Oklahoma City — Helen Swope considers herself a traditional Republican, skittish about paying higher taxes for what can seem like the ever-growing role of government.
But after Oklahoma City spent hundreds of millions of dollars building new parks, bicycle trails, elite recreational facilities and a soon-to-be-completed streetcar network, Swope thinks maybe the state government can learn something from the city’s former four-term mayor, Mick Cornett, a leading Republican candidate for governor.
“The whole city has been transformed,” said Swope, who lives in the suburbs but now travels into the city each weekend to new indoor tennis courts paid for by city taxpayers. “You get a lot of promises a lot of the time and nothing happens, but now there were a lot of promises and things happened.”
Even as Republican voters nationwide continue to lurch to the right, Swope’s assessment of Cornett reflects a surprising trend in Oklahoma politics this year: The pro-government Republican is making a comeback, as GOP voters at least in some places reject hard-line anti-tax policies.
