Oklahoma

Oklahoma’s Capitol dome, left unconstructed when the Capitol was opened in 1917, was finally finished in 2002. Similarly, Oklahoma’s history has been a story of stops and sudden starts. It was settled in a rush, first by the Five Civilized Tribes driven west by Andrew Jackson’s troops over the Trail of Tears in the 1830s. Then came white settlers one morning in April 1889, when, in the great land rush memorialized by novelist Edna Ferber and half a dozen Hollywood movies, thousands of homesteaders drove their wagons across the territorial line at the sound of a gunshot, the most adventurous or unscrupulous of them literally jumping the gun—the Sooners. In 1905, a convention of the Civilized Nations, as they became known, sought to have eastern Oklahoma admitted as a separate state of Sequoyah. The federal government turned a deaf ear to the Indians, and ended the tribal government. It combined the Indian and Oklahoma territories as a single state, which was admitted to the union in 1907.

The heritage of these hurried settlements is evident today. Oklahoma has the second-largest Indian population in the country, after California—273,000 in the 2000 census—though there is just one reservation and the status of many other tribal entities is often disputed. Some Indian tribes here have unsuccessfully sought a return of native lands and face high unemployment rates. But there has been much intermarriage over the years, and many Oklahomans—and not a few of its politicians—proudly claim Indian blood. There is an ongoing struggle to keep the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole languages from dying out—you can see street signs in the Cherokee alphabet in Tahlequah. The counties with a large Indian heritage in the eastern part of the state have been growing, while the Great Plains farm and oil counties west of Oklahoma City and Tulsa have lost population. Indians own 6% of businesses in Oklahoma, and make up about 7% of the population. In 2009, the Cherokee Nation purchased an aerospace company.

The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical recalled an Oklahoma on the brink of statehood in 1907, at which point the territory rapidly filled up with farmers, rising from 1.5 million people in 1907 to 2.4 million in 1930. Oil helped. The first well was drilled here in 1897 and by 1920, Tulsa was an oil boom town. Then in the 1930s came a decade of bust—or dust—as soil loosened by erosion was whipped into giant swirling clouds: The Dust Bowl. “On a single day, I heard, 50 million tons of soil were blown away,” American journalist John Gunther reported later. “People sat in Oklahoma City, with the sky invisible for three days in a row, holding dust masks over their faces and wet towels to protect their mouths at night, while the farms blew by.” Okies headed in droves west on U.S. 66 to the green land of California, and Oklahoma’s population steadily declined, falling to 2.2 million in 1950. It did not to reach its 1930 level again until 1970. The state’s population is 7% American Indian, 7% African-American, and 7% Hispanic.

Oil brought another boom. As the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 sent oil prices up, Oklahoma’s population rose from 2.5 million in 1970 to 3 million in 1980 and 3.3 million in 1983. Then, with the collapse of oil prices and of Oklahoma’s farm economy as well, it was bust again. A giddy rise was followed by a giddier fall. The rig count went from 882 in 1982 to 232 in 1983 and was just 186 in 2007. The 1990 census reported just 3.1 million Oklahomans. But in the 1990s, Oklahoma began building a more diversified economy, with high-tech employers as well as oil and gas firms. Population rose 10% in the decade, to 3.5 million in 2000, and another 5% to 3.6 million in 2008. High oil prices made it worthwhile to squeeze more from marginal wells, and Oklahoma’s natural gas—it’s the third state in production—has commanded high prices given strong demand. At the same time, Oklahoma has been one of the leading states in developing wind power, with utilities offering customers electricity produced from wind although at slightly higher than ordinary rates. Oklahoma continues to have above-average rates of divorce, teenage pregnancy and crime, and a low rate of college graduates. But unemployment has been low, and the housing bust and the subsequent 2007-09 recession caused less distress here than in many faster-growing states.

Historically, Oklahoma was a Democratic state, with big Democratic margins in eastern counties and in southeast’s Little Dixie. But northwestern Oklahoma, settled by Kansans, has always been Republican, and starting in the 1950s, Tulsa and Oklahoma City leaned Republican too. Vestiges of its Democratic heritage remain. There are more registered Democrats than Republicans (though the 2008 exit poll showed conservatives outnumbering liberals 39%-16%). Oklahoma has not voted Democratic for president since 1964 and has not come close lately. Republican President George W. Bush carried all 77 counties in 2004, as did GOP nominee John McCain in 2008. Oklahoma has elected only one Democratic senator, David Boren, since 1966, and the only Democrat in its congressional delegation is his son Dan Boren. Lots of Oklahomans identify as conservative Democrats, and helped elect Democrat Brad Henry as governor in 2002 and to re-elect him by 67%-33% in 2006. But Republicans captured a 57-44 majority in the state House in 2004 and expanded it to 61-40 in 2008. For the first time in history, they won a majority, 26-22, in the state Senate in 2008.

In some respects Oklahoma politics has been a struggle between Oklahoma City and Tulsa Republicans and rural Democrats. Tulsa-based Republican Frank Keating, governor from 1994 and 2002, managed to get voters to pass a right-to-work law, long opposed by Democrats in the Legislature, by 54%-46% in a September 2001 referendum. But small town-based Democrat Henry profited from a referendum on quite a different subject, a ban on cockfighting, in his 2002 gubernatorial run. Oklahoma was one of only three states that allowed this “sport,” and urban voters helped the ban pass 56%-44%. But opposition to the ban brought out rural voters in droves, and they helped ban-opponent Henry defeat Republican Rep. Steve Largent 43.3%-42.6%. Henry is barred from running for a third term in 2010, and it’s not clear whether another cross-cutting issue will help determine who succeeds him. One possibility is immigration. In 2007, state Republican Rep. Randy Terrill led the drive that resulted in the Legislature passing one of the nation’s toughest laws on illegal immigrants. Law enforcement personnel are required to check the citizenship status of everyone arrested, applicants for driver’s licenses must establish their legal status, and public and private employers are required to use the federal eVerify system to establish legal status. The law has been challenged in federal court.