The Republican Party Lives Out It's Claim: The Party Of Equal Opportunity

Gov. Mary Fallin

  Oklahoma's new Republican era is  a great time of new opportunity for all. The past 10 years have seen a big shift from the "good  ol' boy" Democrat bigotry and segregation, to"

• Oklahoma's first female Governor; Republican Mary Fallen
• Oklahoma's first black Seaker of the House; Republican TW Shannon
• Oklahoma's first female House Majority Leader, Republican Pam Peterson

Speaker TW Shannon

  There seems to be little coverage of these broken barriers in state news coverage. Could that be from journalistic laziness or is it liberal embarrassment; or both?

Majority Leader Pam Peterson

  I've been an Oklahoman pretty much all of my adult life, and early on I discovered a few pockets of blatant racism and prejudice, firsthand. The peculiar little fact is, almost all the incidences involved old lifelong Democrats being the practitioners.

  The Republican Party is the party of Abe Lincoln and Dr Martin L. King. We don't like set-asides and tokenism when it comes to selecting leadership. We just know how to spot capabilities and we're not tied to decades-old negotiated power-brokered backroom deals. Yes, that type of  activity still happens sometimes, but the days of Gene Stipe and his ways.... are over.

  There are a few, in the Republican Party, who want to go back to the days of set-asides and forced limitations, using imposed statistical representation. They are busy preparing a state party amendment that would limit how many party offices that women can fill.

  The new visionaries of the party know better than to use any method other than Dr. King's demand; that we all be judged "by the content of our character, not by the color of our skin".