April, after Cooper and Hamon are seated, six of the nine members will have four years or fewer on the council — Holt, Cooper, Hamon, Nice, Todd Stone in Ward 4 and Mark Stonecipher in Ward 8. Holt was elected last year. Nice has been a council member since winning a special election in November. Stonecipher won election Tuesday to a second term, and Stone joined the council in 2017.

Ward 3's Larry McAtee is the council's most experienced member, having served since April 2001. David Greenwell in Ward 5 has been there eight years and Greiner has been there six.

Holt is excited about the changing face of the council.

“I view this as an opportunity to harness new energy and new ideas,” Holt told

The Oklahoman's Bill Crum. “We'll need them as we move into this new chapter for our city and develop a MAPS 4 proposal that continues our city's momentum and extends it to all our citizens.”

The victories by Cooper and Hamon were impressive for different reasons. Cooper, a public school teacher who campaigned on building stronger neighborhoods and expanding the city's public transit offerings, secured a majority of the vote in a five-person field — a tall order in any political race — to avoid a runoff and win outright.

Hamon, meanwhile, offered an example that the political candidate with the deepest pockets doesn't always win. In winning a three-person race, Hamon raised about $18,600 – about eight times less than one candidate who raised more than $140,000.

Hamon, an education coordinator at the Mental Health Association of Oklahoma, lives downtown. She has said her career and her time spent getting around on foot, by bicycle or by bus — she doesn't own a car — could provide needed perspective to the council.

Youth is being served on the city council. It will be interesting to see how that manifests itself in policy decisions going forward.