By Jason Murphey

I’m fascinated by how, in the social media age, particularly insightful commentary never truly fades away; it continues to circulate, re-circulate and resonate, constantly finding new audiences. A prime example of this: Paul Harvey’s “If I Were the Devil.” If this iconic commentary has yet to make its way into your social media feed of choice, it’s a must-listen. As you listen, you will observe that there’s something absolutely haunting about that crackling, 1960s-era call from the past from such an iconic personality.

In three minutes, Harvey adeptly guides the listener through imagining the strategies of the devil as he seeks to corrupt the United States. Harvey lays out each strategy with an uncanny foresight. With the benefit of 50 years of hindsight, the predictive value of his prognostications remains undeniable. One of Harvey’s observations stands out as especially notable in that a first glance it seems to be an antiquated concern from a bygone era, but, in my view, it’s just as spot on as all of his other observations: “If I were the Devil, I would sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction.”

This commentary reflects a once widely held belief that those who aspire to lead society should embody the virtues of sobriety, maintaining self-control at all times, never engaging in any action that would suggest a willingness to become intoxicated, to yield self-control, or to encourage others to give up their self-control – especially as it relates to the decisions of the public matter. Until and unless a person was willing to set this example, he was rightly considered unprepared to lead our society and not qualified to be a custodian of the public trust. Requiring society’s leaders to aim for 100% sobriety may seem unrealistic, but it’s an admirable target to which to aspire.

Perhaps as a reflection of this old-fashioned aspiration, Oklahoma’s Constitution specifically designates habitual drunkenness as an impeachable offense, and the rules of the Oklahoma Capitol building explicitly prohibit state employees from bringing intoxicating beverages into the building.

Thus, you can imagine the awkward position in which the state employees, particularly the legislative assistants to members of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, recently found themselves when, distributed throughout the building, to the desks of these assistants with their House member as the intended recipient, were special 105-proof whiskies – consisting of more than 50% alcohol by volume in a limited run of just 500 bottles – branded as “Speaker’s Strong House Double Gavel” in celebration of the longest-serving Speaker of the House, Charles McCall.

The bottle prominently featured the Oklahoma state seal, specially customized to boldly coronate and forever define Charles McCall as “Speaker Maximus,” a title that no individual in the history of the state has ever before attained.

At a reported cost of just shy of $10,000, the pompous self-declaration, indicative of a decadent self-indulgence, was tone-deaf to the basic sensitivities and well-founded perceptions of the wider public of Oklahomans. Yet, it is entirely typical of the self-congratulating inside-the-Capitol crowd. This extravagance couldn’t have been a more fitting farewell celebration of the excesses of the McCall era – a final, arrogant, insulting token of thanks from McCall to his lemmings who repeatedly surrendered their power (and by proxy, the power of their constituencies) to elevate Speaker Maximus to his imperial speakership.

For you see; by consolidating power, McCall had reduced most House members to mere green-button pushers, stripped of any real meaningful responsibility.

What tempts legislators who are idle and lack real responsibility? Naturally, it’s food and drink. A review of the lobbyists’ gift reports from the era of Speaker Maximus reveals thousands of dollars spent on food and drink throughout each legislative session.

This constant flow of complimentary alcohol puts those legislators who choose to imbibe into a potential continuous struggle to maintain sobriety. The observant viewer might notice this by watching the House feeds where they may find themselves wondering, “Are these people sober right now?” Much as I did when I viewed the March 2024 footage that helped spark the Oklahoma State Capital project.

Occasionally, we don’t have to guess as an incident rises into the public purview, such as the fall of 2022 event involving one of McCall’s foremost lieutenants, House Appropriations Vice-Chair and local Edmond State Representative Ryan Martinez. Martinez had the great misfortune of encountering an Edmond police officer who, despite Martinez’s extremely creative efforts to talk his way out of it, refused to overlook his state of intoxication. The Edmond police, still reeling from the recent loss of one of their own officers to an intoxicated driver, were not about to give a special pass – even to one of the state’s most powerful politicians.

In a misjudgment emblematic of his term in office, and in a demonstration of character that starkly contrasted with the integrity shown by the Edmond police, McCall did not seem to share the same dedication to the old-fashioned aspiration of sobriety in public office. He continued to allow Martinez to be the face of the House, as demonstrated during the 2023 legislative session press conference in which Martinez appeared before the media to justify a multi-million-dollar corporate welfare giveaway to the German Volkswagen corporation. This deal was being pushed through with little to no transparency, following a remarkable and nearly unprecedented decision by the House to block debate on the proposal on the House floor. Martinez attempted to defend the lack of transparency by claiming that the matter had been discussed in closed-door caucus meetings – a shocking defense that was an absolute affront to the principles of open, representative government.

Martinez was no ordinary House member. That a high-ranking member of his stature would defend giving away millions in corporate welfare, sans debate, by pointing to closed-door deliberations, tells us everything we need to know about transparency in the McCall era and in the current state of Oklahoma political discourse.

Then, after Martinez made a deal with the prosecution, the House appeared to be working with the Attorney General’s office to secure an “unofficial” opinion that Martinez wouldn’t need to resign from office – a sham they might have gotten away with had it not been for the pro se filing by former State Representative Mike Reynolds. Reynolds’ filing thwarted the entire effort to keep Martinez in office and Martinez subsequently resigned.

The insightful observer couldn’t miss the fact that the House and the Attorney General’s office appeared to go to great lengths to protect Martinez and keep him empowered, once again, in stark contrast to the integrity demonstrated by the Edmond police.

This set a troubling tone: Martinez’s closeness to the all-powerful Speaker Maximus was what truly mattered.

In 2023, yet another incident came to public attention as Representatives Dean Davis, TJ Marti, and an unknown third person were involved in an early morning encounter with police outside of a Oklahoma City Bricktown bar.

Davis would plead no contest to a municipal public intoxication charge after police footage showed Davis attempting to use his position to intimidate the police officer. These events are well documented by the press but what wasn’t significantly addressed in press reports was the fact that Davis and Marti were out in Bricktown, after 2 AM, on a legislative deadline weeknight.

During a legislative deadline week legislators cast many, many votes. Starting at 9:00 the next morning, those legislators were set to start hitting their green buttons.

Only the naive would believe that those legislators were in an appropriate state of mind to actually read the bills and give true deliberative review to the many potentially complex legislative proposals that came before the House the next day.

Davis, unlike Martinez probably wasn’t one of McCall’s lieutenants. He was likely just a backbencher, a lemming whose most important contribution to Team McCall was simply showing up and pressing the green button.

He almost always votes green, and since most bills in the House pass with the predictability of Soviet Politburo-level support, why wouldn’t he goof off in Bricktown until the early hours of the morning? Why would he spend time reading bills that he would never be able to vote against – all deliberative review having long since been outsourced to Speaker Maximus and his lieutenants in the corner offices.

In both Martinez’s and Davis’s cases, we clearly see the effects of the McCall legacy: an imperial speakership that concentrated power in the hands of a few and reduced the rest of the House to near pointlessness – a group of lemmings whose primary role was to tap their green buttons and then seek out lobbyists to court them to the next eating and drinking extravaganza. There, they will engage in the Capitol’s latest gossip circuit, perhaps discussing the perceived shortcomings of their political foe, Education Superintendent Ryan Walters, while hoping everyone overlooks the clearly impeachable offenses of the hard-drinking Corporation Commissioner Todd Hiett, about whom almost no Republican legislator is speaking out against. After all, these legislators wouldn’t want too much public attention drawn to Hiett’s particular alcohol-related indiscretions, as consistently enforcing a standard of sobriety could ruin much of the fun of the legislative session.

Was your state representative an enabler of the Imperial Speakership? Find out by viewing the Capital’s Green Button Governance report. If your representative voted green more than 90% of the time, then it’s not too soon to consider stepping up to challenge him in the next election cycle. The sooner you lock in your decision, the better. Email jason@oklahomastatecapital.com to express your interest.

If you have benefited from my commentaries, please take a moment to share with your contacts. If you have yet to subscribe to the Oklahoma State Capital project, you may do so at OklahomaStateCapital.com and join the community as we work to return the voice of the people of Oklahoma to the state legislature.

Jason Murphey was a member of Oklahoma House of Representatives and was term-limited in 2018. He scored a perfect 100% score on the Oklahoma Conservative Index for each of 12 years he served.