A 21-year-old OU student looks to bring innovative technology and a smarter future to Oklahoma City with a bid for mayor.
Taylor Neighbors, a piano junior at OU, will face two other candidates Feb. 13 in the Oklahoma City mayoral election. Neighbors looks to succeed current Oklahoma City mayor Mick Cornett, who announced his candidacy for Oklahoma governor in May 2017 and is Oklahoma City’s longest-serving mayor after four terms in the position.
Other candidates in the running include Republican state Sen. David Holt, Cornett’s former chief of staff, and Democrat Randall Smith.
While Neighbors is registered as an independent candidate, the mayoral position is nonpartisan. Voter registration for the election ends Jan. 19.
The mayoral race piqued Neighbors’ interest in summer 2017, when she found out Cornett would no longer be in the running and began to research other candidates. When she was unable to find much information about the candidates or their goals for the city, she said she realized she could be the one to set those goals, and filed for candidacy in December.
An Oklahoma City native, Neighbors said she’s been impressed with the tremendous change she’s seen in the city under Cornett and she hopes to “emulate his spirit,” but she wants to push the city further and “do better.”
Neighbors said while she would work on issues like crime or public transportation that are important in any major city, she also wants to look toward innovative initiatives and solutions to city issues.
“We're going in such a great direction, but we need to kind of look beyond what we've been trying to tackle for the last 10 years,” Neighbors said. “Of course we need to solve those problems. The current leadership here addresses issues that the city — well, every city — should consider a given.”
Technology like blockchain, which Neighbors said could make city transactions more secure and eliminate third-party costs through cryptocurrency, or robots that can sense the presence of opioids in a city’s sewer lines, could set Oklahoma City ahead, Neighbors said.
“Things like where we just get more involved, we get the community more involved in 21st century technology,” Neighbors said. “We could not only make our city prosper, we could also put our city on the map. Things like this where we show up in the news more often would absolutely make people want to visit.”
The core goals of Neighbors’ campaign involve being proactive in leading Oklahoma City toward the future, she said. She recalled seeing a photo of Cornett and other city leaders celebrating the opening of a new sidewalk, and realizing the city could be setting its sights higher.
“We need to not only be addressing these problems we have, which are sidewalks, potholes, housing — we also need to be forecasting opportunities and going after them in advance ... we need to be looking 30, 40, 100 years ahead,” Neighbors said.
While the OU student would want to continue her studies in some capacity while holding the mayoral position, she said she’s prepared to take on a lighter class load and find balance between the two positions. Neighbors said being busy will be nothing new for her.
“I am a piano major — I have been stretched thin since I started playing piano,” Neighbors said. “I'm used to it, I love it. I also always try to busy myself with projects, I teach piano privately — I'm used to living a busy lifestyle.”
At 21, Neighbors just meets the minimum age requirement for mayor. Neighbors said she does meet some voters with doubts about her age or qualifications, but asks those voters to look beyond age and experience and consider a candidate’s vision and ideas for the city, she said.
“I would just say do your research and listen to the ideas,” Neighbors said. “Look very closely for who might be a career politician and who might just be someone who has good ideas and thinks this is the right time for the city to hear those ideas.”
