Patrice Douglas, born 1962(1), an
Oklahoma corporation commissioner and former mayor of Edmond, is running
for the US Congress, August 2014.
Patrice Douglas grew up in a family of hard-core Democrats and
sorely disappointed her grandmother when she registered as a Republican
in 1980 to vote for Ronald Reagan.
“We’re working men,” her
grandmother told her back then. “That’s why we’re Democrats.”
At
the time, Douglas was a recent graduate of Putnam City North High School
in Oklahoma City and a freshman at Oklahoma Christian University. She
worked on her first political campaign that fall too, volunteering to
help Republican Don Nickles in his race for the U.S. Senate. Christian
conservatives — the Moral Majority in the 1980 parlance — helped sweep
Reagan and Nickles into office.
Douglas, an Oklahoma corporation
commissioner and former mayor of Edmond, is running for Congress and
faces retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steve Russell in the runoff primary on
Tuesday to decide the Republican nominee for the 5th District seat. The
two are hoping to replace Republican Rep. James Lankford, who is running
for Senate.
Douglas says her grandmother became a Reagan Democrat
in 1984 — there were a lot of them in Oklahoma — and she credits herself
with the conversion.
Thirty years later, in her own campaign,
Douglas hits many of the same anti-big government themes that propelled
Reagan and Nickles into office, particularly regulation — even though
she’s a regulator. The difference, she says, is that state regulators
have more expertise and are closer to the wishes of the residents.
“The federal overreach to me is amazing,” she said.
Like many
in the state, she wants the Environmental Protection Agency to keep out
of the oil and gas production that takes place on non-federal lands. In
Oklahoma, the Corporation Commission regulates much of the oil and gas
activity.
Douglas and the commission have come under pressure to
determine whether the new energy boom — in particular, wells used to
dispose of excess water — is causing earthquakes all over the state.
Douglas’ campaign has received tens of thousands of dollars from
Oklahoma energy companies and their leaders — the same is true for some
other Republican candidates for federal and statewide offices — but she
said the commission has been “proactive” in monitoring every wastewater
disposal well.
“There’s really no conclusive evidence right now”
that the earthquakes are linked to the disposal wells, but the
commission has rejected some projects because the risk was too high, she
said.
Douglas did not attend a heated town hall meeting in her
hometown in June about the swarm of quakes. Only one of the three
commissioners — Dana Murphy — was on hand, though a commission spokesman
did most of the talking.
‘She must not sleep’
Douglas’
parents met when her father was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base. The
couple stayed in Oklahoma City, and her father eventually started his
own sheet metal business there.
Douglas, who will be 52 next
week, didn’t grow up to be a Democrat, like her grandmother expected, or
a working man. But she did grow up to be a working woman.
She
decided to go to law school on the recommendation of a professor at
Oklahoma Christian. After getting her law degree at the University of
Oklahoma, she worked for judges and courts, but never practiced at a
firm or took on clients. She became general counsel at her father’s
sheet metal business, handling a range of legal work. She then moved on
to the banking industry and was executive vice president at First
Fidelity Bank in Edmond.
While working and serving on various
state and local boards and commissions, Douglas also was raising two
young sons with her husband, Brent, who is now a business consultant.
Longtime friend Teresa Wiedenmann, an Edmond school teacher, said
Douglas “is into everything.”
Douglas never missed a game while
the boys — now 18 and 16 — were playing youth sports and was always
willing to help out at their school, Wiedenmann said.
“I’ve joked
with her that she must not sleep,” she said.
Political ambitions
If Douglas had political ambitions, she held them at bay for years,
and her first race was a non-partisan one. In 2009, she ran for mayor of
Edmond, the Oklahoma County city of about 87,000, and easily beat
incumbent Dan O’Neill after a campaign stressing transportation and
economic development issues. She didn’t draw an opponent when she ran
for a second term in 2011.
During her time as mayor, Douglas
helped formulate and rally public support for a $25 million plan to
build a new public safety center for police and emergency management
services. A similar, though more expensive plan, had been rejected by
the city’s voters a few years before.
“We did it with no debt,”
Douglas said recently. “We made it affordable. We let everybody have
input.”
Wiedenmann said Douglas “really brought the community
together” as mayor and credited her with listening to those involved in
an issue before taking a position.
In 2011, Gov. Mary Fallin,
Douglas’ friend, appointed her to the Corporation Commission, which
oversees the state’s utilities, along with oil and gas drilling. In
2012, she didn’t draw an opponent for the term ending this year.
Douglas has steered clear of major controversies in her brief political
career, and this is only her second race with an opponent. Her
consultant-driven campaign for Congress has been mostly focused on
espousing boilerplate anti-Obama messages.
Her issues
In
an interview, she said she was concerned about “borders, budgets and
bureaucrats,” an alliterative slogan referencing immigration, regulation
and the national debt.
Douglas’ political hero, Ronald Reagan,
presided over a tripling of the national debt, and he signed an
immigration bill in 1986 that effectively granted amnesty to millions of
illegal immigrants.
Douglas has adopted the more recent
Republican position that deficit spending is undesirable. And she said a
so-called “path to citizenship” smacks of amnesty if it puts people here
illegally on equal footing with those already on a legal path.
She declined to say whether an estimated 11 million undocumented
immigrants should be deported.
“I don’t support amnesty,” she
said.
Notes:
1. She turns 52 'next week' in an
article dated 24 Aug 2014. |
