Don’t ask Tulsa mayor about Trump rally plans
OKLAHOMA CITY » For most mayors in deep-red states like Oklahoma, the prospect of hosting the first rally for President Donald Trump in months would be a delight. It would showcase the city on the international stage and draw revenue for local businesses that have been shuttered for months amid the coronavirus outbreak.
But G.T. Bynum, the firstterm mayor of Tulsa, isn’t celebrating Trump’s planned rally Saturday at the city’s 19,000-seat downtown BOK Center arena. While other Oklahoma GOP officials are hailing the event, Bynum finds himself in a precarious position, balancing partisan politics, the city’s deep racial wounds and a COVID-19 infection rate that is suddenly spiking.
Trump announced the rally in Tulsa as the kickoff of a tour to rev up his political base and show the nation’s economy reopening after the long quarantine. Trump said in a tweet that almost 1 million people have requested tickets, although party officials haven’t announced the total. Oklahoma has followed a Trump-friendly aggressive schedule for its economic reopening, ticking through a series of phases that now have almost all businesses free to resume operations.
But the announcement comes as Tulsa’s infection rate is rising steadily after remaining moderate for months. The four-day average number of new cases in the city has doubled from the previous peak in April. The city’s own health department director, Dr. Bruce Dart, has said he hopes the rally will be postponed, noting that large indoor gatherings are partially to blame for the recent spread.
He campaigned on public education but also on investing in the black community, traditionally a Democratic cause. After the shooting of Terence Crutcher, an unarmed black man, by a Tulsa police officer in 2016, Bynum pushed for independent oversight of the police department, but was thwarted by fierce opposition from the police union. He has also pushed for publicly coming to terms with the race massacre, earning him credit in the black community that may have helped the city avert violence after Floyd’s death at the hands of the white police officer in Minneapolis.
Bynum did draw the ire of many for comments in a national interview in which he blamed drug use, not race, for Crutcher’s death. Bynum later walked back the comments, writing in a post on social media, “When your friends start calling you and repeatedly using the phrase, ‘I know your heart,’ it’s a good indicator you’ve screwed up. I would hope that my work during 8 years on the City Council and 4 years in the Mayor’s Office would speak louder than one dumb and overly-simplistic answer to a complex question, but I understand if it doesn’t.”
Other Oklahoma Republican officials insisted the Trump rally can be good for the black community — Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt said he has invited Trump to join him on a walking tour of the Greenwood district, where the massacre occurred, to build understanding. And the head of the Oklahoma Republican Party, David McLain, insisted the rally can be safe. He said all rally-goers will be provided with masks, although there will be no mandate to wear them. He said party officials would like to see every seat filled.