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Last Updated November 30, 2005
Update: November 30, 2005 Oklahoma City, like many state capitals, was not the spontaneous creation of commerce but the deliberate creation of government, sited in the geographic center of the state, on what turned out to be oil lands. Oil rigs were pumping crude on the grounds of the then-domeless Capitol until 1989; a derrick still stands sentinel outside the governor's window. The land here is browner and more eroded by creeks than the greener, rolling Oklahoma farmland farther east. From its center Oklahoma City has grown far out into the countryside, followed, as in so many southwestern cities, by expanding city limits so that it extends into four counties and three congressional districts and covers 621 square miles. Oklahoma City became the center of the nation's attention in April 1995, when a bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 and injuring more than 500. The profound grief has persisted here, but was channeled into the construction of the Oklahoma City National Memorial on the site of the blast, movingly dedicated exactly five years later in April 2000. The 5th Congressional District includes most of Oklahoma County and Oklahoma City, all except a small section of the county including Midwest City and Tinker Air Force Base. Also included are Pottawatomie and Seminole Counties to the east. These two counties partake of the ancestral Democratic leanings of most of Oklahoma. But Oklahoma City is solidly Republican in state as well as national politics and Oklahoma County casts 88% of the district's votes. The congressman from the 5th District is Ernest Istook, first elected in 1992, in his views and attitudes a forerunner of the Republican freshmen of 1994. With heavy turnover, he became in just two terms the most senior of the state's House delegation. Istook is the grandson of Hungarian immigrants; after graduating from Baylor, he was a radio reporter in Oklahoma City and went to law school at night. He practiced law and was elected to the Oklahoma House in 1986. In 1992, he ran for the House, taking on 16-year incumbent Republican Mickey Edwards, who had 386 overdrafts on the House bank. Edwards finished third in the primary, with 26% to 32% for Istook and 37% for 1990 gubernatorial nominee Bill Price, who harshly criticized Edwards. Istook ran on conservative issues and won the runoff 56%-44%. He won the general election by only 53%-47% over oil and gas lawyer Laurie Williams, who attacked Istook for his anti-abortion stance. He has been easily reelected since. Istook has a very conservative voting record. "Oklahoma has the kind of values that the rest of the nation needs to have," he says. He has used his seat on Appropriations to press for various controversial amendments. One was his 1995 effort to ban organizations that receive federal funds from using more than 5% of their money for lobbying. This was fought vociferously by nonprofits; both houses passed different forms of the Istook amendment, but no limit was passed. Istook was the chief sponsor of the Religious Freedom amendment, which came to a vote in a revised form in June 1998; it got 224 votes, well short of the required two-thirds. He opposed the Medicare prescription drug bill in June 2003 but at the request of the leadership agreed to pair his vote with the absent Bill Young of Florida. Young was then chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and Istook is the only Oklahoman in either house on Appropriations. In 1999, after only six years in Congress, he became chairman of the D.C. Appropriations Subcommittee, and thus a member of the "College of Cardinals." In 2001, he became chairman of the Treasury-Postal Appropriations subcommittee, which supervises the White House budget. In March 2002, he criticized the Bush administration for not providing enough information on homeland security and threatened to withhold the $329 million appropriation for the Executive Office of the President unless Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge testified before Congress. In 2003 he became chairman of the Transportation Subcommittee. This has jurisdiction over the highway projects many members covet. In his early years on the committee, Istook declined to use his seat to bring home pork; his attitude seems to have changed. In August 2003 he was earmarking $2 million for an I-44 interchange in Tulsa, $5 million for a Tulsa Airport taxiway and $30 million for the relocation of I-40 in the heart of Oklahoma City. He boasted that Oklahoma was receiving more transportation appropriated funds per capita than any other state. He used the transportation appropriation to make the Oklahoma City National Memorial an affiliate, not a property, of the National Park Services so that local people could control it and helped head the effort to raise privately an $18 million endowment for it. But he told Oklahoma City officials that a light rail line would be "hugely expensive" and would not make sense; at the same time he held up $500 million for a light rail line from downtown Seattle to Sea-Tac airport for lack of planning. Istook is not a fan of Amtrak either. In 2004 the administration sought $900 million for Amtrak while 21 House Republicans signed a letter urging $1.8 billion. Istook wrote them in February and warned, "Any request for Amtrak funding, even if submitted in a separate document, must and will be weighed against your other requests, and I will consider it as a project request for your district." He pointed out that the Heartland Flyer which runs from Oklahoma City to Dallas, has revenues of $883,000 from passengers and $5.2 million from the state of Oklahoma and still doesn't make a profit. In his 2004 appropriation Amtrak got $1.22 billion, and without further notice Istook cut transportation projects from the 21 letter signers' districts. Two of the signers, James Gerlach and Rob Simmons, were from marginal districts; another, John McHugh, almost came to blows with Istook. Speaker Dennis Hastert was angry with this treatment of fellow Republicans, and in December 2004 Istook sent the 21 a letter apologizing for not communicating better. Istook was also embarrassed in November 2004 by the disclosure that his appropriation contained a provision allowing the Appropriations chairman and designated staff to inspect individual income tax returns. Democrats bellowed with horror, and so did many Republicans. Istook at first said the provision was prepared by the IRS and that "nobody's privacy was ever jeopardized." It turned out that it was drafted by a staffer who wanted members to be able to visit IRS offices as part of agency oversight; the IRS resisted this on the grounds that individual returns might be visible on computer screens. The Senate passed a resolution saying the provision had no effect, and the House quickly followed. After this and the flap with the 21 letter signers (two of them, McHugh and Curt Weldon, served on the Steering Committee, which nominates Appropriations subcommittee chairmen), there was talk that Istook might lose his cardinalship; when the number of subcommittees was reduced from 13 to 10 in 2005, it came as no surprise when he lost his chair. Istook was easily reelected from 1994 to 2000 in a district that included only part of the Oklahoma City area and jutted northward to include other heavily Republican areas. But the 2000 Census cost Oklahoma a House seat, and the Democratic legislature wanted to eliminate one of the state's Republican-held districts. This put Istook in potential jeopardy. But the solution presented itself when 3d District Republican Wes Watkins announced his retirement and a state court judge in May 2002 approved a plan that would protect the five remaining incumbents. Istook was easily reelected in 2002 and 2004. But not before he made a stab at running for the Senate seat being vacated by Don Nickles. He planned to announce his candidacy on October 11, 2003. But Senator Jim Inhofe told him that he planned to endorse Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys the day before, even though Humphreys was not yet a declared candidate. Inhofe did just that, and Istook, who had been raising large amounts of money far more useful in a seriously contested Senate race than in a shoo-in reelection race, announced he was not running for the Senate. In the process he attacked "party leaders" who would "anoint" a candidate; he ultimately got something in the nature of revenge. A week before the July 2004 primary he endorsed his former House colleague Tom Coburn over Humphreys and had the satisfaction of seeing his candidate defeat Inhofe's a week later by a 61%-25% margin.
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