In Okla., worries over fallout from racist tape
Will officials’ remarks hurt area tourism?
IDABEL, Okla. — So many residents of northern Texas cross the border into McCurtain County in far southeast Oklahoma each week that the area has earned the nickname of the “Dallas-Fort Worth Hamptons.”
With its clean rivers and lakes, these forested foothills of the Ouchita Mountains have become dotted with luxury cabins, and a tourism boom over the last decades has fueled a renaissance in the region. Jobs are no longer limited to the timber industry or the chicken processing plant, and parents are optimistic that their children won’t have to leave the community to find work.
But the growing optimism about the county’s future took a gut punch last week when the local newspaper identified several county officials, including Sheriff Kevin Clardy and a county commissioner, who were caught on tape discussing killing journalists and lynching Black people. One commissioner has already resigned, and elected officials, including the mayor of Idabel and Republican Governor Kevin Stitt, have called for the others to step down.
“Just hearing it on audio and coming from our elected officials’ mouths in a meeting, it made my stomach turn,” said Lonnie Watson, a lifelong county resident and seventh grade teacher and coach who is Black. “It was shocking. It was sad. It was hurtful. Just to hear the hate . . . was just gut-wrenching.”
For its part, the sheriff ’s office has released only one formal statement since the McCurtain Gazette-News broke the story. The sheriff ’s office didn’t address the remarks, but claimed the recording was illegally obtained.
On Friday, the governor, who has called for Clardy and others said to be involved in the taped conversation to resign, released a letter that he sent to state Attorney General Gentner Drummond, asking him to investigate possibly removing Clardy from office for willful misconduct.
A spokesperson for Drummond said investigators are already looking into the case.
While many county residents say the remarks are a throwback to a bygone era, they still worry about the negative repercussions the incident will have on the community’s reputation.
“We have concerns. We do. Anyone in their right mind would,” said Tommy “Blue” McDaniel, who owns and operates the county’s first legal distillery, Hochatown Distilling, in the heart of the county’s tourism region. “But that stuff down there is a few individuals. It’s not what McCurtain County is, and it’s definitely not what Hochatown is.”
McDaniel’s assessment was echoed by many in the county. With a population of about 31,000 and bordering both Arkansas and Texas, the county is a part of the state known as “Little Dixie” because of the influence in the area from white Southerners who migrated there after the Civil War. Although about 60 percent of the county is white, there are significant numbers of Native American (18 percent), Black (8 percent), and Hispanic (7 percent) people.
The Choctaw Nation’s historic reservation encompasses the entire county and most of southern Oklahoma, and the tribe has broken ground on a $165 million, 200,000-square-foot resort hotel and casino near the lake and Beavers Bend State Park that is scheduled to open this year.
It’s projects like these and the growing tourism industry that residents such as McDaniel, the distillery operator, hope McCurtain County will come to be known for.
“I see a bright future,” McDaniel said.