A Very OK Podcast

Episode 39: “Impeachment”

September 17, 2024

Episode Transcript

(upbeat music playing)

Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I am the executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, and with me, as always, is Dr. Bob Blackburn. Bob, it’s great to be with you here again, talking about some history of our wonderful state of Oklahoma. How have you been?

Dr. Bob Blackburn: I’ve been doing great, Trait. I’m working on a new book on the history of parks in Oklahoma City. So I’m still learning, still digging. Had an interview yesterday with an Oklahoma City planner from the ’90s on the trail system that I know you use and Stinchcomb Preserve where you take your kayak. So I got the story of how that became part of the city park system. So I’m having a good time as usual. Still digging and learning and just following wherever my curiosity takes me.

Thompson: Well, I love to hear that, and I love that you have time to pursue some of those projects, because being in this job, I think of a great book topic about every other day. And then I think, how in the world will I ever have time to do anything like that? Because I, like I said, I get good ideas all the time, but having the time to actually run those to the ground and do something about them. So I’m envious of you a little bit, but I’m glad that you’re out there and you’re continuing to find ways of how you can add to the historical record of our state, because these are the things that we want to know about. And being able to put these things on paper are is really, really important to preserve that.

Blackburn: Yeah. And of course, I’ve been fortunate in my career to meet people like Cal Hobson, who we’ll interview here in a few minutes, to get to know people like. And I had lunch today with Glen Johnson and just talking to them, but people who have made history. Getting to know George Nigh so well and being able to listen to those stories about the 1950s and ’60s, and the people I’ve met over the years have been mentors. You know, writing the book for Tom Love and Jack Zink and Tulsa, getting to know some of these people who I consider the pioneers of so much in Oklahoma history, getting to know them. And I keep realizing, well, I’m now 73, so I’ve lived a long time and had the good fortune to be around a lot of people that I can look up to and say, yeah, I knew them.

Thompson: You might be one of those pioneers yourself now.

Blackburn: That’s right. I’m now an old timer.

Thompson: Well, I have to say, you know, I geek out when I meet some of these people, and the opportunity, when you’re in a room with people like George Nigh and some of our former elected officials and current elected officials, and it’s one of the reasons that I really try as often as I can, I like to get a photograph with people, because I want to be able to look back and say, hey I met this person at this time. These are the people that are out here. They’re making history themselves. And, you know, thankfully, because of the work that I get to do now and the work that you used to do, we find ourselves around a lot of people who are making a difference in our state, and I like to be able to rub shoulders with people like that.

Blackburn: Well, and you’re probably feeling the same thing that I did for years is like by talking to Glen Johnson or Denzil Garrison or George Nigh. As historians, we can remind them of what they’ve been through, and they’ve had so many instances where they’ve had challenges or opportunities or made deals. They tend, it becomes a blur after a while, and we can remind them. And every time I’ve done the history of the state fair or the history of Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores or Sonic America’s Drive-in, talking to Troy Smith, who built Sonic into what it was, and Cliff Hudson, who expanded it even more and made it so dynamic. Talking to them, I get them to think about it in terms of like, how did this really happen? And I can see that evolving in their minds as I’m interviewing them. That’s fun. And then they look at me saying, oh, I helped them understand what they’ve been through because they’re always looking ahead. Those kind of business pioneers are not thinking about what they did 20 years ago. They’re thinking about where they want to be in 20 years, and us getting them to look backward for just a moment to do a book or an article or just to help us is rewarding for me and them. And so I’ve always felt fortunate that the 27 books I’ve done so far, I’ve been able to get some people to think about their own history, where they fit into this bigger story. And now, of course, I’ve got all these stories spinning around in my head at any given moment and connecting those dots between one and another. It’s been a, I’ve been fortunate in my career that so many people have shared their stories.

Thompson: Absolutely. And we couldn’t do what we do without people being willing to share their stories, and not only their stories, to share their life with us in the terms of the things that they’ve collected over the years, your documents, your papers, and all of those kinds of things. So I guess this is my little plug for those of you who are out there. And if you’ve got, you know, a historical connection to the state of Oklahoma and you’re wondering, well, what do I do with all of this stuff, well give us a call here at the Historical Society because we live to preserve these kinds of things. And so we would love to talk to you about some of the things that you have, because the last thing we ever want to happen is, unfortunately, and it does happen, you pass on. Your relatives come by and go, what’s all of this junk? And the next thing you know, it’s off in a bin in a landfill somewhere. And there goes a piece of our state’s past.

Blackburn: Yeah.

Thompson: Well, I wanted to, a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to appear on a panel on OETA and the Oklahoma News Report. And, because of some current events that are going on right now, they said Trait, we want you to come and talk about the history of impeachments in the state. And I thought, well, it’s kind of an interesting topic. And I knew off the top of my head a little bit about some of the impeachments. Of course, some of the big ones like Henry Johnston and Jack Walton. And so I started doing a little bit of a deep dive into some of the history of impeachment. And I thought, this is really kind of fascinating. And usually we have our podcasts all planned out, but I thought this would make a good podcast episode, and so we did a little bit of a pivot. So we wanted to talk to you all out there about impeachments in Oklahoma. We can get into, first of all, what are the requirements in the constitution for impeachment? We can talk about some of the people who have been impeached and get into a little bit of the circumstances around each one of those. But that panel discussion was a lot of fun, and I had some great panelists with me in there. And so I thought we should we should do a little bit of a deeper dive on this in our podcast.

And so, Bob, you know, when we think about impeachments in our state, of course, we became a state in 1907. The first impeachment that we had was in 1913. And, really in the teens and ’20s, it really seems that in Oklahoma, we went on a bit of an impeachment spree in our state. And it’s almost, I made the comment on the program that it almost feels like the legislature would impeach for sport at some times, that it was kind of, okay, obviously there’s corruption. Some of the things that we look at, I kind of wonder, well, was that really a big deal or not? In many cases, it might have been an opportunity to get someone you don’t like out of office or to move on to the next person. But what do you think is surrounding our culture in that early part of statehood that just makes us a little bit impeachment happy?

Blackburn: Yeah, I think two things going on. One, and I’ve talked about this, so I won’t belabor the subject, but the conservative populism of Oklahoma’s beginnings. We’re really founded by agrarians. People who come from farm and ranch are by the vast majority. Now, you’ll have a few exceptions of urban people, especially in Tulsa. One reason Tulsa is so different from the rest of the state, and for years, they call themselves the State of Tulsa, is that they were founded and grown largely with pioneers who came out from the Mid-Atlantic and the oil industry. They had a corporate background. They had corporate money. They thought of things differently. They thought like people in Pennsylvania rather than in Texas or Louisiana. Most of the rest of the state was founded by people who come from the farm and ranch. And you get a very strong Scots-Irish blend in that and that wanting to protect my civil liberties, you’re not going to tell me what to do, and I’m big enough to carry a gun on my hip to take care of myself. So I don’t need law enforcement. I can ranch, I can do this, and don’t tell me what pesticides I can use. Like, don’t mess with me in my valley, my property, my person. And this conservative populism that comes from the farm is very much a part of our political culture, which gets to the point where you don’t trust government. If you’re not from my valley, I can’t trust you. So there’s a distrust in rural Oklahoma of what’s happening in Oklahoma City. at the State Capitol. There’s a big distrust of Washington, DC. Like don’t bring your federal money, because we don’t want those federal regulations. You still hear that today. We don’t want the strings attached to the federal funds, and they don’t know what we really want out here in rural Oklahoma. The MAGA movement is an expression of that in many ways. Here is still a conservative populism based in rural culture.

The second thing is, I think we were a frontier. And at OU specially, they’ve done been 70, 80 years of comparative frontier study. So you take the frontiers of New Zealand, the frontiers of Australia, and the frontiers of South Africa. You compare the way a frontier affects culture, and you have a little bit of a loosening of morals and ethical behavior. And it comes from people being away from the institutions of a small town where you have eight generations of family. Your grandma is there looking over your shoulder, goes to the same church, knows the people on the next block. If you if you misstep and do something wrong, grandma is going to find out about it, and suddenly you’re in trouble.

Thompson: (laughing) Yeah.

Blackburn: Well, coming out from the frontier, you’re away from those kind of controls. You’re away from that kind of filtering of making sure everyone has kind of the regular standards that are expected of a man and a woman and a family and the ways you do it. Ku Klux Klan is a bit of a reaction to that changing America. We’re losing those values. You see it, even the MAGA movement, we’re losing those values. Let’s go back to the way it used to be. And so you have this American frontier with people coming from all different parts of the globe, literally, and no one knows anybody else. And so you’re trying to establish these, and so you have a lot more freedom. So you say, hey, I’m going to run for mine inspector. Well, why not take a few bucks here from the miners? And maybe I’ll do this on the side, and occasionally they’re caught. Typically, the district attorney of a county will protect who’s happening in that county if they’re part of the political organization. So you don’t see that much with a school superintendent getting crossways with the district attorney or a justice of the peace. And you have this protection, and really, the first three decades of Oklahoma state history is a period of exploitation. We’re exploiting the natural resources in terms of the oil on the coal underneath the soil. The soil and the crops you can grow, the livestock you can raise. We’re exploiting the Black population. We got cheap labor. Let’s make sure they don’t have a vote so they can’t change the system. And let’s exploit the Indians. Look at them as a natural resource. Let’s get their mineral rights. Let’s get their land. Let’s get the money that’s coming down from the federal government. This sense of exploitation with the frontier process of people being away from the institutions of their families I think leads to a little bit of loose morals, ethical behavior that people think, well, you know, guy over there’s doing it. County commissioner scandal.

Thompson: Yeah.

Blackburn: Which would not happen until late in our history. That culture goes right back to the very beginning. Well, the last county commissioner got a 10% kickback on that piece of machinery. Well, okay, if that’s the way it’s done.

Thompson: Right.

Blackburn: Until almost all county commissioners are doing it, because it becomes part of this culture, and that would have been the way it would have been in the mining industry or the printing industry or the governor’s office or the legislature. So people are kind of running fast and loose. Those representatives coming want to please their constituents. They say, hey, I went after the bad guys. They’re not from our valley. We can’t trust them anyway. So did you see that I voted for impeachment? Let’s get the rascals. Kick them out. That was that early culture. And then you get the bare-knuckle fighting within the Democratic Party. And until Henry Bellmon, every governor was a Democrat. Legislature was always run by the Democrats, a one-party state. So you get Democrats fighting Democrats, hard-knuckle politics, and depending on the factions that are behind somebody, and we’ll talk some specifics here in a minute with the impeachments of governors, but trying to balance those support systems, and it’s so fractured, and it’s really not a unified state because of our settlement patterns. The people of Cherokee Outlet think of political culture so differently than those in Little Dixie. It’s like two different universes. And trying to work within this system of this patchwork quilt of settlement in so many different ideas of what’s expected, some people might say, hey, we expected them to take money. If I was governor, I was going to get that too. Someone else might say, no no, you can’t do that. And so trying to navigate this new frontier with this Scots-Irish culture of distrust of elected officials and general distrust of anybody in power or with money. You can’t trust the banks. You can’t trust the railroads. You can’t trust those people on Wall Street. That culture really gave us an era that was just fertile ground for impeachments.

Thompson: Yeah, absolutely. And I should mention, for those of you who might be interested in learning more about the county commissioner scandal, we did an episode on that called “At War With Corruption.” So you can go look that up when you have time to do that. We should really get into what are the conditions that lead to impeachment. And that’s spelled out in our constitution in Article VIII. Just to quote, it says, “The governor and other elected state officers, including the Justices of the Supreme Court, shall be liable and subject to impeachment” for the following: “willful neglect of duty, corruption in office, habitual drunkenness, incompetency, or any offense involving moral turpitude committed while in office.” And so those are the conditions. And I would, I think that you’ll see as we get into this conversation more, you could really stretch those conditions. Those are those are pretty wide boulevards to be able to drive down. If you do want to impeach someone because, moral turpitude and incompetency can cover a lot of things. You know, you can be accused of incompetency for, you know, forgetting to file a report or something along those lines.

So the legislature has a lot of leeway when it comes to deciding to pursue charges of impeachment. And one of the things that I always like to say is you have to remember how our constitution is set up in the state of Oklahoma, where the legislature is king. And at the end of the day, if you are governor, or if you’re a state, another statewide elected official, or if you are a leader of a state agency, you have to understand that the legislature holds most of the cards when it comes to power in state government. They have the power, of course, to appropriate money to you. But they also hold a lot of the power in terms of governing, who gets to do what in the state of Oklahoma. And governors typically find out pretty quickly that they better learn how to work with the legislature, or otherwise they’re going to be out. Because there, as we’ll see, there are, legislators and legislatures who have decided, yeah, we’re pretty much done with you, governor, and we’re going to get rid of you too. So.

Blackburn: Well, then it comes down to who has the votes. This is a political process. It’s, you know, there’s a degree of the judicial process involved here. A judicial proceeding that you can talk about here in a minute. But it comes down to you have the votes. Are there votes to take someone out? In the House, it’s easier. Simple majority. Senate, to convict, two-thirds. It’s hard to get two-thirds.

Thompson: Yeah.

Blackburn: Any legislative body, no matter what time period you’re talking about, to agree on anything. And so to get two-thirds of the majority of the Senate on any case means that someone really messed up and made a lot of people mad and didn’t have any friends to protect them.

Thompson: So trivia question, Bob, do you know the very first person to be impeached, do you know the office that he held?

Blackburn: No, what was that?

Thompson: He was the state printer. Now you want to talk about, you know, we’ve talked about populism in Oklahoma and wanting to vest power in the people, and the way that our framers of our constitution did that is we elected everything in this state. And including, at one point, we had an elected state printer. Now this is the person that’s going to handle maybe printing bills and documents, printing, you know, government forms and all of those kinds of things. That was an elected position. Can you believe that?

Blackburn: Like the mine inspector and the assistant mine inspector, you know. How’d all those people in Tillman County know who to vote for for mine inspector. But that’s the way that constitution was written.

Thompson: Yeah.

Blackburn: Power to the people. We’re going to maintain control and not let anybody take control over our lives.

Thompson: So as I was preparing to sit on that OETA panel, Dr. Keith Gaddie was one of the people who was going to be on the panel with me. And, you know, of course, I knew off the top of my head because I’d done, you know, just come across this in other research before. I’d known about some of the people that had been impeached in our state. But he texted me and said, you got to talk about Giles Farris, who was the state printer and the very first person to be impeached in the state of Oklahoma. And he was elected the state printer in 1910. By 1912, he was arrested for forging an endorsement on three warrants to the Democrat Publishing Company in Tulsa in the amount of $1,500. The charge was ultimately dismissed, but the House voted to impeach him and the state auditor as well. And it appears that what got caught up is he was attempting to publish the Red Book, and the Red Book was an early document that we had in state government, which was, it listed all of the elected officials in the state. It listed all of the state agencies. It was sort of this general informational book, I think, similar to what we call the almanac today. And he was attempting to publish that, got into some trouble, because apparently didn’t have the authorization or didn’t have the money to do it, forged or attempted to forge some government funding to do that. And the legislature said, you know what? You’re out of here. The Senate voted to remove him from that office in 1913. Also caught up in this little scandal was the state auditor, Leo Meyer, who was impeached for approving claims against the Red Book. But he ended up resigning before the Senate trial. So that’s your first, that’s your first impeachment in state history. The legislature just went ahead and later on in 1913, they just eliminated that position altogether.

Blackburn: You know, it’s my guess, Trait, I don’t know the circumstances, but I would guess that that printer got crossways with the press. The Oklahoma Press Association was organized in 1889. There was an Indian Territory Press Association, Oklahoma Territory. They eventually merged into what we now have still as the Oklahoma Press Association, but especially before radio and TV and before really the consolidation of newspapers in the 1990s in the 21st century, the Press Association was huge at the State Capitol. My guess is that printer got crossways with some of those newspapermen, and it could have been over. Maybe they didn’t get to print something. Or maybe their enemy in that town, next town over. My guess is that they lost the contact with the constituencies that they served.

Thompson: A few other early impeachments that came along, Perry Ballard was the insurance commissioner between 1911 and 1913. He was accused of taking $200 from an insurance company in exchange for approving a license for them. He also received an insurance policy worth $10,000 that he didn’t pay for. So he was impeached in the House, and he resigned before he could be tried in the Senate. His successor, A. L. Welch, ultimately ended up getting impeached as well in 1915 but acquitted by the Senate. So later on in in our discussion, we’ll talk about another insurance commissioner, Carroll Fisher, who was the last person to go through an impeachment process of the House. And that’ll be in the second part of our conversation with Senator Cal Hobson today. A. P. Watson was elected to the Corporation Commission in 1907, and he was accused of borrowing money from people that had cases before the commission. So he was impeached by the House in 1915. And later that year, the Senate convicted him, and he was tossed out of office on two of the nine articles of impeachment. But really where things start getting good is when Governor Jack Walton is elected to office. He was elected in 1922, probably had one of the most unique political campaigns in state history. He was a charismatic, kind of an odd fellow, but a really charismatic fellow. He promised when he was elected that he was going to invite everybody in the state to his inaugural party, and he didn’t have some hoity-toity dance or ball. He had a giant barbecue at the fairgrounds in Oklahoma City. And I think over 100,000 people showed up to that, if I recall correctly. But he was really riding that wave of populism. But he very, very quickly got on the other side. He had a coalition of support that was farmers, socialists, union members kind of all put together, and his coalition started to fall apart pretty quickly very soon after he took office in January 1923.

Blackburn: Well, and I can say that part of his, and one of the reasons was incompetence. He was not a good politician. He had been a street fighter. He had been mayor of Oklahoma City before he ran for governor, and he comes right out of World War I, and it’s a turbulent time. Here you got radio coming on. You got all this displacement. The movie industry is really changing quickly. Bring in all these ideas, not just from New York but from Paris. And there’s this reaction, and this is the era when the Ku Klux Klan is really growing so rapidly. And he kind of taps into this fever of kind of bare-knuckle politics in Oklahoma City. He was the kind of guy that would have jumped up on the back of a wagon and given a campaign speech on the street corner, and people would have come over and been entertained. As you said, he was charismatic, but he was kind of that street fighter. And I don’t really think he ever understood state politics very well. He was fairly new to Oklahoma. In Oklahoma City, street politics are so different from legislative politics and state politics. He went in, just thinking, I think, he was going to have more authority because at that time in Oklahoma City, and until 1925, Oklahoma City’s government was a strong mayor system where the mayor actually ran the government. In ’25, they’d go to the city manager system, where the mayor and the council would hire a professional to run day-to-day. Well, until then, he ran day-to-day. That’s what Walton did. He was used to saying, you’re giving my campaign, if you want to be the policeman, raise some money for me. He had control over it as mayor. So that was his experience. When he steps into the State Capitol not knowing any better, no mentors. Did not have, other than when you talk about the socialists and the farmers and the unions, you’re not going to have many mentors there on how to navigate the politics of the State Capitol. So he went in thinking that he was bigger than he really was and was willing to duke it out and do that, be the street fighter. And it was pushback.

Thompson: Yeah. He used, he started using patronage really as a way to sort of shore up his support, and where he started drawing the ire of legislators is when he started getting involved in the university system, and he wanted to be directly involved in appointing the president of the University of Oklahoma, which, you know, he wanted to appoint someone, which everyone balked against. He tried to replace the president of OSU with a, quote, “radical agitator from Rush Springs.” Ultimately, Dr. William Bizzell from Texas A&M was appointed to that position, who ended up being a good university president. But then he got involved in the Oklahoma A&M presidency, and he appointed, well, he got the, he named an entirely new Board of Agriculture, and then got them to name a socialist, George Wilson, as president. Students protested with chants of “we want educators, not agitators.” So this was very unpopular. And then when Walton got tired of him and want to replace him, he wanted the board to fire Wilson. But the board said, no, you’re going to stick with him now. And ultimately, and this is where it gets really, really interesting. He tried to make entreaties with the KKK and tried to, he actually even paid money to become a Klansman-at-large. And when that didn’t help his fortunes, he decided to completely do a 180. And now we’re going to go all-out war against the KKK, you know? And so that begins his big crusade across the state to try and stamp out the KKK. He declares martial law in Okmulgee County and Tulsa County in the summer of 1923, and this, he imposed a sundown curfew. He suspended the power of the police. He forbade criticism of the state or the military. He imposed military censorship on the Tulsa Tribune. I mean, this is this is very, very heavy-handed on his part. He suspends the writ of habeas corpus, and eventually he declares martial law across the entire state in an effort to combat the KKK. And so this is a man who is maybe a little bit drunk with power. Legislators decided they had had enough, and they didn’t, back in those days, legislators didn’t have a way to call themselves into special session if they wanted to call themselves in the special session. And so they noticed that there was an election that had been set for early October. So they quickly get together an initiative petition, get the signatures, get it on the ballot, which that would never happen today. It takes months and months and even years to get something on the ballot today.

Blackburn: And a lot of lawyers.

Thompson: Yes. Back in those days, I guess they could work a little bit quicker because they got it on the October 2 special election ballot. And, and, ultimately, Walton, he fired the members of the State Election Board to prevent them from certifying the results of the initiative petition and getting it on the ballot. The courts got involved and said, no, it can go on the ballot. It ended up passing 209,000 to 71,000. So as soon as that election was certified, the legislature calls itself into special session. They issue 22 charges of impeachment against Walters. I’m sorry, I said Walters. That’s a slip-up. Walters was way in the 1990s. Walton is who I meant.

Blackburn: Freudian slip there.

Thompson: If Governor Walters is listening, I’m sorry for, sorry for that slip up, but Walton is suspended from office by the legislature. And ultimately, they convict him on 11 counts. So Walton ends up being the shortest term governor in state history. He serves from January to November of 1923. Other than, and this is a little bit of a fluke. when George Nigh served for nine days after Governor Edmondson resigns the post, and then between the next election. But Walton is the only elected governor to serve just that few of the amount of months.

Blackburn: Well, one last thing is, instead of just being stupid and combative and overreaching his own authority, it was a bit of the crook in him as well. One of the Articles of Impeachment was accepting a home from an oilman in Heritage Hills, a mansion that’s still there today. Take you over there to this very moment right there on Walker.

Thompson: Yeah.

Blackburn: but that House was bought by an oil man and given to Walton, and that was one of the Articles of Impeachment. He accepted that, basically a bribe.

Thompson: Yeah. And I should also mention that he, at one point, he called the National Guard out to block the Capitol, to block the legislators from meeting at the Capitol to begin impeachment proceedings against him. So they go downtown, and they go into a downtown office building, probably the Lee-Huckins Hotel, and they meet there to do impeachment charges against him.

Blackburn: One of my favorite photographs is the photograph of the National Guard unit with a machine gun in front of the Senate chambers.

Thompson: Yeah.

Blackburn: And they’re just not going to let anybody in with the machine gun.

Thompson: So, he’s tossed out of office. And ultimately, at least in the short term, Walton’s action ends up really not weakening the Klan, but making it even stronger for several years to come. They were able to bolster support for their mission and cause, such as it was.

Blackburn: One little comment on that, even though they were still strong, the Klan was kind of reaching its maximum popularity. We think at least a half of the legislature were, they were members of the Klan. But Governor Trapp, Martin Trapp, who had been the lieutenant governor, who had been impeached before over bonds. He was a bond salesman and oil properties and not convicted. But he was the elected lieutenant governor and took over. He also went after the Klan, but in a smarter way. He did it with an anti-mask law. He says, yeah, you can march down Main Street, but you got to take your mask off. You can’t do it with a mask on. Well people didn’t want to go down there and have the people in their church see them carrying a flaming cross and threatening to lynch people, running people out of town for morality, the morality police what they really were. If you look at Afghanistan today, it’s a direct parallel to the Klan. And he did the anti-mask, you know, his wife was Catholic, was threatened. Klan went after Catholics. She had to carry a gun.

Thompson: Wow.

Blackburn: At the time that Martin Trapp became the Good Roads governor, he was there who helped push through changes in the Department of Transportation. Brought in Cyrus Avery to run his commission, later got Route 66 established. So Martin Trapp, in his three short years, did more than most governors in four. And he was a shoo-in to be the next governor. But then the legislature, the Supreme Court said, no, he has been governor even for three years and some months. He can’t run again.

Thompson: Yep, back then, the constitution said you could only be governor for one term, and they didn’t consider him a replacement governor or an interim governor. They considered him the governor, and so that was it. He couldn’t come back and run again. Oklahoma became the first state in the country to pass a law prohibiting the wearing of masks in public after Walton was ejected from office, and that was because of Martin Trapp. So, and then we go, of course, like you said, we have a few years of tranquility with Martin Trapp as governor, and then Henry Johnston was elected. Henry Johnston had actually been the first president pro tem of the state Senate. And he comes back, and he is a Democrat of the Grover Cleveland era. He is suspicious of tariffs, monopolies, railroads, and liquor. But really, what gets him in trouble with the legislature is he’s just really kind of indecisive, and he’s not all that great of a leader. He doesn’t have good relationships with a lot of the state legislators.

And in fact, he has Mamie Hammonds as his confidential secretary. Now Mamie was the gatekeeper of all gatekeepers because, when people tried to get in to see the governor, including legislators, she was the one that turned them away at the door and said, well, the governor’s busy you can’t see him now. And legislators begin to get upset at this, and they couldn’t get access to him. And in the meantime, he was, in the highway department, people, the legislators wanted their friends appointed to offices and positions in the highway department, and they wanted their friends who were the contractors to get jobs in the highway department, and Mamie Hammonds was the gatekeeper and wouldn’t let the legislators go talk to the governor about all of this. And there were four legislators that, and this is really will a little apocalyptic here. There were four legislators that were known as the Four Horsemen who tried to eject, or to start impeachment process against Governor Johnston. And these were Tom Knight of Claremore, E. P. Hill of McAlester, Tom Johnson of Antlers, and Robert Graham of Oklahoma City. And this little saga became known as the “Ewe-Lamb Rebellion.” And I just love the “The Four Horsemen of the Ewe Lamb Rebellion.” It’s like we’re reading a Game of Thrones saga or something like that. And ultimately they tried to come after the governor for the terrible crime that the highway department was using asphalt instead of concrete to build roads. So once again, going back to that constitution, if you want to find a reason to impeach, you can find a reason to impeach. And the legislature tried to call itself into special session. This is in November of 1927. And at that point, the Supreme Court got involved and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, this 1923 initiative petition, it wasn’t done correctly. It’s invalidated. You can’t, you can’t use this. It was improperly submitted. And so only the governor now can call people into, call the legislature in a special session. And the legislature ignored the court and said, no, we’re going in special session, and they tried to meet in the Capitol. Well, you know, it’s time to play the greatest hits, Bob. And Johnston calls out the National Guard and he declares the fourth floor of the Capitol as under martial law and blocks the legislators from getting up to the fourth floor of the Capitol to get into the legislative chambers. Thankfully, well, kind of, you know, saved at the nick of time. Christmas holidays came. Things kind of cooled down a little bit.

But Johnston’s undoing came again in 1928 when he vocally supported the presidency of Al Smith. Al Smith was Catholic. Al Smith was a critic of prohibition, and Oklahoma was decidedly not those things. And his vocal support, he was a part man to the through and through and to the end. And his vocal support of Al Smith got him in trouble, and Hoover ended up carrying the state of Oklahoma 394,000 to 219,000 votes. And when the legislature convened in 1929, the House voted for 13 Articles of Impeachment against him. And the Senate later ended up calling 141 witnesses and convicting on one count of incompetency.

Blackburn: Yeah. When I first got to the Historical Society in ’79, there was an old journalist that’d hang around the Capitol. His name was Irvin Hurst. And I knew about Irvin because he had written a book called The 46th Star. It was an early textbook. It never was used in the classrooms, but it had been published, and I had read it in graduate school. So I was really impressed with Irvin. Irvin Hurst told me the story that Henry Johnston had run for governor every time in state. He was one of those perennial people who filed, and we still have them occasionally. Oh yeah, that guy’s run for three times and never gets any support. Henry Johnston had been that person. And in 1926, when it’s time to file again, everyone assumes that Martin Trapp is going to run again because he’s so popular and he’s done so well, has all the support, even the Republicans. And so he’s going to be the governor. So it’s just the perennial people who had run who file again. And then Irvin told me that once he could not run again because of the Supreme Court decision, that he had already had a term, the best one of the perennial filers was Irvin Hurst, and no one else could then file. And so there was no chance to put up competition. So he was the last man standing in a lot of ways. And he said incompetence was the real reason. He said he probably never committed a crime. He was a good church man, a good community leader, but he was just incompetent. He was in way over his head and could not handle it well.

Thompson: And going back on your comment about him being a little bit of a strange person, in reading some of the writings about him, he was a mystic. He preferred solitude. He liked to meditate. He liked, he was big into astrology. And in fact, there was a story that I read in the book Oklahoma Politics: A History that was by Danney Goble and, oh.

Blackburn: Ralph Scales.

Thompson: Yes, and Scales. He even once delayed signing a bill until his personal astrologer advised him that the conditions were favorable. So you can see how people might have looked at him a little funny because of some of those habits that he liked to keep. I do remember reading, going back in the newspaper archives a little while back, and they interviewed Walton about Johnston calling out the National Guard to block the Capitol. And Walton’s responses were like, well, isn’t that cute? I, you know, I already did that back in my day. So yeah, it was, it was déja vu all over again for blocking the Capitol. To my knowledge, since those days, the Capitol has not been blocked by the National Guard. But if someone out there knows different, you can certainly correct me, but those were our two governors who have been impeached through history. I have to believe that had David Hall lasted, he might have been impeached for some of his, for some of the things that he ended up getting nailed on by the feds. And we talk about more about that in our corruption episode as well.

Blackburn: And for him, most of the charges that came out after he was out of office and had already been defeated.

Thompson: Absolutely. So going back and talking about a couple others who were impeached, and we’re not really going to cover the 1965 Supreme Court scandal in this episode because we did a whole episode on it earlier this year, and you guys can go check that out when you have a moment to do it. A. L. Crable was the state superintendent of education from 1936 to 1947, and this is a pretty interesting story. I think one of his big problems was he got on the wrong side of Governor Leon Phillips in the early 1940s because Phillips had a big, big campaign to pass the balanced budget amendment. Up to that point, we did not have a requirement for a balanced budget. And so the state would, over the years, just get a little bit more in debt, a little bit more in debt, and a little bit more in debt until, by the early 1940s, especially with all of the Great Depression in the 1930s, we were really in dire straits in terms of the debt load that our state had taken on. And Crable campaigned hard against that balanced budget amendment because he thought it would adversely affect the schools. And that put him on the wrong side of Leon Phillips. And I’m sure it didn’t win him any friends in the legislature either.

What ended up happening is a textbook scandal in which Crable was accused of, well, Tulsa County grand jury, invited them, indicted them on a textbook conspiracy in 1943, and they charged that the defendants conspired to defraud Oklahoma school patrons out of more than $1.2 million by controlling the adoptions and the price of books used in common schools and that they gave lucrative contracts to textbook publishers willing to keep 10% of the profit and then hike, it’s a kickback scheme, you know, charge 10% more and then give the 10% to the elected officials. And the judge in the case said the evidence indicates a complete unfitness and lack of character on the part of the defendants. The House Special Investigating Committee charged that Crable had been “either the witting or unwitting tool of the textbook grafters.” And so it was kind of a double jeopardy thing there, because if you’re the witting tool, then you should be impeached. If you’re the unwitting tool, then you’re too stupid to be in office, and you should be impeached too. So there was really no way to win in all of that. Representative Streeter Speakman said, wrote to A. L. Crable and said “you could serve your personal interests and the general welfare of the state by finding some other suitable employment. On the other hand, you can remain in office and pull the House down upon your head.”

Ultimately they didn’t end up impeaching him because this is the end of World War II, and there were other pressing matters, and the legislature chose to address those. And the motion to draw the Articles of Impeachment was defeated narrowly by 50 to 48 on April 21, 1944. So that is the school superintendent conspiracy there on the textbooks. And that was one that I hadn’t really been, really been keen to until after my appearance on OETA. I got a letter or an email from a person who had watched it and said, you didn’t mention A. L. Crable. And I said, well, it was only like an eight-minute segment. So, but I didn’t really know much about him. So we went back and found this, and we can cover it now in our podcast. And the last one I want to talk about is Secretary of State John Rogers. He served from 1967 to 1975. And he was brought up on impeachment charges in May of 1975. And ultimately, the Articles of Impeachment allege that he used his office to solicit a foreign corporation operating in Oklahoma to employ a member of his staff, that he closed down his office to prevent the filing of an initiative petition. He knew that there were forged signatures on the 1971 liquor by the drink petition, and he didn’t do anything to report the forged signatures, carelessness with public documents, and that he solicited funds from Bob Naifeh and Johnny Monsour in 1971 for the validation of the 1971 liquor by the drink petition. Ultimately, there was a House report from the Special Investigating Committee that said, let’s hold off to 1976 because it’s at the end of the session. It’s at the end of the year in 1975. We don’t have a lot of time to do this. So let’s wait till the next legislature to impeach or to look at impeachment. There was a minority report that was filed that said, no, we should impeach, and the House ended up adopting the minority report. And so they ultimately ended up impeaching him. Representative Gary Payne said what it all boiled down to, to make a long story short, was the legislature accepted the minority report from the committee, and the House voted impeachment against John Rogers, basically because they didn’t like him, which kind of emphasizes the fact that an impeachment proceeding is as much political as it is legal.

And so that really just highlights what we’ve been talking about here is, yes, there is a bit of a law that comes in that when the Senate goes into session to consider an impeachment, to take someone out of office and adopt the Articles of Impeachment, they do sit as a jury, and they do vote, and it is a two-thirds. It does require two-thirds of the quorum to be able to actually act on the Articles of Impeachment. But this is a political process at its heart, and it’s all about who’s got the votes and who doesn’t. So that was John Rogers, and he was ultimately impeached, but he was, he resigned before the Senate trial started. And that was the last impeachment proceeding before we get to Carroll Fisher in 2004. And that’s a great place to start with our guest.

Blackburn: That’s right.

Thompson: Well, Bob, I’m really excited about the guest we have today. Cal Hobson is a man that I’ve gotten to know a little bit over the past few years and just respect his time in public service. So I’ll introduce him formally. He was born in 1945, in Tucson, Arizona, while his father was serving in the US Army Air Corps. He and his family returned to Oklahoma and settled in Wayne, Oklahoma, later Lexington. He attended the University of Oklahoma and graduated with a degree in history. He served an active duty in the Air Force from 1968 to ’74, was deployed abroad in 1989 during the invasion of Panama while serving in the Oklahoma National Guard, and he retired from the military in 1999 with the rank of colonel. He was elected mayor of Lexington in 1975 and to the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 1978. He served in the House until 1990, was then elected to the Senate, and he was elected president pro tempore of the Senate from 2003 to 2005. After retiring from politics, he began teaching at the University of Oklahoma, and he’s still teaching there today. He lives in Lexington on his fifth-generation family farm that was obtained during the 1889 Land Run. Senator Hobson, Cal Hobson, it is such a great honor to have you with us here today, and thank you for making time for us.

Cal Hobson: It’s my great pleasure. This will be a lot of fun.

Thompson: Well, I thought we could start out before we jump into talking about impeachment and specifically the impeachment of Carroll Fisher in 2000, in the early 2000s. I thought we could start out and talk a little bit about your career in public service. You started out as a mayor. What compelled you to make that first jump into public office?

Hobson: If I’m not careful, this would be the entire 30 minutes. But here’s the short version. I just returned to Lexington from military duty and enrolled back in graduate school at OU. But being the world knowledgeable fellow I was, I saw a problem in Lexington and thought it ought to be addressed. So I went down to city council, and I was the only one there, of course. And they had their meeting, and the town clerk, they adjourned and she said, wait, wait, wait. We have a visitor. You all remember Calvin Hobson from high school here? He’s got a suggestion. So they recognized me and I said, here’s what I’m suggesting. These three for four blocks from the highway up to the high school, the kids, there’s not sidewalks. The kids have to walk in the street. And I’m just suggesting one stop sign, just one stop sign. So those kids driving to school just have to slow down a little bit. Seemed reasonable. Well, the guy that represented in my part of town jumped up and said, well, you’re so damn smart. You get on the council.

(laughing)

Hobson: I quit. I said, I don’t want on the council, I’m just a stop sign. And anyway, he just stormed out and the mayor says, yeah, you’re so smart. Get up here. I’m going to swear you in. So that evening, I became a council member. The next month for the elections, all of them either quit or got beat. I was now the senior member of the council with four new ones, and the senior member is the mayor. (laughter)

Thompson: All I can think of is the phrase “that escalated quickly.”

Hobson: It escalated very quickly. And but I was determined to prove I was right, the need of a stop sign. So I followed up. I got a federal grant for this, for a study of our entire town. And you know what the federal grant said? You don’t need just one stop sign. You need 56 stop signs. Being the aggressive liberal that I was, I said, you’re going to pay for all of them to be put up for safety for everybody. Yes. So they put them up. They were there less than a week. Somebody came to town, cut the heads off the stop signs.

Thompson: Whoa.

Hobson: I found them in a bar ditch on my farm out east of Lexington. So I learned a lesson. Don’t give people more government than they might want. That’s how I got involved in politics.

Blackburn: Conservative populism strikes again. (laughing)

Thompson: Yeah.

Hobson: True story.

Blackburn: That’s a good, I’d never heard that one. Randy Splaingard wrote about it. So anyway.

Thompson: And so from there, you go on to serve in the House and you, you know, chaired several committees in the House.

Hobson: Yeah.

Thompson: Well, what compelled you to jump from local politics into state politics?

Hobson: Well, there was a fellow named David Boren running for the United States Senate in 1978, and there was a fellow very prominent bond attorney named Glenn Floyd in Norman, Oklahoma, a member of the House who said, I’m going to run against Boren. He’s a crook. So Glenn announces he’s going to run, creates a vacancy in the House. That’s the time to run. So five of us Democrats and one Republican filed. I won. That’s kind of how that transpired. Of course, Glenn Floyd ended up not running. And, you know, the rest of the story about Boren. So that’s how I arrived at the House.

Thompson: Very nice. And then you get into the Senate. Did you have aspirations of leadership in the Senate when you moved over?

Hobson: I tried the leadership path in the House. There’s a couple of interesting wrinkles there real quick. For the only time in the history of the state, I believe, there was a revolt in the House that many people say I led, which led to the removal of Speaker Jim Barker.

Blackburn: Linda Larason, my state representative, was part of your split tea group.

Hobson: We met at her house the night before the removal. Anyway, from that, I became the appropriations chairman in the House and planned to stay. However, it didn’t turn out so well for me there. So I ran against an incumbent in Norman, a senator who had voted against the education funding bill 1017 and was lucky enough to defeat him. And that led to 12 more years in the Senate.

Thompson: Did term limits affect you at all, or did you did you escape those?

Hobson: Oh, term limits, in a funny way, actually were beneficial. The timing on the term limits at that time when it passed declared that those elected to a term in 1990, that term didn’t count. So in effect, those of us elected that year ended up with 16 years instead of 12. So, it did affect me eventually in 2006, but in in 1990, when you’re thinking about that, it doesn’t seem like a huge burden. You know, I was a staffer for President Pro Tem Brian Bingman for about four years. And I got an up-close and front-row view of how difficult it is to manage a caucus, to hold everything together, to work with the governor, even, you know, even when you’re talking about a governor of your same party, you’re talking about caucus members in your same party. It’s just a very difficult thing to do. So what was your experience as you were working to pass legislation to try to hold a coalition together? How did you manage all of that?

Hobson: Well, fate, luck, those kinds of things, starting with the fact that, Brad Henry wasn’t supposed to win.

Thompson: That’s right.

Hobson: In 2002. He did win. Larry Adair, speaker of the House, was supposed to lose the majority in 2002. He picked up a seat. And on our side, there was also talk that the Senate will go Republican. Those first two things happen, and we ended up with 26 Democrats, 22 Republicans, one spare is how that works out, as you know. Fortunately, what Brad Henry cared about and wanted to do matched what I wanted to do. And with one exception, it matched what Speaker Adair wanted to do. There were three or four big things that I announced in my acceptance speech. Number one, finally solved the casino legal,/illegal argument with the tribes. Number two, tie that with the horse racing industry because Remington was about to fold again, try to put that package together. Next thing, Brad cared a great deal about a lottery. You recall he wanted a lottery for education. Third thing, I wanted to pass a cigarette tax earmarked for health care. Those big three, and then a $500 million bond issue for higher education, largest in the history of the state. So those four things I was determined to get done. There were other things, but that’s where I set my mind.

Unfortunately, the one thing Adair wasn’t for, he wouldn’t carry the lottery bill. I never been told why, but he wouldn’t. But we got Clay Pope to carry it, and that’s the end of that story. Money for education, money for health care and long-term capital bond program for higher education.

Thompson: You know, one of the things you mentioned just brought to mind, you were the last Democrat pro tem to preside over a Democrat majority in the Senate, because in 2006, that’s when the elections that went to a tie for two years.

Hobson: That’s right.

Thompson: Before it went Republican after that. And so, you were the last, you were the last Democrat pro tem with a Democratic caucus.

Hobson: Yeah, and you had, you know, the joke always is herding squirrels or something. Cats in a wheelbarrow. Brother, I can identify with that. If you had two missing, you couldn’t have a process. You couldn’t pass anything. One, you can still pass a bill if all 25 prima donnas would be helpful on that particular day. And you know what I’m talking about when I say that.

Thompson: Yeah, yeah. Well, when Pro Tem Bingaman was in there, we had a majority. I want to say it was 32, 33. Wasn’t like it is today with 40 or so.

Hobson: Yeah.

Thompson: I can’t even imagine what that would feel like.

Hobson: That’s the point now. They’ve grown to the point, they act like Democrats. You got a conservative, conservative, conservative wing. You got some moderates. You got whatever you got. And in my case, I just told them, look, you’re the 26 most powerful people in Oklahoma. Do you want to act like it and pass some major things, or do you want a bunch of factions and do nothing? And that seemed to work on those items I talked about.

Thompson: Bob, you and Senator Hobson worked together to make sure that the building that we’re sitting in got built. And I’m very thankful for that.

Blackburn: Right. Well Cal served in the legislature with my wife, Debbie. And then, of course I had gone to see him when, even though I didn’t have a museum in your district, senator, I still made the rounds. I could see leadership potential. And Linda Larason was a close personal family friend. But anyway, so I knew him. And so he goes into the Senate. Well, in 1999, the first bond issue for the History Center was passed, and we had done a study, said we needed at least $46 million, if not more, to build a Smithsonian National Archives quality facility. had good support, but it came out they only appropriated $32 million in that first bond issue. Well, the leadership said, well, go ahead and build the $46 million, and we’ll get you more money. So the Board of Directors was unanimous, and we said, let’s just hope for the future. Keep moving ahead. So we went up for bid and started building, with the bigger picture in mind.

Well, Governor Keating leaves office, and no more bond money had come forward. So here comes Brad Henry. Here comes Senator Hobson into the Senate. Larry Adair there in the House. And I knew Larry as well. And so first went to Brad Henry. Kind of the protocol. Brad Henry who said I’m all for it. Yeah. Whatever we can do, we’ll do it. House. Larry Adair, yeah, we got the votes here. I’ll go to Senator Hobson I’ll never forget that day. Mike Morgan in here in his office. They have a staff member on the other side of the table, kind of like you would have done for Brian Bingman. What was his name, Senator?

Hobson: Well, it was probably Vic Thompson.

Blackburn: That was Victor. You’re right. Vic Thompson sitting there. So I come in, and I make my case. I said, we want to build this History Center. Been around since 1893. Public-private partnership. We’re collecting your story. You know, the sales pitch that I’d used so often raising money. And I said I need to do it. Well, I also knew it was a revenue shortfall year. They were furloughing teachers that year. So I knew going in, so I had to have a strategy walking in the office. Jim Joseph, the bond authority guru, had coached me. He said, well, if you’re going to go ask, you need to know this. He said, there’s a way that you don’t need any cash for two years. You can amortize interest on a bond issue. I said, explain that to me. So they explained it to me. So I said, don’t need cash. I’ll make this sell easier. And so I went in, and Cal looked at me and said, I’ve got all these other needs. What you just mentioned in your goals, you had that first of all, and I left and I thought, well, what can I do now of new occupation? I’m going to be leaving this History Center halfway finished and bankrupt. So yeah, I can go back in academia. Well, I went for my run. Didn’t feel much better. I shouldn’t say this on the air, but I had a beer on the front porch.

But I had a cell phone, and I get a call, and I pick it up, and it’s Mike Morgan. He was chairman of appropriation for the senator, and he said, Cal and I were talking after you left, and we understand your dilemma. We’ll support you, if. They gave me four conditions, you may not remember the exact, but one, you have to get two-thirds of the entire Senate to sign up to say they’ll vote for it. They didn’t want to be a partisan because it was so close. So you got to get some Republicans. I couldn’t do it with just Democrats. So I had to get Republicans Second, no logrolling. They knew the traditions around there. If you start at one end, everyone wants to add one to it. Yeah, I’ll support if you’ll do this. No log rolling. If something was added, it was dead. They said we don’t believe you that you can amortize interest, but we’re going to trust you. And if that’s true, we’ll support it. And then last, you’ve got to match it with $12 million in the private sector. I was asking at that time $18 million, so you got to raise it $12 million. For some reason, I don’t know if fate or what? I put down that phone, I got it. I, you know, I didn’t have it, but I felt that way that very moment. So I get the roll call sheets, start working. I’ll never remember. Stratton Taylor was still in the Senate. He stayed after he finished his pro tem. He called me Robert Moses. He said, how did you put that deal together? You’re like Robert Moses. And at the time I’d read the book, Robert Moses. But I said, I’m not sure that’s a compliment, but I’ll take it.

Hobson: That’s a high compliment coming from Stratton.

Blackburn: But anyway, I got the votes and spoke to the Republican caucus, and there were a couple of senators who said, Bob, why would we be against this? So, you know, there are a few key individuals around.

And so I went back to Senator Hobson. I said, here’s my roll call sheet. He said, I can’t believe you got those. And he said, how about the money? I said, we’re raising money right now. I’ve got two or three big corporations. I had OneOK at that moment in Tulsa, maybe, Noble Foundation, of course, Chesapeake and Devon, Kerr-McGee. I said, we’re going to do this.

Thompson: Who was my minority leader at the time?

Hobson: It was a split deal, was either Coffey or Williams.

Thompson: Williamson. Williamson.

Blackburn: You know, Senator Coffey supported us. And he was co-pro tem for a couple of years. And I admired the way that he and Mike Johnson and the appropriations shared with Mike.

Hobson: Yeah.

Blackburn: And Johnnie Crutchfield. That was much better transition in the House. But anyway, we got it all. Never had to, and we got the votes, and it passed. And we got that second bond issue that you used to help leverage some of that money in your base to make those payments, to help you out now. So your investment, that was a 20-year bond, fortunately not 30. Well, when that matured, that money was still on the base. And Trait made a really good deal with the legislature to invest it again. Capital improvement.

Hobson: . Correct.

Blackburn: They keep doing it. But I say without Senator Hobson saying yes, we were dead in the water in a revenue shortfall year.

Hobson: Well, we thought that we had made the hill so high, there’s no way he could raise that money. (laughing)

Hobson: So, well, I could say that now, but, anyway, he did very quickly. And so we had to put up, and I’m glad we did.

Blackburn: Yeah.

Thompson: Well, now I have to say, today we’re sitting in a world-class Smithsonian-rated facility that puts Oklahoma on the map in terms of historic preservation and interpreting our own history. And we just had a group of board members a couple of months ago from AASLH, which is the American Association of State and Local History organizations. And people from all over the country that came in here for a reception. And they were just in awe of what we have here in Oklahoma. And so that investment has put us on the map, and we are continuing these investments. You know, a couple of years ago, we got $46 million to continue to invest, not only here but in our museums and sites around the state. We are now toward the end of our useful life on some of our HVAC and boiler equipment. And so I’ll be going to the legislature this spring to ask for a few dollars to, you know. We have to, not only do we like to work in air-conditioned offices, but, you know, we hold some of our state’s most precious artifacts in this building. And so to keep them in the proper climate and humidity, those are things that we need to do. So the work continues. But we wouldn’t be where we are today without you gentlemen and a whole lot more as well.

Hobson: I just would like to add, this is one of the jewels that I’ll always remember. The other one that still stands out in my mind was so difficult. It was the putting together the National Weather Center down at OU. And the story behind that, I try to keep it to 30 seconds or a minute. Just we didn’t have the money. It was, oh gosh. About 2000, same difficult time frame. Yeah, it was the last of Keating. Anyway, Boren, as Boren does, you know, we got the federal money. We’ve got to have $18 million. We didn’t have five cents. So I remembered another pot of money from years earlier, and I checked it, and it had grown, and it was a one-penny assessment on gasoline to clean up underground storage tanks at service stations. Voilà. I checked over at the Corporation Commission. They’re sitting on a lot of money, and I said, let’s go get that. Extend the length of the time the penny exists. We’ll pay him back more than we’re taking, but all hell broke loose. But we passed it in the Senate, 47 to nothing. I thought I was home free, and then the minority leader, who was then the majority leader in the House, Fred Morgan, first Republican majority leader in decades, said I’m not for that because it’s Cal Hobson’s.

Blackburn: Because you’re for it.

Hobson: Yeah. That’s right. And so instead of a slam dunk, the vote in the House was 53 to 47. But it passed, and it’s down there now. These two things.

Blackburn: And world-class.

Hobson: It’s wonderful.

Blackburn: It saved millions of lives.

Hobson: And oh my goodness, yes. So those are kind of some special events.

Thompson: Well let’s jump into our topic today. And Bob, we’ve been talking about some of the history of impeachments in the state of Oklahoma. And the reason I wanted to have Senator Hobson here is the last impeachment in the House was in 2004 with the insurance commissioner, Carroll Fisher. Carroll Fisher was elected in 1998. He served from 1999 to 2004. And I wanted to get into, you were the pro tem during that. Now, Fisher resigned before the trial could start in the Senate. But in doing my research, you all had met, you had organized yourselves and were getting ready for that. So I’d love to go back and talk about your memories of what was the situation going on back in those days? What, you know, how did Carroll Fisher come to be in a place where he had Articles of Impeachment filed against him? And what was the mood of the moment? Because once again, this is, Democrats, coming against a Democrat here.

Hobson: Correct. Carroll Fisher was an extremely likable fellow, and he came around a lot, unlike some statewides who show up once every four years, or when they need money. Fisher was a frequent visitor in and around the Capitol. Great storyteller, back slapper, and so it was a shock in many ways that he had been doing what he was doing. And so there were at least three felony charges lodged against him. And so the momentum was building, partly because he was a Democrat. You know, part of the era of when you still had statewide elected Democrats, but the Republicans were growing numerically. And so it was an opportunity for them to do what probably they should have done. They’re corrupt. They’re evil. We need to get this guy out of here. Well, one thing led to another, as you know, and the House, I think, actually voted Articles of Impeachment, which sent this issue over to the Senate. There had not been, I may be wrong about this, but I think the previous time there was an actual impeachment goes all the way back to the judicial impeachments.

Thompson: There was one between it, Rogers, 1975. John Rogers, secretary of state.

Hobson: Thank you, thank you. He didn’t make that news quite as big as the three judges. But bottom line, it’s a pretty rare event. Not rare that impeachments might be talked about or even impeachments past. Because if I had my facts right, it takes only a simple majority.

Thompson: That’s right.

Hobson: In the House to pass impeachment. But then the plot thickens. And when it comes to the Senate, I believe it takes two-thirds.

Thompson: That’s right.

Hobson: To remove. And you set up a court, as I recall. I may be wrong on this too. As I recall, we were in the process of building a witness stand. People would go up there, be sworn in. The chief justice of the Supreme Court is the presiding officer, and the Senate leadership would designate one or more managers to be the prosecutor. I don’t recall, you all can help me, if we had identified such a person or persons to be the prosecutor of Fisher. But before we got to that point, a law firm had been hired to represent the Senate, those kinds of things. So we were fairly well along. And as I recall, Fisher resigned prior to the actual commencement of an impeachment trial.

Thompson: I found the House resolution, number 1040, that was passed 84 to 12 that created the Special Investigating Committee in the House. And this is what was in the resolution as being part of the charges against Carroll Fisher. First, embezzling money raised in connection with an insurance education program and with operating a charity illegally. He was reprimanded by the Ethics Commission in 2002 for violating ethics rules, saying he used his position to obtain confidential documents about his opponent from the Farmers Insurance Group. Third on the list was he solicited and accepted gifts in the form of artwork and furniture, valuing approximately $30,000, from entities that he regulated. He distributed Friends of Fisher stickers to medical professionals and instructed that they be attached to insurance submissions for faster claims processing. (laughter)

Thompson: That was a good one. I almost had to give him points for creativity. (laughter) Wrote a check for $35,000 to a Florida attorney for attorney fees and expenses from an account that was forced into conservatorship by the insurance department, and the check was written two weeks after the two attended the Super Bowl together. So those were the five things. And in May 2003, he deposited a $1,000 campaign check into his overdrawn personal bank account, in that May, and did not disclose the donation on his campaign reports to the Ethics Commission. And so he argued that he was using the money to test the waters for a 2004 US Senate campaign. But of course, he didn’t end up, and of course, that didn’t end up happening. (laughter) So those were some of the charges and of course, you know, mix that with some charges at the, you know, impeachment is a largely political process, but he was also having his own legal troubles. He had felony charges that were filed against him as well.

Hobson: Yeah, the interesting question to ask after all that recitation of his misdeeds, how were there 12 “no” votes on impeachment with a vote of 84 to 12? It only would take, what is it, a simple majority of those present.

Thompson: Right.

Hobson: So you could actually have a far less than the maximum number to pass impeachment. But that was a strong message. Apparently Ds and Rs were together on the issue. And you know, the 22 Republicans in the Senate at that time, or close to it, would have been very much in line with an impeachment trial because he’s got a D after his name. He’s a part of the Democratic, and there were several statewide elected Democrats at the time. We were part of the old guard and doing all the wrong things. But he just folded as he should have, prior to an actual trial.

Thompson: So he was impeached on September 9, 2004, on five articles of impeachment, which included neglect of duty, embezzlement, and incompetency. And so this is September of ’04. The legislature turns into a pumpkin in November of ’04 because you have the elections, and then we’re getting ready to transition over to a new legislature at that point. So, by my research, by mid-September of ’04, you guys are looking to organize yourself as the court of impeachment. Do you remember kind of feeling, you know, the pressure of trying to get this done in a quick manner? And then also it had been almost 20 years since the last impeachment. So where do you go to look for for guidance on how to do all of this?

Hobson: Well, old timers, Stipe was still there. Charlie Ford over in the Republican Party. Jerry Smith, who I made judiciary chairman, once I had the power to do that, the only Republican ever judiciary chairman. I did it over the opposition of my own caucus because I thought he was the most qualified person in the Senate to do it, and he did a great job.

Thompson: Wait a second. Wait, wait, wait.

Hobson: Okay. Yeah.

Thompson: You actually took into account who was qualified to do a job?

Hobson: That one rare occasion.

(laughing) It was the exception to the rule.

Thompson: I’m just saying politics has changed a lot, and, you know, you don’t think it has, but, you know, that’s a pretty big deal. That just today looks almost like a fantasy land.

Hobson: Well, Kris Steele, once former Republican speaker of the House, we got along very well, even after I recruited a guy to beat him when he ran for the Senate in order to replace Brad Henry. Charlie Laster last year beat him over in Shawnee, but we remained good friends and later worked together on many criminal justice issues. I still see him occasionally. So it was different days back then where you you did, out of necessity and probably occasional good sense, would pick out somebody in the other party and try to have a kind of a unified effort. The toughest bill I ever carried, and I’ll get back to that other point. Toughest bill I ever carried was trying to put together the casino solution tied to racino horse racing. And you’ve got all these elements of horse groups, thoroughbred, quarter horses, all that. That was the toughest bill ever. And I got five Republicans to vote for it in the in the Senate, which was a shocker.

But we were talking about what was going on in this time frame, of having this on our mind, the impeachment coming. But I was more focused on the fact I was about to lose the majority in the Senate. And I’ll give you a great example. The fella, you’ll have to help me. The Democrat from Lawton that played professional baseball.

Thompson: Randy Bass.

Hobson: Thank you. Randy Bass. We had an open seat down there, and Randy was our nominee. But it was going to be tough to hold that seat. It’s about 11 o’clock at night, election night, November whatever of 2004. And we’re losing, and we’re going to lose the majority. And the only box out down in that Lawton area was the little town of Cache. And lo and behold, the Cache boxes, two of them, came in overwhelmingly for Randy. They must’ve loved baseball. And we caught up and held a majority. So I’m trying to find Randy Bass because he had gone home, I thought. Well, he hadn’t gone home. He went to a Lawton bar. And I finally ran him down there and he said, I’m sorry I let you down. I said, you’re going to let me down if you don’t show up in the morning to caucus because you won. I presume he fell off the bar stool, but he was there the next day. It was that kind of environment mixed with what you’re asking about, plus those elections about lottery, casino. What was the third one? Cigarette tax for health. So yeah, it was a busy time.

Blackburn: And what I might here too that amazes me to this day, and I still think we need to get Glenn Coffee and Mike Morgan on a stage together to talk about their willingness to work together with co-power. And of course, we’ve lost Mike unfortunately. I’ve seen Mike in just recent years. Got to talk to him before he passed away. But Johnnie Crutchfield, they work well together in appropriations. I remember meeting with the two of them. And then I had two chairmen, co-chair of subcommittees. That was a difficult time for us agency directors.

Hobson: Oh, yeah.

Blackburn: But I appreciated the way that Glenn Coffee and Mike Morgan made that work that year.

Hobson: Yeah.

Blackburn: And really, to me, the power in the Capitol moved to the Senate to those years because you all kept the staff. House had cleaned house, and all the corporate memory was thrown out.

Hobson: Because Fred Morgan had cleaned house, because he had become the speaker on the outside. Am I remembering that right?

Blackburn: Well, I don’t know that he became speaker, but he would have been in the leadership. Todd, no, Todd Hiett, I think.

Hobson: Well, yes, I’m sorry. Morgan had been the minority leader. That’s right. And Todd Hiett, that’s right.

Blackburn: But they came in and just angry, cleaned house. The Senate had the professional staff.

Hobson: Absolutely.

Blackburn: At least I retired three years ago, the Senate was still leading on writing the budget, And it happened, well, during those years, you know, they shared power. But I’ve always admired the way that you all pulled that off.

Hobson: Well, when I was giving my departure speech, Coffee and then Williamson, or Williamson and then Coffee, had been minority leaders during my time as pro tem, and I gave them the labels. As I made my remarks, I said, Senator Williamson to me is Mr. Grumpy. I could never get him to smile, never happy about anything. But the opposite is Mr. Happy, because Glenn Coffee is always smiling and happy and grinning. The problem was, I could make a deal with Williamson, but I couldn’t with Mr. Happy. So it’s one of those internal nonsensical things.

Thompson: Well, and I’ll tell you this about Williamson, because when I started in the pro tem’s office, he was the chief advisor to Pro Tem Bingman.

Hobson: Yeah.

Thompson: And you want to talk about the guy who knew the rules backwards and forwards and knew how, you know, because when you’re a minority, you have to come up with anything you can to try and thwart the other side. And a lot of times, you’re going to do it through the rules because it’s all you have at your disposal. And I learned so much from Jim Williamson. And he was there, I think, for two years in my first two years working in the Senate. And I wouldn’t trade for those times that I had to kind of sit at his feet and learn what he knew.

Hobson: And that is why I found him so frustrating, because he outfoxed me so many times as I was flying by the seat of my pants. I shouldn’t have been pro tem. I know that. It was a fluke deal of even how that happened because of the others that were running at that time, but occasionally I could outflank him. I remember, we were sitting down, just the three of us, Williamson, myself, and Brad Henry, talking about what we were going to do and all that. And I just blurted out, governor, I’m going to move that bill dealing with the casino and the horse racing on Wednesday, or something like that. And Jim said, you’re not going to do that. And I said, sure am. And he said, you won’t get a single vote in our caucus. I said, we’ll see. There were reasons why those five broke from his caucus. It helped me with the numbers. We don’t need to go into that, but I think that’s the only time I ever outflanked him on anything important.

Blackburn: Well, and he was a minority leader, Trait, when I asked to speak to the entire Republican caucus, you know, I could try to pick them off, but the group dynamics was always different from individuals, and a lot of times some would say, yeah, I’ll vote for it and change their minds. So I needed to go to a caucus, and he allowed me to go to the caucus.

Hobson: Yeah.

Blackburn: In fact, the only time in my 25 years as director here I talked to the entire Republican caucus.

Hobson: Is that right?

Blackburn: Until Bingman. There was Senator Bingman who allowed me to do that several years in a row. That’s where I met Trait. And Bingman had six years. Didn’t he have the full three?

Thompson: Yeah, he did, and I worked for him for four years, and he had two after that.

Blackburn: My story with Trait is that I’m trying to pitch Senator Bingman on a museum in Tulsa on popular culture. So I’m sitting there talking, and there was always the guy in the corner, whether it was the pro tem’s office, the speaker. There’s always someone out there, taking notes. What did you promise today, senator?

(laughing) You asked, what did I just deal with? So there’s always somebody. Yeah. And I was always aware but rarely in the conversation. So I’m making a pitch, and all of a sudden the person behind starts speaking up in favor. I look around. It was Trait. He was from Tulsa. And he knew the Tulsa community and says this will work over. I said, I need to know that young man. And so I circle back around and says, who are you? And that’s when we became friends. But that was a good day.

Thompson: Yeah, maybe to my detriment. I didn’t have much of a filter sometimes, and I would speak up a little too often.

Hobson: I will tell you the time I met you, you won’t remember, but it was one of the few times I think I was already out. Whenever you were put in charge of redoing the Capitol. What was the timeframe on that?

Thompson: I started in that in 2014.

Hobson: Yeah. Okay. It was years later. Anyway, I was going out of the Senate chambers, been there for some reason, and the door open, and you were coming in, and I looked up this mountain of a man and I said, hi, I’m Cal Hobson, and he says, I know senator. I’m Trait Thompson. And then I read later that you were in charge of redoing the Capitol. I said to myself, at least you’ll be able to pick up the two by fours. He’s big enough to do that.

(laughing)

Hobson: I didn’t know anything else except that.

Thompson: I just got hit in the head with two by fours occasionally.

Hobson: It’s a beautiful, beautiful place.

Thompson: It all turned out well. Some days, I questioned my own sanity on why I agreed to do that.

Blackburn: Boy, I was sold on his managerial skills. I knew about trying to do anything at the Capitol. No one’s in charge. The Senate thought they were in charge of every square foot. The House wanted of their square feet. And of course, everyone else thought they were in charge, and Trait was having to swim in those shark-infested waters.

Hobson: Absolutely.

Blackburn: Day-by-day and keeping it going. And multiple bond issues and just but it was masterful.

Hobson: It was indeed.

Thompson: And now I’m happy to be over here.

Hobson: Are you really?

Thompson: I couldn’t be more thrilled. I couldn’t be more thrilled. And just to put a bow on the Fisher conversation, he ended up resigning September 27, 2004, and he ended up being sentenced to 14 months in prison for the felony charges that were brought against him. And then in 2009 pleaded no contest to bribery while in office, which ended up being, I think, another six-month term at a correctional facility in Tulsa. And so, that was an unfortunate chapter, I’m sure, for him and in our state’s history as well. But the last time we’ve done an impeachment and, of course, you know, those who keep up with current news, who knows if we’re going to do one again anytime soon, and we will keep an eye on that. And, of course, all the historians will be ready to record that for posterity if any of that should happen with anybody. Well, Senator Hobson, it’s just been so great to sit with you here today. Thank you for sharing your memories with us. And of course, thank you for your many years of service to our state.

Hobson: It was all fun for me, I assure you.

Blackburn: Well, and I’ll second that. And thank you, Cal, for being a friend of history and a historian by nature and just serving the state so well in the military and in public service. Well, I finally put to use that history degree that I couldn’t feed my family with originally. But learning the history of the state has certainly benefited me in those courses at OU, and they love having people with you all’s background and knowledge come in and tell them how we got to where we are. And we’ve got a whole bunch enrolled in this coming October, and we’ll talk about that in a minute, too.

Thompson: It sounds good.

Hobson: Okay.

Thompson: Sounds good. All right, well, it’s good seeing you, and we’ll see you down the road.

Hobson: Thank you, sir.

Thompson: Bob, I really enjoyed sitting down with Senator Hobson and hearing some of his stories and his recollection, not only from the time involving the impeachment, but just hearing more about his time in public service and some of the things that he was a part of. What a great person who’s been involved in passing some great legislation in the history of our state.

Blackburn: Well, it’s fun occasionally to pull the curtain back and let people hear about the way things really happen in the State Capitol. And I think Cal has been a part of so many things in the House and the Senate, and over the years, a passionate advocate for a lot of progressive legislation, has always tried to do what he thought was best for the state. And I’ve always appreciated his real commitment to public service.

Thompson: Well, Bob, I want to leave us with this thought, and in doing research for this episode, I came across a quote by “Alfalfa Bill“ Murray, and you know, Alfalfa is who Alfalfa was. And so I don’t often like to quote him, but I found that this quote has a particular, a particular importance into the topic that we’ve been talking about today. And it says, “The people have a right to elect a fool, and the best way to cure them of that habit is to let him stay in office.”

Blackburn: Let him speak.

Thompson: All right, Bob, well, it’s been great, and we’ll see you next time.

Blackburn: Thank you. Looking forward to it.

(upbeat music playing)

Thompson: You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.

(upbeat music playing)

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