72 HOURS AND COUNTING FOR TULSA CITY ELECTION

Attention all Republicans

All hands on deck
For the 72 hour push
To get out the vote!

Meet Us at Dewey Bartlett's Headquarters
1648 S. Boston
(the corner of 17th and Boston)
starting at
10:00 am Saturday
1:00 pm Sunday

You will be assigned a neighborhood to knock on doors to remind people to vote on Tuesday November 10th and please vote for Dewey Bartlett for Tulsa Mayor We need volunteers to be in the neighborhoods throughout Tulsa this weekend!

Bring your friend, child, relative or neighbor to Headquarters on Saturday and Sunday to Help us comb the neighborhoods
Thank you!

Victoria Bartlett
527-1404 (cell)

Sally Bell elected head of Tulsa County GOP

Former County Commission candidate Sally Bell was elected head of the Tulsa County Republican Party during voting Saturday at the county convention.

Bell easily outpolled Tulsa Huntington Learning Center owner Bryan Osborne, receiving 58 percent of the vote at the Expo Square Exchange Center.

Owasso engineer J.B. Alexander will be Bell’s vice chairman.

“It’s great for the party to have a contested race and to have a civil debate,” Bell said. “Now it’s time to move on. We are going to build this party.”

Bell, who was vice president and chief financial officer of Bell's Amusement Park until it closed in 2006, unseated County Commissioner Randi Miller in last year’s Republican primary before losing to Democrat Karen Keith in the general election.

Anne Patterson elected Tulsa County GOP State Committeewoman with out opposition.

Jeff Applekamp 175 - Gary Casey 170 for Tulsa County GOP State Committeeman.

Jerry Buchanan and Virginia Chrisco elected to 1st District Committeeman & Committeewoman with out opposition.

Medlock madness

Medlock madness
By David Arnett
Friday, 18 April 2008

It was an insulting, brutal, vicious, and personal attack delivered with threats of violence. The victim is Virginia Chrisco, one of the most beloved senior Republican Party workers in Tulsa history. The perpetrator was KFAQ radio personality Chris Medlock who is also an elected Oklahoma Republican State Committeeman representing Tulsa County.

Early Thursday morning April 3, Medlock began demanding information from forms submitted by republicans who were filing for election as Presidential Elector at the District Convention. Medlock called various party officials knowing that the information he sought was not released to the public prior to the morning of the Saturday, April 5 at the Republican District Convention.

As Chairperson of the Credentials Committee that received those Presidential Elector forms; Chrisco returned the call to Medlock, noting that the information he sought would not be available until the full committee opened each packet and vetted each application and followed procedures long established.

Chrisco said, “Medlock simply could not accept this answer because he said he was having a 3 PM meeting and he wanted those names and that information for that meeting.”

Steadfast holding to the rules, she refused – Medlock began to rant. “He said I couldn’t even pass an eighth grade civics class and all these things you know, but he never used profanity,” Chrisco added. “He was trying to bully and intimidate me.”

According to Chrisco, Medlock said, “I am the State Committeeman. I have the authority to have access. I’m on the Executive Committee; I have authority to have access to that information.”

Chrisco said, “Among other things, Medlock said that I was going to be the big story on his radio show the next morning. He threatened press coverage of our closed committee meeting and said I was going to be on the front page of the newspaper. This was not just a brief conversation. He said this was a deep conspiracy and I was corrupt and went on and on. Finally, Medlock said he was going to have 15 to 20 supporters at the committee meeting and asserted that they would have that information in their hands.”

“As the conversation ended, I told him that he would not be able to come to the meeting as it was an officially closed Credentials Committee Meeting. I hung up and got to thinking that if he showed up with a crowd, I would not be able to control those people and would be forced to call the police. That’s not a good thing is it,” Chrisco added.

After that phone call, Chris Medlock drove to the Tulsa County Republican Party Headquarters and demanded the information. He demanded the information from workers who had already received a call from Chrisco and had hidden the information.

Medlock personally searched the office for the information he was not authorized to even view prior to the convention.

“Chris Medlock did not show at the evening Credentials Meeting, but 7 or 8 of his supporters did. I explained to each one of them that this was a closed meeting and while their interest in the proceedings was appreciated, they would not be able to sit in on the meeting. Only one was antagonistic and refused to leave, but one of the men at the meeting sweet talked him out the door,” Chrisco said.

“I consider Chris Medlock in his position as a State Committeeman and a member of the Executive Committee as in the leadership of the Tulsa County Republican Party. I don’t believe that his actions are the proper way for a member of the leadership of the party to behave,” Chrisco said.

Chrisco has been active in the Tulsa County Republican Party since 1995. She has served as Credentials Chairman at county, district, and state conventions. She worked backstage at the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in the Official Proceedings VIP Section, assisting speakers and presenters on the program.

Medlock is a former City Councilor who barely survived a recall effort launched because of his public and private behavior. The man who defended him in that recall effort, Rick Westcott was later elected to the District 2 City Council seat and with District 7 Councilor John Eagleton, publicly withdrew support for Medlock because of untrue and vicious statements Medlock made on public media during his unsuccessful campaign for Oklahoma House District 69 in 2006, which followed his unsuccessful campaign for mayor. Those two elected officials spoke on the record with Tulsa Today in 2006 and that interview remains available online (click here for “Dumping Chris Medlock”).

Asked today if his opinion of Medlock has changed, Councilor Eagleton said, “He made a promise he did not keep on a matter of personal integrity. He said some things on the radio that could be construed as not flattering and when I spoke to him on the phone about it he said he would make a correction and an apology and I am still waiting. So Medlock and I are done – he broke his word to me and I will have no dealings with him.”

Medlock has attempted to leverage politics and media and was successful first as a co-host with KFAQ’s morning host Gwen Freeman until she would not submit to his demand to lead a conversation one morning so he swung a microphone which hit her. It is said that local blogger Michael D. Bates was witness to that event, but apparently the loyalty of self-interests between Bates and Medlock has prevented Bates from talking about the incident.

Saturday the Oklahoma Republican Party State Committee will vote on their candidates to the Republican National Convention. Medlock is campaigning for a position as a delegate or alternate delegate to the Convention. As the full committee votes, Tulsa County Republicans – other than Medlock – will remind those present that Medlock has lied to and about elected Republican officials on broadcast media, brutalized the most loyal Republican volunteers, and, in general, placed personal ambition over the good of the party – not exactly considered good form.

Medlock did not return calls for comment for this story nor did KFAQ General Manager Randy Bush. However, today was Chris Medlock’s final day as a morning talk show host. Beginning Monday, he will host an afternoon show on the same station – a far less important time slot.

Tulsa County GOP kill minority report

Republicans kill minority report
By David Arnett
Tuesday, 26 February 2008

For the first time in modern history the Tulsa County Republican Party Platform Committee last Saturday forwarded to the general convention a Minority Report supported by over 20 percent of voting members as an alternative to the traditional platform. The Report was described by proponents as “removing minutia that divides us to focus on foundations that unite us.”

Debate was killed by parliamentary procedure rather than the typical discussion and vote on the merits. According to opponent Craig Davidson, the Minority Report was “in opposition to the adopted platform since details are specific points for which the Republican Party stands – points for which the Minority Report does not stand.”

Supporters believed that every significant point within last year’s platform was covered by the new abbreviated verbiage. “We were outmaneuvered,” proponents admitted. Calls from the floor throughout the room at the time charged, “This is not democracy,” and “This is not Republican.”

The Minority Report included broad principles of government that proponents asserted would be more effective in communicating with unregistered voters why they should become Republicans. It was one page of text compared to the more traditional eight pages of detailed positions many felt were beyond the proper scope of the Tulsa County Party and less than helpful to Republican elected officials.

The text of that report follows:

We believe in equal rights, justice and opportunity for all human life regardless of race, creed, age, sex or disability. We believe the strength of our constitutional republic lies with the individual and that each person’s dignity, freedom, ability, liberty and responsibility must be honored.

We welcome legal immigration and recognize the tremendous benefits new immigrants have contributed to America. We oppose illegal immigration. We believe the federal government has an immediate duty to hold secure our national borders.

We believe the proper role of government is to provide for the people only those critical functions that cannot be performed by individuals or private organizations and that the best government is that which governs least.

We believe the most effective, responsible and responsive government is government closest to the people. State and local governments should be encouraged to address challenges with creativity and without undue federal influence, regulation or restriction.

We recognize that America is now under attack by a worldwide network of highly educated, well-financed, and dedicated fanatics. These enemies work daily to destroy the economic, political, and religious liberty enjoyed by modern societies. Government’s first priority is to keep the country safe from and to pursue active enemies until they are defeated. Such self-declared active enemies must not be allowed any safe base of operations from which to launch attacks against America – ever again.

We reject the European Union model of abdicating national sovereignty to gain economic success. We recognize that the United Nations is failing and in specific cases has degenerated into harmful ineffective bureaucracy that must immediately be reformed or rejected as an agent for world peace. We believe America should continue efforts to extend peace, freedom, individual liberty and human rights throughout the world.

We believe individual initiative in free enterprise provides opportunity, economic growth and prosperity. We oppose socialism in general and specific entitlement programs lacking incentives to grow personal productivity. We believe government must practice fiscal responsibility by reducing spending and the total tax burden on all citizens.

We believe the Republican Party is the best vehicle for translating these ideals into positive and successful principles of government.

Proponents of the Minority Report met after the vote and pledged to continue efforts to bring such a “foundational platform” in some form forward at next year’s convention. They note instructions from the chairman of the convention restricted the wording allowed in the introduction to only describing how it came forward. In so doing, the “reason” and “need” for the change never got a hearing at the convention.

Members of the 2008 Platform Committee continue to share differing opinions by e-mail both on the Minority Report and the procedure by which debate was killed. Some suggest that the “letter of the law killed the spirit of the convention.”

Requesting anonymity, one proponent was brutally straightforward: “No elected official of either party has ever served in office constrained by county party platform planks, so why include planks that serve as nothing more than springboards for extremists to dive into deep dispute and division? A platform should be something that could be distributed, for example, at the Tulsa State Fair so that undecided voters could quickly and clearly see the foundations on which the Republican Party stands.”

A cynic not involved in the debate suggested that the platform serves primarily to allow fanatics to get their pet foolishness on a record no one else cares to read. Supporters answer, yes, but those who can stay awake long enough to read it are less inclined to become, support, or fund republican candidates so is it truly worth allowing pet planks a permanent home?


The Tulsa County Republican Platform is available by clicking here