Something is afoot in Osage county.
The political climate has been volatile all around the country lately, but the national temperature has been much more heated than on the local, civic scale. Well, at least in places like OKC where we have the Cool Tall Mayor and young, fresh blood serving on the council.
Things are much different in Pawhuska, where a successful petition is forcing a potentially game changing special election. From Fox 25:
Pawhuska is holding a special recall election next month and the Recall Committee says four of the five council members, including Pawhuska's mayor, should be kicked out of office for how the police situation was handled.
[...]"We had this kind of slapdash firing of the police chief, and there's a number of citizens who came to me and said 'Steve, what do we do?'" said Steve Holcombe, a member of the Pawhuska Recall Committee.
Holcombe is a former city councilor and the leader of a group of citizens who successfully called for a recall election. They are holding the council responsible for the police chief's firing and having no vision and no plan for the city that has turned into a tourist hot spot.
"What I was saying to the people that came to me here in this room was, 'If you want to solve this issue with the police chief, then have a special meeting and maybe he gets rehired and maybe he doesn't, fine, but if you actually want some sort of systemic change, you need to change the leadership of the city. You've gotta change the city council,'" said Holcombe.
Why was the police chief fired? I'm not a real journalist, so I don't know. I was digging through the archives of the Pawhuska Journal-Capital and learned that Police Chief Nick Silva was fired, subsequently rehired, and then fired again. Everything I've read said he was beloved by the police force, interpret that how you may.
The Fox 25 article goes into more details about the recall election, and I have no idea who will be running, but there is one clear outlier who would crush anyone else: one Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman.
It's a no-brainer. America has finally given in to its obsession with wealth and celebrity. As a state, we elected an inexperienced and non-voting businessman to our highest office. As a country, well, we all know what happened. Drummond is a shoe-in, and would provide that outsider, amateur gusto that Republicans champion over experience and detailed policy.
Aside from name recognition, Drummond has the financial resources to crush any other candidate who stepped in her way. She also knows more about seasoning cast-iron skillets than anyone who would oppose her, which is a very trustworthy trait.
Running on a platform of improved school lunches could be enough to bring in Pawhuska families to vote (even if some of the culinary changes aren't particularly inspired). The only barrier to her election is whatever potentially racist skeletons she has hiding in her closet.
