OKC Mayor Race 2014

[Mel]

My DIL worked for Ed. Said he was a good boss. She is a mobile hospice nurse now. I don't live within OKC political district but it does effect all cities and towns close by.

[zookeeper]

I'm ready for a Cory Booker or Wendy Davis-type Mayor. Who's with me? Know anyone?

Ready for them how? Cory Booker is mayor in a Strong Mayor system of government in Newark. Is that what you're advocating? Wendy Davis is a State Senator in Texas and is looking at running for Governor. I'm not sure what they have that you're ready for. I might agree, but what did you mean?

[okcboy]

Cornett barely beat Hunt. You guys are in denial if you think he wins in a landslide. Cornett is a puppet. At least Shadid stands up for the people and what is right and makes sense. He is also not afraid to do so. MAPS 3 is for special interest not the people. Unlike its predecessors.

[rcjunkie]

Wow, Junkie your crack pipe really needs to cool off before you try to read! Pissed? How much more could I say I love downtown?

But you cant do it without the usual "poor old, abused public safety BS"

[Tier2City]

Cornett barely beat Hunt. You guys are in denial if you think he wins in a landslide. Cornett is a puppet. At least Shadid stands up for the people and what is right and makes sense. He is also not afraid to do so. MAPS 3 is for special interest not the people. Unlike its predecessors.

Is Shadid against the purchase of Santa Fe Station?

[betts]

Is Shadid against the purchase of Santa Fe Station?

Perhaps it's one of his campaign promises? I also remember a promise he made to support timely completion of all MAPS 3 projects as outlined.

[PhiAlpha]

Cornett barely beat Hunt. You guys are in denial if you think he wins in a landslide. Cornett is a puppet. At least Shadid stands up for the people and what is right and makes sense. He is also not afraid to do so. MAPS 3 is for special interest not the people. Unlike its predecessors.

Congrats, you win the award for the most inaccurate comment on the thread so far. Would you like your prize shipped via UPS or FedEx?

[Tier2City]

Perhaps it's one of his campaign promises? I also remember a promise he made to support timely completion of all MAPS 3 projects as outlined.

I just wondered if Shadid was more interested in supporting Santa Fe Station special interests rather than supporting a key step in building a regional transit system.

[OSUFan]

Cornett barely beat Hunt. You guys are in denial if you think he wins in a landslide. Cornett is a puppet. At least Shadid stands up for the people and what is right and makes sense. He is also not afraid to do so. MAPS 3 is for special interest not the people. Unlike its predecessors.

This seems to be what most of the Shadid supporters seem to be hanging their hat on. They seem to forget Cornett did literally no campaigning.

Shadid has money and he does seem to connect with people. He can win but he has a hard argument to make. It is going to be hard to convince people Cornett has done a bad job.

[Bellaboo]

Cornett barely beat Hunt. You guys are in denial if you think he wins in a landslide. Cornett is a puppet. At least Shadid stands up for the people and what is right and makes sense. He is also not afraid to do so. MAPS 3 is for special interest not the people. Unlike its predecessors.

Not sure what kind of drugs you're on -

But the last time I checked : Trails, Sidewalks, Streetcars, Wellness Centers, River Improvements........Are for the People.

[warreng88]

Not sure what kind of drugs you're on -

But the last time I checked : Trails, Sidewalks, Streetcars, Wellness Centers, River Improvements........Are for the People.

So are the central park and the transit for that matter. I hate it when I hear people say that MAPS is only for the rich. Right, the rich are the only ones who go to the ballpark, Thunder games, canal, civic center, library, river, a park, use transit, walk, exercise or do anything else that MAPS has helped and will help. The fairgrounds improvements help with trade shows coming in. The new convention center will help bring better conventions and that will benefit all the hotels, restaurants, retail establishments, etc in the area.

[Patrick]

My DIL worked for Ed. Said he was a good boss. She is a mobile hospice nurse now. I don't live within OKC political district but it does effect all cities and towns close by.

Being a surgeon and being mayor are two different things.

[Patrick]

Cornett barely beat Hunt. You guys are in denial if you think he wins in a landslide. Cornett is a puppet. At least Shadid stands up for the people and what is right and makes sense. He is also not afraid to do so. MAPS 3 is for special interest not the people. Unlike its predecessors.

Cornett beat Hunt by 16 points. That's not bad considering no one showed up to vote because it was Cornett against a no name. Basically, all of the Hunt supporters showed up and the Cornett supporters stayed home.

Shadid stands up for the devil. He's a devil's advocate. He also stands up for Ed. At least Cornett thinks long term and what's best for the city, and not what's best for his own ego. Ed is a puppet for, well, Ed.

[Patrick]

You know how politics work don't you? You support those who support your interest. Ed has been willing to listen to what Police and Fire have to say. Same as Griener. All we asked is that they be willing to sit down and talk. We have made it perfectly clear that we don't expect them to support us all the time. But please be willing to sit down and listen to our side. Who would you support? Someone who isn't willing to shake hands or someone willing to listen to you?

Listening to someone and actually doing something that leads to progress are two different things.

[Patrick]

Is Shadid against the purchase of Santa Fe Station?

Probably. He's against almost everything, right?

[Dubya61]

Cornett barely beat Hunt. You guys are in denial if you think he wins in a landslide. Cornett is a puppet. At least Shadid stands up for the people and what is right and makes sense. He is also not afraid to do so. MAPS 3 is for special interest not the people. Unlike its predecessors.

Who would you say Cornett is a puppet for? Who do you think is pulling his strings?

[PhiAlpha]

So are the central park and the transit for that matter. I hate it when I hear people say that MAPS is only for the rich. Right, the rich are the only ones who go to the ballpark, Thunder games, canal, civic center, library, river, a park, use transit, walk, exercise or do anything else that MAPS has helped and will help. The fairgrounds improvements help with trade shows coming in. The new convention center will help bring better conventions in that will benefit all the hotels, restaurants, retail establishments, etc in the area.

Thanks to you and Bellaboo for elaborating on my snarky comment, hadn't had my coffee yet. To add to that, how is MAPS III any less for the people than MAPS I? In at least a few cases, MAPS III improves on MAPS I projects like the river and the convention center. The only part that could be considered not "for the people" is the convention center, when as you said, it does in many ways...unless OKCBOY considers all the hotel owners, retailers, restaurant owners, and other business owners around downtown rich members of the Upper Class (I know several...they aren't). Besides all it takes is one convention trip to another peer city or larger city to realize that we need a better convention center. The Cox as it stands is ok, but is too small, behind on amenities, and doesn't have a hotel. Not to turn this into a convention center debate, but something needed to be done about it and every other project on the list is directly for the people.

[adaniel]

Cornett beat Hunt by 16 points. That's not bad considering no one showed up to vote because it was Cornett against a no name. Basically, all of the Hunt supporters showed up and the Cornett supporters stayed home.

Shadid stands up for the devil. He's a devil's advocate. He also stands up for Ed. At least Cornett thinks long term and what's best for the city, and not what's best for his own ego. Ed is a puppet for, well, Ed.

This is obviously quite dated, but the last time somebody polled Cornett's approval rating in January 2011 it was around 68 percent, with 44 percent of that strongly approving of his job performance. Nothing has really happened in city government to make me believe this has substantially changed.

Oklahoma Gazette News: Poll position

A more recent survey (in which I cannot find the link) that polled people on the general direction of the city was somewhere around 80 percent approval.

This is probably the main reason Shadid has gone negative so fast. He has to convince people that things are not as good as they seem. Which is a very awkward position to be in.

The 2010 race was more of a protest vote for people still steamed about MAPS3. If I am not mistaken, turnout was only about 8-10%.

[bradh]

Steve Hunt held a results party.

Mayor Cornett was at the Thunder game, courtside, just chillin.

That should tell you how serious he took that election.

[krisb]

Is Shadid against the purchase of Santa Fe Station?

I have no reason to think he is against intermodal transit. He has also spent a lot of time advocating for E.K. Gaylord to become a walkable street when the hub is built. Remember, it almost got slashed from Project 180.

[Pete]

It did get slashed. It got re-added when federal funding became available. Sorry, but didn't have anything to do with Ed. Ed did however walk that street with Eric (and me) and advocated heavily for making it pedestrian friendly. We talked a lot about options. I'm still hoping for the best there.

Shadid did bring a lot of attention to this issue when he called out Jim Couch for going forward with street improvements around the Civic Center and quietly cutting EKG completely from their plans.

The whole thing was almost unbelievable, as Eric Wenger stood before City Council with his usual Powerpoint presentation of pretty pictures and made claims like "we are still going to get everything done" while showing a brief graphic that in fact demonstrated they had cut almost 50% of the work that had been originally promised.

I watched that City Council meeting and it was the first time I had ever seen a councilperson make such an open challenge of Couch and Shadid was 100% right. I remember very clearly that Couch said, "Well, something had to come first." Absolutely an absurd answer and just demonstrated how unprepared they were to respond to any real questions, because they get so few. Also, Cornett tried to change the subject just because the whole situation was so uncomfortable and frankly, embarrassing.

It was at this point I gained a great deal of respect for Shadid and became very wary of Jim Couch. Shadid continued to push, asking repeatedly why some streets were given priority over EKG, which had been identified by Jeff Speck as being in the worst need of changes.

Only after Shadid's persistence did Wenger & Couch "find" federal money for this project. Ed may have not been the one that produced the funding, but he was 100% responsible for providing the heat that motivated the City staff to action.


Again, I am not advocating for Ed Shadid OR Mick Cornett. Just trying to point out that Shadid has done some great things for the City and deserves credit for his efforts.

[Pete]

That's not the sequence of events as I understand it but that's okay. I wasn't looking to debate it.

Didn't mean my comments as a contradiction to what you posted, just an elaboration.

Here is a post I made about that City Council meeting at the time:

Project 180 - OKCTalk

[sunshinepatriot]

From a blog post...

"This race can potentially derail Oklahoma City’s political status quo. If Shadid wins, he will need to learn how to play nice with the downtown growth activists.... If Cornett wins, he must find a way to reconcile complaints from the relatively ignored, quasi-suburban neighborhoods left behind by his MAPs-centric tenure. Failure on either side will potentially jeopardize Oklahoma City’s revitalization efforts."

bit.ly/1ev6yuX

[adaniel]

^
No offense, as I don't know if you wrote this or not. But there is lots of sweeping generalizations and inaccuracies in that blog post.

Focus on downtown has come at (some) cost to neighborhoods. I recently read that the northwest side is a “suburban wasteland” with burnt out buildings and poor services. The focus downtown has come at a cost borne by middle- and working-class neighborhoods

By far the biggest problem I have with this.

This is what Ed Shadid wants people to believe. The northwest side has creeping levels of blight, aided by absentee landlords and their crumbling apartment complexes. But it is far from a wasteland, and I don't see how MAPS3 caused this. Can anyone show where police, fire, code enforcement, or street maintenance budgets were cut and funneled downtown? You can't because it didn't happen.

Shadid would be wise to come out on a broken windows-like platform to fix this, but alas I doubt it. Much easier to lie and blame "downtown interests."

Shadid is also correct that the current plan for the streetcar is ridiculous. Advocates are correct that most of the largest cities in the country feature either light rail or a mass transit gimmick. However, this is an ad populum argument. If everyone were jumping off of bridges, should OKC jump too?

By far the highest rated project during the planning phase was the streetcar. And probably still is. So yeah, I guess OKC will jump off that bridge.

All things considered, Cornett will likely win reelection

Yep. Independent of any sort of scandal, the candidate who is for something generally beats the candidate who is against everything.

[bradh]

I live on the NW side. I have friends who have bought homes between May & I-44 around 36th street, nestled in and improved them. I'm further out, and yeah there are seedy apartments with no caring residents, but it's hardly a wasteland.