Monroe Nichols announces he's running for Tulsa mayor

Nichols made the announcement in a press release Thursday, at the same moment he rolled out his monroeformayor.com website.

“I feel like we are at a point in Tulsa where we can really go two different ways,” Nichols said in an interview with the Tulsa World. “We can jump out ahead and be leading class in cities across the country that are growing and thriving and hopefully engaging everybody in that growth and that thriving, or we can kind of be stuck in neutral.”

Nichols, 39, is the first candidate to announce his intention to run for Tulsa’s highest office.

County Commissioner Karen Keith, City Councilor Jayme Fowler and state Sen. Dave Rader also have expressed interest in the job.

Mayor G.T. Bynum reiterated this week that he will not seek a third term.

Candidates for mayor won’t file for office until June 2024, followed by the general election in August. If a runoff election is required, it would be held in November.

Tulsa’s municipal elections are nonpartisan.

“It’s one of those things where I am excited about what is coming next, but it is also kind of bittersweet,” Nichols said.

Nichols was first elected to the House from District 72 in 2016. He is the only Black person ever elected from the district, which stretches from 33rd West Avenue through downtown Tulsa, east to the University of Tulsa and north as far as 91st Street North.

“I think the best thing of the legislative experience is how it has helped me navigate relationships with people I don’t agree with all the time. … I have become a much more patient leader,” Nichols said.

He hopes to use that patience and ability to bring people together to ensure that everyone who wants to participate in moving the city forward is part of the discussion.

“I do think we have to find a way in which we are having a conversation with folks across the city about how we are going to live together and how we are going to express ourselves together and how we are going to do all of the stuff we have to do as a city with some level of unity knowing that we disagree about a lot of stuff,” Nichols said. “I do think there is a role a mayor plays in helping citizens navigate through that type of stuff, as well.”

Nichols said that if elected mayor he would focus on three main issues — economic development, homelessness and public safety.

“Those three issues, and the idea of building a community that folks choose because we have changed those things at a rate in which the rest of the country takes notice, … those are the reasons that I am running,” he said.

Nichols’ first taste of public service was in 2006, when he worked as an aide in then-Mayor Kathy Taylor’s administration. He went on to become chief of staff for former OU-Tulsa President Gerry Clancy; served as economic development manager at the Oklahoma State Department of Career and Technology Education; and was director of business retention and expansion programs for the Tulsa Regional Chamber. He co-founded Impact Tulsa in 2014.

In addition to his work at the Capitol, Nichols is director of policy and partnerships for Strive Together.

“That kind of well-rounded experience both in the Legislature and my career outside of the Legislature I think really has equipped me well to help lead the city to the future,” Nichols said.

It’s also provided him with a perspective that he says played a key role in his decision to run for mayor.

“2006 to 2023, there are so many issues that were issues then that are issues today. We have not knocked things off the list,” Nichols said. “I am not saying that I get elected mayor, life becomes automatically better. But the fact is we are letting persistent problems just fester year over year over year over year without any indication that they are getting better.”

Nichols took pains not to be critical of Bynum or any of the city’s previous leaders but said he is concerned that Tulsa has not made real headway in addressing Tulsa’s education, crime, affordable housing and other challenges.

“Everybody says the mayor has nothing to do with education, but if you look at the indicators on what it takes for kids to be successful from when they start school to when they matriculate through higher education of some sort, if you don’t have stable housing, you are going to struggle along that pipeline,” Nichols said.

“If you don’t have a city where you can have people who can kind of climb the economic mobility ladder as you build an economy that allows for that, that is going to show up in school.”

Nichols, whose father and uncle were police officers, said he would support some form of police oversight while at the same time doing everything he could to ensure that officers are compensated properly for their work.

“I think if we were more conditioned to know if something goes bad, our tolerance for bad things happening would be a little bit higher,” Nichols said. “And not that we think that it’s OK, but knowing that every time something happens somebody is being held accountable, I think that in and of itself would help the relationships between law enforcement and those in the community and probably make things safer for both in car stops and so on and so forth.”

Along with the highest standards of accountability, Nichols said, should come proper compensation.

“It’s not lost on me that it is difficult right now to recruit folks to go into the profession,” he said. “The fact that we have not figured out how to get public safety districts passed in this community to make sure we can also pay to have the best folks on the force and to incentivize folks to stay who have experience is a problem.”

Nichols said he would be open to exploring how the city could provide some form of reparations to those harmed by the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The issue, he said, is one of values: Does Tulsa want to be known as a community that resisted tackling the issue or a community that addressed it head-on?

“I really believe that the platform that I will lay out, the way that, if elected, I spend my time as mayor, if not in a most traditional sense of reparations, will be certainly about capitalizing on what made the Greenwood District special and figuring out ways in which we can bring that back,” he said.

During his seven sessions in the House, Nichols’ legislation has included measures to encourage affordable housing, revitalize neighborhoods and improve education. Because Nichols is a Democrat in a Republican-controlled Legislature, few of his bills have made it into law under his own name. Of the 12 measures he filed this year, 11 failed to reach a final vote.

The 12th, which allows law officers to issue warnings to people with outstanding warrants instead of taking them to jail, was signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt earlier this year.

Nichols said he takes particular pride in that measure, which he co-authored with Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat, R-Oklahoma City, as an example of his ability to work across party lines.

“It’s absolutely going to keep people out of jail,” Nichols said.

As a debater, Nichols has tended to strike a direct but generally congenial tone while challenging colleagues, particularly on race and civil rights issues.

As he begins his campaign for mayor, Nichols said Tulsans can expect the same kind of bipartisan approach on the stump and, should voters choose him to lead the city, in the Mayor’s Office.

“If you are mayor, people care about the trash getting picked up, traffic lights being synced up, all that kind of stuff,” Nichols said. “So I don’t even think about solutions from a partisan standpoint.”

Randy Krehbiel contributed to this story.

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