"And if, if I'm being entirely honest, it wasn't just that. It was also that I was running against a guy [Dewey Bartlett] who was running to be the longest serving mayor in the history of the city. And I knew that term limiting myself would differentiate me from him by saying I would only do eight years, versus a guy who, if he got reelected, would be doing it for 12 and so I committed to it when I ran.”
This is my sixth interview with Tulsa Mayor George Theron Bynum IV, but nobody calls him by his first (or middle) name. G.T. Bynum has been the city’s mayor since 2016. It was the summer of that year, before he took office — and I was working at Tulsa People at the time — that I thought it would be a good idea to meet with him every six months or so and track the trajectory or descent of his administration.
He agreed. I thought then (I think now) — and it is something I never discussed with the mayor but I think he knew — that the conversations would be part journalism, part kibitzing, part talk show dynamic, part nakedly partisan, part two guys talking politics at lunch.
I thank him for putting himself through it. He had nothing to gain from meeting with a cranky liberal columnist who would make fun of the sofa he got from Ronald Reagan or question his motives on a host of topics. We did five within the first three years, but then I left Tulsa People, as well as Tulsa Voice, and there was no landing place for these interviews. With Bynum’s term about to end, though, I wrote him earlier in the summer and asked if he’d like to get together for one more.
I didn’t expect that by the end of it we’d be talking about Grateful Dead lyrics.
BF: I don’t want to put you in the Rudy Giuliani role and I certainly don’t want to be Tim Russert, but after 9/11, Russert said to Giuliani that as far as he was concerned, he could be mayor forever. You promised me eight years ago, at our first lunch, before you were even elected, you were only going to do this for eight years. It’s eight years. You’re probably as popular now as ever. Why get out?
GTB: I'm glad externally it looks that way. And I asked my granddad that actual — that actual question — one time. [His grandfather, Robert LaFortune, Tulsa’s 31st mayor, served from 1970-1978. GT’s cousin, Bill LaFortune, was Tulsa’s mayor from 2002-2006] ‘You're wildly popular. You were still young, you were only 51 when you retired. Why didn’t you keep doing it?’
(Robert LaFortune, who died earlier this year at the age of 97, casts a welcoming shadow over his grandson.)
And he said, ‘If you're doing it the way it should be done. Eight years is enough, just physically, mentally, emotionally.’ I can appreciate what he meant like it is. It's not something that you do nine to five and quit thinking about the end of the day. Like it's your whole life, 24 hours a day. And I love it if, if I were comfortable, like letting off the gas and not working as hard, probably could do it for longer, but I would feel guilty doing that. So you just give it all you got in the time that you got, and then be done with it.
BF: Sol there's no gas left of the tank.
GTB: Well, we still have 138 days. Okay?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Friedman of the Plains to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.