You may have recently heard that local "activist" and Lost Ogle punchline Steve Hunt is running for mayor. After the jump, we take an essay-style look at our experiences dealing with this very persistent, odd and interesting man....a man who may just happen to be the next mayor of Oklahoma City.
That is, of course, only if the voters of Oklahoma City collectively lose their mind.
The first encounter
I first learned about Steve Hunt when I stumbled across his MySpace page. I looked it up one night while doing research on the key players who were against the "Big League City" vote, and in general, progress for Oklahoma City.
This was when I discovered the infamous picture above. It was also when I first learned that Steve sneaked into a Super Bowl, liked to take pictures with large breasted girls, and had a peculiar fascination with a poster of a guy named Garret Morgan.
Obviously, Steve seemed interesting. He wasn't your typical activist. So what did I do when I was presented all this info? I wrote about it:
You see, Steven is the creator of MapsforMillionaires.org, a website that's against the Ford Center tax. When Steven is not busy trying to get Oklahoma City to stay on par with Amarillo and Shreveport, he is posting pictures of Bob Barry Sr., Taj Grey and others holding a poster of Garret Morgan on his MySpace Page.
Yeah"¦this dude is just plain weird. He's even weirder than Clark Matthews and the Justice League of Oklahoma. Hell, you'd probably be better off getting political advice from BikerFox than from Steven. That's why you should do what Steve doesn't want you to do and vote YES! on March 4th.
Notice how I referred to Steve as "Steven." That's because I had no clue who he was. Unfortunately, I would soon learn that he went by Steve. And I would learn way too often.
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Steve Hunt. Steve Hunt. Steve Hunt.
To put the size, scope and relevance of our first Steve Hunt post in context, you need to know the history of The Lost Ogle.
Basically, there are two periods in the life of this site: B.G. and A.G. These acronyms stand for "Before Gazette" and "After Gazette." The B.G. era was a time filled when we had three active editors, low traffic, and a thing for Lauren Richardson. The A.G. era is a time with two active editors, higher traffic, and a thing for Joleen Chaney.
The first post about Steve Hunt occurred in the B.G. era. That means on the day we posted it, it was only read by a few hundred readers. Because of that, it apparently took a day or two for word to get back to Steve that we were making fun of him. But when he found out, he struck back. And he struck back with a firestorm of comments.
Obviously, his comments were in poor taste, crude, and not publishable. After the fourth or fifth one, we banned his user name and IP address. Then Steve did what any persistent activist would do, he went to email.
The first few emails Steve sent us were soft and mildly entertaining. He hit all the key points. He made fun of our relative anonymity, South Park avatars, typos, "kidults" status and obscurity. But somewhere along the way, the tone of his emails changed.
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Would you like any Hot, Mild or Fire Sauce with That?
In March of 2009, Steve went before the Oklahoma City Council with a proposal to create "Bring a Lobbyist to Work Day." In response to this post we wrote, he dropped this line to Mayor Cornett:
I don't have a problem with your friends at The Lost Ogle weekly belittling me and saying I work at Taco Bell.
Since Steve didn't have a problem with that, we decided to make it a day. We called it "Belittle Steve Hunt and say he works at Taco Bell Day."
After that post, the Taco Bell references didn't die. Through the Ogle Mole network, we got our hands on a cardboard cutout of Mayor Cornett. The cutout was created to promote the Fresco menu at Taco Bell. When we took Cardboard Mayor to the 2009 Norman Music Festival, we added the words "Steve Hunt Made These" to Fresco Menu.
Anyway, as the Taco Bell references shows, we've enjoyed quite a bit of fun at Steve's expense. Sometimes, Steve was a good sport. Other times, he was not so good.
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Can you get any creepier?
As I mentioned earlier, Steve Hunt has sent Clark Matthews and I a bunch of emails over the past 2 years. The emails range from the basic "Check out this funny link" to the "you guys suck" to the creepy ones referenced below:
From: Steve Hunt
To: Patrick
Date: Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 11:42 PM
Sub: lucky
that pajama pub crawl is a joke, otherwise I'd come smash your face in
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From: Steve Hunt
To: Patrick
Date: Wed, May 20, 2009 at 12:14 AM
Sub: dang!
I was going to go to the norman music festival!! Would have been easy to spot you guys carrying around that sign and break your fucking necks.
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From: Steve Hunt
To: Patrick
Date: Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 9:08 PM
Sub: dont tell
Don't tell Clark but I am going to do a funny website about his wife. It will be all in fun of course, but it will make her look pretty dern bad! It's gonna be a lot of fun. Do you have any pictures to share? I'm going to reaaaaly do this one up.
I don't know about you, but I want my mayor to wear a suit, shake hands and be professional. If my mayor does have a fault, I want it to be that he gets too excited during minor league baseball games. I don't want him or her sending threatening emails to the mayor of Warr Acres!
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Meeting Steve Hunt
Leading up to our Snuggie Pub Crawl, Clark Matthews and I received a barrage of emails similar to the ones referenced above. In them, Steve threatened to crash the party and ruin the night. Knowing that "” and having never met Steve "” I was obviously a bit concerned when I saw him enter the upstairs bar at the 51st St. Speakeasy and walk towards me.
Now the story gets real boring.
Instead of breaking my neck, punching me in the face or showing me the webpage he made about Clark Matthews' wife, Steve introduced himself and offered to buy me a beer. Being the affable person I am, I declined. I bought him one instead.
For the next 10 minutes or so, I had as close of a coming to Jesus talk as you could probably have with Steve Hunt. We talked about the emails he wrote. "Jokes" he said. We talked about the grief we've given him. "Just Messing With You," I quipped.
Overall, it was an nice and pleasant conversation. Steve Hunt the person is a lot different than Steve Hunt the persistent attention-seeking emailing activist. He was nice, polite and seemed like an okay guy. In fact, he was so nice that I even agreed to let his activist friend David Glover write a guest post for us! Hell, if Steve ran for mayor that night, I probably would have even voted for him...or at least lied and told him I did.
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Steve Hunt for Mayor
In late January, Steve Hunt officially filed to run mayor of Oklahoma City. His odds of winning are about as a high as OPUBCO buying The Lost Ogle. I would say that's at about .0138%.
Despite his low odds to win, the local media is treating him as a viable candidate. In fact, I've never seen a fringe candidate get this much attention. It kind of makes me wonder if our coverage of him has provided some sort of validity. For example, if we didn't make fun of Steve like we did, there's a good chance that less people would know about him today. If he was less known, not as many news directors and editors would care that he was running for mayor. If they didn't care, he wouldn't get media coverage. So if Steve Hunt becomes this city's next mayor, blame us.
But I wouldn't worry about that. Steve Hunt will not be the next mayor of Oklahoma City. Instead, he'll bank on his now higher profile persona and become a more visible activist. He'll probably lead protests at Chamber events and create fake rowing teams to compete in local regattas. He'll probably try to sneak into the Soul Bowl and perhaps he'll open a Hookah Bar. And he'll probably email us...a lot...maybe even from Taco Bell.
