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"Team Blue" Wins in "Red" Oklahoma [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-30

Two “Team Blue” Wins in “Reddest of Red” Oklahoma– Congratulations Stephen Tyler Holman and Amanda Sandoval ! February 20, 2025

Oklahoma–the Sooner State. “Oklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plain,” as the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical put it. Oklahoma, home of many oil booms but also of terrible tornadoes. Oklahoma, a state hit hard by the 1930’s Dust Bowl which sent many of its residents fleeing to California and whose story John Steinbeck portrayed so well in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Politically, OK started out as a conservative Democratic state because of many of its original Southern settlers. Now, just like much of the South, OK is one dripping “Red” State. According to the 2024 Almanac of American Politics, not a single OK county has voted Democratic in a presidential election since 2000. The last time OK, a state entirely in the conservative Bible Belt and where social conservatism plays well, voted for a Democratic president was when it went for LBJ in 1964. In 2024, OK gave Donald a crushing 34.26 margin over Kamala Harris. Yes, in 2020, Oklahoma City gave Demagogue Donald just a one percentage point win, but in 2024, Donald still won OK County where Oklahoma City lies by 1.68 percentage points. The western suburb of Bethany is also located in Oklahoma County. In 2024, Cleveland County, which includes the city of Norman, gave Trump a “ y uu ge” 14.91% victory over Kamala Harris. OK has been considered a very safe GOP area for a long time, and there is no indication of it soon flipping “Blue” or becoming a swing state in national elections.

Still, despite OK’s “dripping Red” record, Democrats can still win key Sooner State elections at the local level. On February 11, 2025, Democrat Stephen Tyler Holman handily defeated incumbent conservative GOP Norman, OK mayor Larry Heikkila. Holman received 69.21% of the votes to Heikkila’s 27.37 %, according to Thomas Pablo of the OU Daily. Tyler was a City Councilmember and ran his campaign on increasing transparency and accountability in city government. Holman had served as a councilmember in Ward 7 since 2013. He worked as a real estate agent and part-time as well in a deli and a market. In January, 2025, Tyler stated that “after serving with four different mayors and almost 40 different council members over the last 12 years, I felt strongly that this was the right time to step up and make this kind of leap.” Holman said he was “inspired by the support from people all across Norman, bipartisan support… which is making an effort to work with everybody as best as I can.” Homelessness and affordable housing were major issues in this mayoral race. Holman voted in favor of purchasing a new permanent homeless shelter while incumbent mayor Heikkila voted against it, because he didn’t want the city of Norman to fund this shelter. Fourth-generation Norman native Holman voted for homeless aid and decency and the voters in conservative OK did not fault him for it. Holman himself knows about adversity. Holman grew up as a shy child in east Norman and never thought he would end up serving as mayor for the next three years. A single father, Holman raised his son while in his early twenties despite his grandparents willing to take in his child. In his victory speech, Holman credited his father for making him the person he was and stated that his Dad had always “been there for me, and had supported me all the way.” Holman truly shows what real “family values” are all about.

And there was another mayoral “Team Blue” victory in the “Dripping Red” Sooner State. Democrat Amanda Sandoval, who served on Bethany, OK’s city council from 2019-2023, won Bethany OK’s mayoral race. She becomes, in heavily WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) and Scots-Irish Protestant OK, the first Latina mayor, making history. Sandoval, unlike Holman, won a squeaker of a race. She defeated her opponent Jeff Knapp by just 46 votes, but remember, to quote former Los Angeles Lakers’ coach Phil Jackson, a “W” is a “W,” or “a win is a win,” no matter how big or small. Had a GOPer won this race with this narrow margin, we never would have heard the end of it, about the Trump-Musk team being national, state, and local “landslide” (NOT) winners.

Sandoval called her win a “big honor.” She said that she “stood on the shoulders of giants and was the answer to my wildest dreams.” She added that she took pride, “I wear my culture on my sleeve, I’m a proud Latina. I have this opportunity to enact the most change here in my hometown, here in the city that saw me grow up and now is seeing my child grow up. It’s a very beautiful and humbling feeling.” Sandoval, however, noted that she did not run for mayor just to become the first elected OK Hispanic. She said, “It wasn’t trying to run to try to be the first Latina elected mayor. It was me trying to run to make sure I’m listening to our residents and paving the way for accountability and transparency in local government. I just want to encourage more of the youth to run for office, more people of color to run for office, because we are part of this community, and we have every right to be in these spaces and be in these offices.”

Notice this fact. Politicians who win on the Democratic ticket, from President on down, usually have legislative and/or executive experience at some governmental level–mayor, city council, state or federal representatives. Someone like Demagogue/wannabe dictator Donald, when he first ran for the White House, had no experience whatsoever either as a military general or in any political office. And his “co-president” Musk certainly has no such background. Making billions of dollars is not equivalent to governmental service where one must constantly bring different groups of people together to make agreements. How many of us would trust a doctor to perform surgery on us or a lawyer to handle a trial for us without training and experience? Well, politicians, despite what the GOP thinks, should have some kind of political experience at some level before trying to run for higher office. And remember, mayors represent local voters even more closely than those at the federal level. If Democrats can win such races in “ultra-Red” OK, they can certainly take back the White House, the House, and, eventually, the Senate in swing state areas and in “Blue” regions. However, to do this, our side must vote in droves, not stay home on Election Day which far too many of our base did in 2024. Getting out to vote is EVERYTHING. Once again, congratulations, OK “Team Blue” victors Stephen Tyler Holman and Amanda Sandoval!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/30/2313444/-Team-Blue-Wins-in-Red-Oklahoma?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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