Over the course of the last few days of the recently completed campaign season, I was cautiously optimistic that Brad Henry would pull off the upset against Steve Largent, which, of course, is exactly what happened. However, I was worried that Henry might win the gubernatorial race but would have to deal with a Republican majority in the state House of Representatives. In such a situation Henry likely would have faced additional difficulty in implementing some of his ideas, such as sending a state lottery to a vote by the people. Of course, the same situation exists whenever a governor or president is a member of a party that does not control the legislature. The executive has to search for people who are willing to cross party lines in order to support his or her programs. Even if these supporters can be found, they will often demand certain compromises.
Henry will not have to face a Republican majority in either house of the Oklahoma Legislature, but that does not mean that the Legislature will necessarily be friendly to all of his ideas. A look at Oklahoma history shows that Democrats have been in control the majority of the time but have not always presented a unified program.
The state Senate has never been controlled by the Republicans, and the state House of Representatives has only spent two years under Republican control. That was back in the 1920s before the Great Depression effectively ended the Republicans' strength in the state. The party did not recover until 1962 when Oklahoma's first Republican governor, Henry Bellmon, was elected.
The two parties have spent about the same amount of time in the governor's office since Bellmon's election. Overall, the state has spent about two-thirds of its history under complete Democratic control. However, that has not meant that gubernatorial or legislative programs have found easy passage. Through the many years that the governor and the two houses of the legislature have all been controlled by the Democratic Party, the state's political leaders have usually found ways to oppose each other anyway.
It did not take long after the start of the Great Depression for Oklahoma Democrats to begin to disagree on the New Deal, one of the most significant legislative programs in American history. Governor William H. "Alfalfa Bill" Murray opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt for the 1932 presidential nomination and lost badly. He took out his soreness over that race on the entire state by blocking the implementation of many of Roosevelt's New Deal programs in Oklahoma. The next governor, oilman E. W. Marland, won the race on a platform of bringing the New Deal to Oklahoma.
Four years later, Leon C. "Red" Phillips, who had opposed Marland's programs as the speaker of the state House of Representatives, won the governor's race on exactly the opposite platform. He cut government programs at an incredible rate and is seen by many historians as Oklahoma's most conservative governor ever. This succession of governors serves as a good illustration of the lack of cohesiveness in the Democratic Party caused by powerful leaders with their own ideas and convictions.
With the new legislative session starting next week, the Democratic Party has an important challenge before it. Having experienced eight years under Frank Keating, the first Republican governor to serve two consecutive terms, and having come close to losing control of the state house of representatives, its leaders need to work together in order to pass meaningful legislation. They cannot complain that the Republicans are blocking their proposals.
Of course, individual Democrats can join with Republicans to block legislation, and that is why the Democratic leadership needs to make the effort over these next two years to come up with programs that the entire party can support. With a new governor as well as a new Senate president pro tempore, Cleveland County's own Cal Hobson, Democrats have the opportunity to make a change in the way that things have historically happened.
If Democratic leaders are not able to make such a change, then it might be a long time before they find themselves in charge of Oklahoma state government again. The term limits that were approved by the voters over a decade ago will finally begin to take effect in 2004, and many longtime legislators, most of whom are Democrats, will be forced to retire. If things are not going well in the state, Republicans will probably win many formerly Democratic seats. If the Republicans win control of the governorship and the legislature in the near future, it is doubtful that they will have the same difficulty enacting their proposals that the Democrats have had.
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