Three candidates remain in the race for the Norman City Council’s Ward 2 seat, which will hold an election this year alongside odd-numbered wards after the August death of former Ward 2 councilmember David Perry.
The current officeholder, Councilmember Joe Carter, was appointed to fill the seat in the interim but is not seeking permanent election.
OU Russian professor Matt McGarry, and local businessmen John Argo and Jay Wendorff, now vie for the seat after former candidate Ed Maguire told Norman City Clerk Brenda Hall he dropped out of the race due to “personal reasons,” NonDoc first reported. Maguire’s name will remain on the ballot, but he will not be able to serve even if elected.
The Daily interviewed each candidate with the exception of Wendorff, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Election Day is slated for Feb. 9 and a runoff election will be held April 6 if no candidate receives a majority of votes cast.
Jay Wendorff
A 1993 Norman High School graduated according to his campaign website, Wendorff is also an OU Health Sciences Center and a licensed physical therapist currently employed by the Absentee Shawnee Tribe “providing outpatient and home care therapy for the native American population in their Little Axe Health care center near Lake Thunderbird.”
On his campaign website, Wendorff wrote he is not running for city council due to “political aspirations,” but out of care for Norman and a desire to see city leadership “look more fully representative of its people.” Wendorff decided to run in this election because of Norman’s “stance against the police department in June” — referencing the city council decision to redirect $865,000 from a proposed Norman Police Department budget increase — and Norman’s “growing reputation as being resistant to business development.”
According to his campaign website, one of Wendorff’s primary goals is to “continue to support (Norman’s) local businesses with fervor” while attracting new business partners to increase sales tax revenue.
“Like many people I know, I have grown tired of watching Norman miss out on great business partners such as Costco, the Warren Theater and Dick’s Sporting Goods,” Wendorff’s campaign website read. “All of these expressed interest to build in Norman, but chose to partner with Moore because we have made the barriers to enter Norman too high.”
Wendorff is endorsed by Unite Norman, and has been critical of the city council’s decision to redirect NPD funding, calling the decision a reaction “to national trends” rather than a decision “best for (Norman)” on his campaign website.
Wendorff described himself as a “big fan” of Norman Forward quality of life initiatives on his campaign website and criticized the city council for allowing projects to “linger” unfinished and reallocating funding “against the citizens’ wishes.”
Matt McGarry
McGarry described himself as a “relative newbie” in Norman compared to his opponents, having moved to Norman six years ago to teach Russian at OU. During his teacher tenure, McGarry said he’s noticed a “disconnect” between OU’s students and the greater Norman community which he would aim to mend if elected.
“We have a lot of students, even before the pandemic — I think it's definitely been intensified during the pandemic — for a lot of students, the world can bend the ends on campus,” McGarry said. “One of the things that I've always tried to encourage my students to do is to become citizens of the community in which they can register to vote, to make Norman — for at least the time that they're here — not just the place they study, but the place that they live.”
McGarry said part of the relationship between Norman and OU — two institutions he said should be “joined at the hip” — should be focused on encouraging students to take part in Norman’s downtown economic growth.
“We could make Norman more inviting to students and make our downtown areas friendlier to businesses by creating pedestrian zones so that students can walk immediately across, let's say, Boyd Street, to campus corner — that would help service a lot more businesses,” McGarry said. “It would also make it a much more friendly, approachable place for students. And then to create more walkways, walking paths and bike paths that would connect you to Main Street, the Lindsey corridor and other parts of Norman so that students who don't have cars or students who choose to walk and use bicycles are able to get safely from one part of town to the other.”
Reevaluating Norman’s public transportation system and making it more accessible for students traveling from campus to Norman’s other areas would also benefit the city, McGarry said, as well as connecting neighborhoods through travel lanes besides roads.
“I think Norman, if it's going to keep progressing, it needs to invest more in bicycle paths, bicycle lanes. Norman has made a lot of progress on that, (but) all streets should have bicycle lanes,” McGarry said. “Also, we should be creating bicycle paths and walking paths that connect our neighborhoods to one another, so that you don't need to get in a car to go from one neighborhood to the other.”
McGarry said he’s seen such a system implemented in Madison, Wisconsin — a city of over 260,000 to Norman’s 126,000 — effectively, allowing residents to move anywhere across the city on bicycles with ease.
Reimagining Norman’s layout in this way would also help bring communities together, McGarry said.
“When you get out of your car and you're on foot or you're on a bike, you see things differently, you interact with people in different ways,” McGarry said. “That's one thing that I’d really like to do, and I think it'd be really healthy for our kids.”
McGarry said he believes funding this type of infrastructure investment would be an ideal use for TIFs, or tax increment financing districts.
“I think TIFs are tools, neither bad nor good. It really depends on how you use the tool,” McGarry said. “I think using TIFs for retail development (as in the University North Park TIF), especially in a town like Norman that sits at the very edge of the Oklahoma City metro area, isn't necessarily the best use of TIF resources and TIF monies.”
The use of TIFs should be subjected to a public vote if the dollar amount passes a certain threshold, McGarry said, a view of Perry’s he agreed with.
“This is where I tended to agree with former Councilman Perry, any TIFs passed a certain dollar amount, I believe it was $5 million, need to go to a public referendum,” McGarry said. “We need to have, I think especially for Norman forward, a great way to get a sense as to projects that would benefit the most people is through putting them to a referendum and getting the public to vote on them."
McGarry said he supports the “organic” growth of local businesses, but did not feel larger retailers being constructed in the University North Park TIF was an effective use of the district.
“One thing that we know about business and about retail in particular, is that retail chases demand. It makes sense for Moore, for example, to have lots of big box stores and stuff like that, because Moore is basically an extension of Oklahoma City and people are looking north when they're thinking about going shopping,” McGarry said. “Putting big box stores on the margins of our town, and giving away a lot of money in the form of incentives to only be paid back pennies on the dollar in the form of sales tax, just really isn't the best use of the resources that can be gained from a TIF.”
McGarry said he would support the creation of a “development concierge” office to help prospective local entrepreneurs through the permitting process in order to engage Norman’s citizenry, which he called “arguably the best-educated population in the state,” to create more local businesses.
The Norman Forward initiatives have been great additions to Norman, McGarry said, and he would support looking forward to the next round of projects.
“When you start thinking creatively about the next Norman forward projects, we need to do a better job with them in the sense of how can we make these projects such that they reach the most people in our community. I think we need to kind of get back in touch and get a better sense of the pulse in the community,” McGarry said. “What do people need, what do most people need ... these quality of life initiatives are so important.”
Other community-building projects he would support included building community centers in city parks that could serve as “hubs” of certain neighborhoods, as well as utilizing Norman Public Schools facilities which “sit idle” in the summertime for educational projects and summer activities.
McGarry was inspired to run from a long-held desire to put effort back into the community that has welcomed him, he said, especially in a time of need.
“I've always wanted to get involved in the community, (McGarry and his family) have always made every town that we've moved to our home and I thought that this is the time to do it,” McGarry said. “It's a pandemic, it's a crisis, and I think it's time to try to give back to the town and in the community that we feel has given us quite a bit.”
His willingness to engage the public on detailed specifics around his policies and government workings are what set him apart from other candidates, McGarry said.
“I believe I’m very happy to dive into the specifics to articulate a clear vision, a policy-driven vision that engages directly with people — that is fine grained and granular, not general and not just overarching, I honestly believe that I'm willing to have a serious direct conversation,” McGarry said.
John Argo
Argo is the owner of Argo Metalworks, which he said he founded after getting married in 1973. Prior to the city council race, Argo also ran as a Democrat in the 2020 race for Oklahoma’s Fourth Congressional District.
Aligning with his history as a local business owner, Argo said his top priority if elected will be helping businesses navigate the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Well, hopefully, it's all turning the corner, and it may not be you know … but I mean, I'm not against shutting (businesses) down (if the virus reaches a high infection rate), But I'm not for it,” Argo said. “You have to look at and say, you got to be able to defend your decision. A lot of (businesses) have put a lot of money into making it a safe place.”
The second largest issue facing Norman, Argo said, is the number of Normanites he said are more committed to their political beliefs than “their values, their children or their city.”
“That's what concerns me more than anything, is I've watched people, they'll discard their values just for their politics, you know, and they go against everything they stand for,” Argo said. “I think we need to take a step back, and this is what I think I bring to the council, just someone that says ‘Leave your politics at the door, and let's work on Norman and its problems and its people.’”
The divisive trend is one of the main reasons Argo decided to run in this year’s election, he said.
“I don't know how you fix this divide, and that's the reason I'm running is because I want to be able to vote for somebody that's willing to be in the middle. I guess what I'm saying is, I'll have both groups mad at me,” Argo said. “I'm kind of the middle of the road guy that’s just for Norman, and I don't care whose idea it is. I don't want to be the smartest person in the room, I don't want to be a polished politician, I just want to get it done.”
One of the best ways he feels the city council can mend the divisiveness that has arisen in Norman, Argo said, is to allow the public to have more control over large-scale issues directly through voting.
“I definitely think the sanctuary city (issue) needed a popular vote, just because … you don't need nine people or whatever up there (unilaterally) making that decision for Norman, that needs to be a decision made by the people,” Argo said. “It has ramifications, you know, and I don't understand all the ins and outs, but it's something that people need to decide, because it affects their city, in the same way as the police (budget).”
On law enforcement and school resource officers, Argo said he feels a compromise can be reached to allow social workers to more directly deal with students and police officers keeping schools safe from outside where necessary.
“I talked to a lady that was working for a school, and she says, ‘We love our resource officer in my school,’” Argo said. “I said, ‘Well, would you be against having a social worker in there (inside the school) and letting the policeman handle threats from the outside, and they take care of that stuff, and she said no.’”
Argo said he wasn’t personally aware of certain aspects of policing the Norman Police Department specifically hasn’t been transparent on, but that he was willing to sit down with his constituents and hear their concerns.
“I'm open to listen, and I'll ask them directly if need be. If you point something out to me, I'll go ask them,” Argo said. “You absolutely need to have accountability and transparency, because things just go bad when you don’t.”
One of his other priorities would be making Norman a friendlier community for builders, Argo said, after personally hearing complaints from people who have tried to build in Norman before.
“I want to maybe streamline certain things that the city does or figure out a way that makes it quicker, more efficient and cost less, and (make it) a friendlier place to build, because right now we've got kind of a bad reputation — after I talk to people and tell them I’m from Norman, sometimes they’re like ‘Oh, god,’” Argo said. “These guys build in Edmond and stuff and in Norman doing stuff they say ‘You talk to the city they say build it this way, and then the fire department says ‘No, you got to tear it out and do it this way.’ You can't do that, you need a finalized decision.”
Argo said although he isn’t as familiar with “the nuts and bolts” of city government as some candidates running, his experience with people and determination to bring people together make him a good pick to represent Ward 2.
“I've got 50 years of treating people with respect, loyalty, and I bring to the table people that know me, and trust me, and that will give me honest answers,” Argo said. “Hopefully people aren't just so involved with the different groups that there may be a spot in the middle for somebody who just wants to concentrate on the city more than who's right and who’s wrong.”
