Unfortunately for McCarty, he lost his reelection bid from his district in 1966, and the IRS descended upon him with tax evasion charges. His critics unkindly claimed that he failed to report his many bribes. In any event, he was convicted and sent to jail. Thus, in a few short years, leading state judges and the powerful former speaker had proven to be corrupt.
The temporary Capitol was in Guthrie, OK. But the plan for a permanent Capitol Building brought with it a fight between the republicans in the West, and the Democrats in the East. they originally sought to create 2 states (Oklahoma & Sequoyah), but Roosevelt didn’t want another Democrat state(Sequoyah), so he supported a 1-state solution and hoped the Western republicans would prevail. The New Jerusalem
William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray proposed buying a township for the capital. He proposed selling lots around the capitol building and said the chosen place should have “good drainage and a picturesque grandeur. ” This and similar plans became known as the “new Jerusalem” approach to the capital - creating an entirely new city on the prairie with construction of the Capitol funded by the platting and selling of lots.
On Nov. 3, 1908, an election was held on a state question calling for the acquisition of a capital site and the selling of lots to finance construction of the Capitol. Although more voters than not approved the measure, it did not pass by the necessary majority.
Special Election
When he signed a proclamation calling for a special election on the matter, Governor Haskell, of Muskogee; crossed out the original election date of June 14, a Tuesday, and changed it to the preceding Saturday.
That meant election results would not be available until the next day, a Sunday, when Guthrie partisans could not find a court open to file for an injunction to stop the transfer of government.
Despite his pretense of neutrality, Haskell, a Democrat, had been stung by barbed criticism in Guthrie’s Republican newspaper. Sound familiar? Also, “drunken hoodlums” in the city’s Elks Club had mutilated a picture of Haskell, and territorial Gov. Frank Frantz (a Republican) “acted the jackass” by refusing to participate in Haskell’s inauguration ceremonies, a Guthrie paper reported.
Oklahoma City sent out trainloads of boosters to canvass the state on June 5. The following Saturday, 160,000 voters - all of them male - went to the polls. Oklahoma City won handily. Guthrie was second and Shawnee a distant third.
Capture The Flag
Legends surround the removal of the seal in 1910, and the truth - not nearly as colorful - has been washed by the passage of time. So nobody really knows exactly how Oklahoma City became the state capital a bit earlier, shall we say, than expected. Dirty laundry is how one source says it happened. Dirty tricks is how Guthrie partisans saw it.
W.B. Anthony, who was Gov. Charles Haskell’s secretary in the days when men were secretaries and women did the wash, said he smuggled the seal out of Guthrie’s interim capitol building in a bundle of clothing. This was in the wee hours of June 12, 1910. Anthony later told an historian that he drove to Guthrie in a car rented for the purpose by the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce.
Arriving at 3 a.m., Anthony told a guard he needed to retrieve some laundry in an office. The seal had earlier been concealed in the clothing. The drive back to the new capital city took three hours, owing as one history book puts it to “rutted, red dirt roads through the blackjacks. ”
Stolen Seal Finds Home
The trip north had actually taken longer because of a flat tire at Seward. Back in Oklahoma City by 7 a.m., Anthony met Gov. Haskell, who arrived that Sunday morning by train from his home in Muskogee.
Haskell declared the capital was now Oklahoma City, and the seat of government was planted in the Lee-Huckins Hotel pending erection of a capitol building.
The fight continued, though, between boosters for Oklahoma City and Guthrie even as the winning city had to referee a debate on where the Capitol should go.
As for the historical record, Oklahoma began as Indian Territory in the early 1800s, and much of the nineteenth century was laced with fraud perpetuated against American Indians. The infamous Trail of Tears of the 1830s began in a scheme by federal officials to transfer Indians from their tribal holdings on the east coast, which white settlers sought, to what was then a distant western wilderness. Removal of the Indians was supposed to be voluntary. But voluntary compliance broke down, and officials resorted to force. The resulting forced march by the Indians through winter weather killed men, women, and children by the thousands. This abuse of the public trust by officials surely ranks as one of the most shameful chapters in both national and state history. 
Harry Holloway, of the Oklahoma Historical Society said;
In retrospect, several points stand out. The first is that Oklahoma does not deserve a reputation as the most corrupt of states, since Louisiana typically stands out as most deserving of that designation. Second, the state has known some spectacular cases of corruption reaching into the Supreme Court, the governorship, the House speakership, and the whole system of county commissioner government. Third, again and again it has been federal officials who attacked corruption and forced reform. Fourth, there have been some notable recent exceptions to the primacy of federal intervention, one being the case of Gov. David Walters and the other being the school bond scam. Fifth is that in both instances of state action, investigative reporting by the Daily Oklahoman deserves credit as a significant counterweight to the limitations of state and local officials.
The Tulsa World wanted to say;
Dishonorable mention: For those who are counting, we’ve already listed dozens, but here’s one more for good measure. Some will be remembered for improprieties that caused a big to-do at the time but did not result in more than embarrassment. Oklahoma gained some notoriety during a U.S. House check-writing scandal in the early 1990s when representatives were accused of bouncing checks on the House bank. Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards was named as one of the worst offenders with 386 overdrafts. Edwards received a letter, he said, in 1992 informing him that no wrongdoing was found in his case. But voters booted him out of office in 1992. After leaving office, Edwards taught for many years at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Senator Ralph Shortey had been a strong proponent of a ‘get tough’ criminal justice policy. In fact, when the voters of Oklahoma passed a referendum to reduce simple drug possession from a felony, to a misdemeanor, Shortey led the charge to convince the legislature to nullify that act during the 2017 session. That endeavor failed in a dramatic way.
With spring break approaching, Ralph was approached by a teen male whom he had developed a relationship. Shortey had been volunteering at a local youth program, in Moore, OK; and had many such contacts. The boy wanted some spending money and Ralph texted back, inquiring if he was open to “sex stuff”.
The text was intercepted by the boy’s girlfriend, who alerted the boy’s parents. They found Senator Shortey and the boy at a local hotel, and police eventually convinced Shortey to come out. Police reports indicate that the room’s air was strong with the stench of marijuana smoke.
Multiple charges were filed within days and the Senate revoked all of Shortey’s privileges.
Shortey resigned his seat and began preparations for a criminal trial.
In the final days of the Jeff Hickman speakership, A payout was made to settle a sexual harassment complaint. the item was discovered by media outlets and the matter turned into a major sex scandal & multiple investigations.
When it was over, Rep. Dan Kirby (R-Tulsa) had resigned to avoid a first-ever expulsion vote. Rep. Will Fourkiller (D-Tahlequah) had been ordered to stay away from minor female pages.
The sexual harassment complaint came from a young woman legislative assistant who had been reassigned to Kirby when she was rumored to be having an affair with her previous assignment, Randy Grau. Rep Grau left the legislature and averted a divorce with his wife.
But it was a 2nd legislative assistant who provided the most damning evidence. She provided evidence of a pattern of Kirby’s pressure toward her, to provide sexually explicit sexting photos of herself. She further described how Kirby provided strippers for the assistant, at a nude dance hall.
Fourkiller was repremanded for his inappropriate conduct with minor girls who were assigned to the state legislature, as an educational program.
Rick Brinkley was the heir-apparent to the Pro Tem office of the Oklahoma Senate, in 2015. But in late April his Tulsa Better Business Bureau completed an audit which alleged that Brinkley had embezzled over $1 million dollars over a period of about a decade if his leadership of the watchdog institution.
He immediately resign committee chairmanships for the remainder of that session. Brinkley was expected to succeed Sen. Brian Bingman as the next Oklahoma State Senate President Pro Tempore.
Brinkley, in August 2015, initially resigned his seat effective December 31, 2015, citing personal reasons. The resignation came as Brinkley was being investigated by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation on accusations of embezzlement from the Better Business Bureau of Tulsa where he had formerly served as Chief Operating Officer. At the time of his resignation he was being sued by the BBB, with the organization alleging in court filings that Brinkley used the money for “his mortgage, pool cleaner, personal credit card invoices, and to support a hidden gambling habit, in an amount believed to be in excess of $1,800,000.” He resigned, effective immediately, nine days later upon agreeing with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to five wire fraud counts and one false income tax return count related to the embezzlement charges.
At the time, Brinkley was also pastoring a church in his Owasso-area district.
Rep., Randy Terrill was convicted in 2013 after prosecutors said he offered a bribe to Leftwich, a Democrat, to withdraw from her race for Senate so Terrill’s friend, Rep. Mike Christian, could seek the office.
Terrill was sentenced to 1 year in prison and required to $5,000 fine.
Leftwich was found guilty of soliciting a bribe during a bench trial — the judge found her guilty instead of a jury — and was sentenced to one year of probation and ordered never to seek a job with the state or run for public office again.
Prosecutors said Terrill pushed officials with the state Medical Examiner’s Office to create an $80,000 per year position for Leftwich.
The court rejected Terrill’s claim that a candidate for office cannot withdraw from office without filing a notice of withdrawal with the proper election board.
“Taking the evidence in the light most favorable to the state, any rational trier of fact could find beyond a reasonable doubt that Terrill bribed Leftwich by offering her a thing of value which caused her to withdraw from her reelection race,” Smith wrote.
Terrill, from Moore, served in the state House from 2004 to 2012. Leftwich, of Oklahoma City, was a member of the Oklahoma Senate from 2003 until 2010.
Both Leftwich and Terrill had appealed the District Court’s ruling, claiming that Leftwich was never a candidate for office, because she had not filed for re-election with the state Election Board. Records showed, however, that Leftwich had begun to raise money for a reelection campaign.
Writing for the majority, Presiding Judge Clancy Smith said the law and evidence from the bribery and corruption trial of former state Rep. Randy Terrill did not require relief.
The court, in a separate opinion, also turned back an appeal by former state Senator Debbe Leftwich.
During A Saturday radio interview With OKC radio host, Scott Mitchell; Terrill talked about “reprehensible conduct” taking place at the Capitol involving House members, issues involving House members having sex with staffers and House members working on the House floor while drinking vodka and impaired voting.
“More than half-a-dozen members partake of a drink in late night sessions. Some have come back impaired after a late dinner – something that is specifically prohibited by House rules. Those found guilty of habitual drunkenness can be impeached,” noted Terrill.
Continued Terrill on the Scott Mitchell Show: “How about House members? Our majority floor leader Dan Sullivan who had sex, an extra-marital affair with his chief judiciary staffer, his chief attorney when he was chair of the judiciary committee before he became the majority floor leader and then subsequently arranged for her to have a job, ultimately on the state payroll regulating insurance companies.”
Terrill would later confirm with Red Dirt Report that the staffer who allegedly benefitted was a Tulsa attorney named Melanie Pouncey.
Pouncey, explained Terrill, was chief legal counsel to the judiciary committee when Sullivan was chair of the House Judiciary Committee.
“Dan Sullivan set her up with a job at the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce. Then he cut a deal with (former Insurance Commissioner) Kim Holland, which explains why Sullivan was one of three Republicans to endorse Holland over Doak,” said Terrill.
Terrill said Sullivan then moved off the Judiciary Committee and became chair of the Economic Development Committee, all the while he was allegedly having the affair.
Dan Sullivan and Janet Sullivan have since divorced and he is now reportedly married to Pouncey, who had become pregnant.
And after the House leadership caught wind of Sullivan’s behavior, then-Speaker Chris Benge made sure that fraternization with a staff member was a big no-no. So, technically, Sullivan didn’t break any rules and the story was never picked up by the media.
Eventually, Speaker Kris Steele & his team were leveraged out of power. Dan Sullivan sought an opening to lead the Grand River Dam Authority, and was eventually named to that post. He spent the next several years in that cushy appointment.
BRISTOW – Former Creek County Judge Donald Thompson was led from a courtroom in handcuffs in August of 2006, to immediately begin serving a four-year prison term for indecent exposure. District Judge Charles Allen McCall formally sentenced Thompson to the maximum prison term – four one-year terms, all to be served consecutively. In doing so, McCall rejected requests from Thompson’s Tulsa attorneys, Clark Brewster and Rob Nigh, that the retired judge be given a suspended sentence or that the four terms be concurrent, in essence a one-year prison term. A jury on June 29 convicted Thompson of four felony counts of indecent exposure after he was accused of exposing himself by using a penis pump to masturbate during trials in Sapulpa. 
The jury recommended a $10,000 fine and a one-year prison term on each of the convictions. McCall also denied a request from defense attorneys that Thompson remain free on bail while his appeals are heard. The judge ordered Thompson to be taken into custody immediately after the hearing, although he allowed him about 20 minutes to visit with his family and say his goodbyes. |
Corruption ChronicleA retelling of the dubious escapades our past state leaders have been exposed for their role in.    
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