OK In-Depth; Bob Sullivan Interview

Republican candidate Bob Sullivan describes himself as the only non-lawyer running for governor. He spent 35 years working in the oil and gas industry, and he served as secretary of energy under former governor Frank Keating. In his campaign, he's called for lawsuit reform measures and cuts to wasteful government spending. He's spoken out in support of the taxpayer's bill of rights, and he advocated an initiative for 65% of every education dollar to be spent inside the classroom. As part of KGOU's ongoing primary election coverage, I had a chance to speak with Sullivan recently about his run for office and his raucous campaign against gubernatorial candidate Ernest Istuk. I began by asking him to review what qualities he felt he brought to the race. I've been a businessman all my life, 35 years, and I've been in a business that has honed me for lots of circumstances, the oil and gas business. We've had all kinds of ups and downs in the last 35 years, as you know, and I've had

to manage through tough times and good times, and I think those skills, as well as many other obligations and positions that I've held uniquely fit what's needed here in Oklahoma. We've had a string of attorneys, and we have a trial attorney in there now, and Oklahoma's going sideways at low levels in everything that counts, and I'm a builder, I'm a grower of the private sector, and I think that's exactly what's called for, and so I think I'm the guy for the job. So you think that much of what you've learned in the business world is very transferable to running a political campaign? No question about it, because I've spent all those years creating jobs, growing capital and bringing capital into the state in large quantities, and career politicians have spent those years growing government, and so it's a fundamental difference, so yes, I think it's directly transferable. How would you say your campaign is going so far?

Well, I'm pleased with the fact that we started from an absolute dead standstill with a completely unknown candidate, and through hard work and some strong financial backing, I've got to tell you, we've set, well, I'm told, or records, smashed records, as far as the first time candidate we've raised $1,150,000 as of today, and it's still going. Through hard work and money and good planning and good teamwork, we've got a great team, I'm very pleased with the way it's going. I fully realize that I'm chasing a career politician, a man who's been in Congress 14 years in state government for that, so that gives him the upper hand as far as name ideas concerned, but when it comes to ideas and mission and the ability to get what Oklahoma needs done, I think I've got something to offer. You say that you've been impressed with your own ability to fundraise and you've done better and you've surprised a lot of people, but on the other hand, has that transferred enough and translated enough into actual polling support in the new polls that come out

every week? Are you where you hope to be at this stage in the campaign? Yeah, it's translated and is translating into getting our message out. And the message, especially in these last couple of weeks of the campaign, is critical because typically at this time, and this is no exception, there's more than half the people have not made up their minds. And so polls don't mean as much as you'd like them to mean now, I think we, by election day, will close the gap because people are looking at the fresh, bold, innovative approach to governance that I represent. I wanted to ask you about this so-called 11th Commandment pledge that you and other GOP candidates in the various races signed where you agreed to avoid launching attacks against your Republican opponents in a negative or derogatory manner that could be used by your Democratic opponents in the real race after the primary and the general election. Several Republican Party Chairman wrote a letter to your campaign recently after you

began airing the television commercial that called, is to a big liberal spender. And here's part of the letter they wrote. They said, as Republican Party Chairman, we're very concerned by the tone and tenor of your campaign, your ad is a gross violation of the 11th Commandment pledge you recently signed to be fair and honest, it distorts the actual record of Ernest Aestok. I know you say you're fully, you feel you're fully in compliance with the 11th Commandment pledge. Yeah, the 11th Commandment asked us to do two things. And I signed it when it came out and I would sign it again today. And I do think I'm fully in compliance. What it asks us to do is two things. First of all, if you're defeated by a fellow Republican to support that fellow Republican in the fall, and the second thing I asked you to do is in the course of campaigning against the fellow Republican, stick to only factually based allegations, if you will, or charges. And what I specifically have done is put on the screen for everybody to look at are some votes on the floor of the United States Congress that has took his vote of four. With right on the screen, the citation is shown there with the date and the name of the

vote or the bill or whatever. So I have stuck to the fact it's right there on the screen. So I don't think I violated anything. I'm just trying to bring to the voter's attention some of the spending tendencies of Governors just took. Of course, is stick though, has over the years received high rankings from several different pro-business type groups and fiscally conservative minded organizations like citizens against government waste. So that's not the image that people have of him that he's a big liberal spender. You just used the keyword image that is precisely, you're precisely right, that is not the image. I wrote a check to Congressman is took a few years ago because from 1994, I believe it was, or 92, whenever he's 92, I guess it was, when he started in Congress, he was genuinely true fiscal conservative. He's just shown some tendencies in the last couple of years to get away from that. And he's become part of that Washington spending mentality and that's what I'm trying to bring out.

So, you're right, the image is there, I'm saying that the act or the fact, rather, are state otherwise. Some of the specific examples cited in your first ad saying that stick supported so-called pork barrel projects like Gorillas and Kentucky removing tattoos in California, stick campaign and some political commentators have responded that those were relatively small appropriations in much larger appropriations bills and that's just kind of how politics works in Washington that, you know, if you have a big bill, you have to kind of settle for small things like that inserted into the bill and in order to vote against those, he would have had to have voted against an entire bill for funding for veterans or something. Right, I'm glad you asked that because when confronted with that by our campaign, Congressman is took, said two things. He said, basically, everybody's doing it and he cited all of the other delegation of Oklahoma and the other thing he said is, as Bob, would you vote against a veterans bill, which is, I think it was tacked on to a veterans bill, which is, otherwise, worthy bill.

My answer to that is, did everybody hear that? This is exactly what I'm talking about. He's got the white flag up on pork spending. Where is the courage? Where is the leadership for Ernest is took to go up and down the aisles and say, hey guys, let's take all the silly stuff off of here and run this bill through without all of it on there. I didn't see that kind of leadership. Hey, let's take this million dollars for guerrillas and all this other stuff and buy some armor for our troops overseas. Don't you think the veterans would like to have that money put there rather than where the guerrillas and tattoos or whatever it is? The second thing is, when he asked me what I vote for the thing or what I vote against the veterans bill, I think the veterans would love what I would do. I would do what Tom Coburn's doing now, and that is, I would stand up and say, this is wrong. We've got runaway spending in Washington because everybody's doing it. So where's the courage?

Where's the leadership? And we don't need that kind of spending habit brought to the governor's office in Oklahoma City. Back to the issue of whether, if you were saying whether you violated the 11th Commandment Pledge or not, I think what was worrisome to some political observers based on what they were saying was not even so much the content of your ads, but more kind of the tone and tenor of it. You of course called it humorous, and I think some other people were saying they found it kind of cruel. How do you feel about that? Well, it's in the eye of the holder. This man is a comedian. I went to school with him years ago. He's the actor. Yeah, I was in school with him and he's a friend, and to the extent some people think he's funny. We've had a lot of feedback that they did think it was funny too, but let me point out one of the things about the so-called 11th Commandment. This is attributed to Ronald Reagan. One might remember that in 1976, Ronald Reagan challenged a sitting Republican president Gerald Ford and eviscerated him. I mean, it was not pretty.

Secondly, one should remember in 1992, when a sitting congressman from Oklahoma, Mickey Edwards, was challenged by a man named Ernest Istuk, and I invite you to go back and look at the way that a challenger Istuk took on a sitting congressman. So it's kind of his own campaign tactics coming back to bite him, you're saying? Yeah, I'm just saying that the 11th Commandment is pretty broadly interpreted. And it has been you selectively, you're saying? Very softly. Yeah. Have you heard at all about some of these ads, maybe backfiring at all? I mean, you've received some negative publicity from various newspapers, including the Tulsa World, which I believe called them nasty and unbecoming. Has that been a worry for you? Well, we've stirred the pot. I personally think that a good vigorous debate in a primary, you know, Republicans aren't used to primaries in the state, because we haven't had enough candidates over the last several decades to have a good, a good tussle, but I really think that the winner of a primary like this is much better prepared for the general election, because he's got his game sharpened.

His team is working and clicking. And so I think that Congressman Istuk is doing me a favor by challenging me on these things and vice versa. What about the concern that just kind of this type of campaign with kind of back and forth between, you know, two candidates might cause some voters just kind of to stay home on election night? Is that a fear at all? Well, I suppose there's always some collateral damage, but if we were all completely quiet and docile and didn't get out and debate the issues and the facts, these are factual you based things we're talking about. If we didn't do that, I think there's a risk that people would stay home because they just were asleep. There's nothing, you know, you didn't wake them up. There's been some polling data that's come out showing that the majority of conservative Republicans in the state of Oklahoma favor your opponent or in Central Oklahoma should say favor your opponent, Mr. Istuk. And some political observers have noted that it's generally the conservative base that

really decides these sorts of elections and that that means your campaigns in trouble. How do you respond to that? Well, first of all, I think I repeat that I think there's at least half the electorate is not decided. So I think that's a premature to say that. Secondly, I'd point out that the conservative end of the Republican Party, every endorsement that could be had, I have gotten the Republican Assembly gave me their endorsement. You have to have two-thirds of their delegates vote in order to, or maybe it's three-fourths, it's a big majority, in order to get an endorsement. And I receive that. The Oklahoma political action, Oak Pack, I think they call it, is a very conservative political action committee. We all spoke in front of both of those groups, every candidate did, and in the end they voted to endorse me. So I don't buy it that the conservative end of the party is supporting our opponent or my opponent in large numbers.

We spoke about some of the charges that You'd raised about Istuk and some of your ads and people had questioned them. Are there any other particular issues, sort of substantive issues that you could point to where you feel that you would take a very different approach than he would, I'm thinking maybe if there's something, you would approach differently just because of your business background or anything? Well, I think you're hitting right on probably the biggest difference between me and Congressman Istuk and Hesitu with lawsuit reform. That is, as a businessman for 35 years, I have not only felt it myself, but I have witnessed unbelievable carnage in the business and the medical world of what a state that has no meaningful lawsuit reform can do to doctors and businesses. In this case, I took a pledge a long time ago, back in last fall, that I would not accept contributions from trial attorneys or trial attorney groups and asked Congressman Istuk and Jim Williamson, if they would take the pledge, Jim Williamson, State Senator Jim

Williamson did take the pledge, Congressman Istuk did not. And the reason he didn't is that's where his primary source of contributors is from. Well, and that is also the reason that he has voted against meaningful lawsuit reform on the Florida United States Congress, and I've got a list of them here, 15 times. And he will tell you that he voted 60 times for lawsuit reform that was all in committee, all procedural stuff, when it came down to the vote on the floor that really counts, including President Bush's lawsuit reform, he voted against it. And that's because he's taken those contributions. And so my question to voters would be, the reason we have not had meaningful lawsuit reform in Oklahoma for 21 years when we first started trying this is that we've got trial lawyer standing in the way. We've got a trial lawyer in the governor's office. Why would we remove him and put another trial lawyer in there? And we're never going to get lawsuit reform if we do that. So that's a huge difference between me and Congressman Istuk, and so that is one thing that I point out that it hasn't been discussed at this point.

You say that Istuk's primary backing comes from trial lawyers, where does your primary backing come from? I would say if there's a chunk, it would be the oiling independent oil and gas industry, because that's why I've lived my life for 35 years. And people know me in that arena. And we've got, I don't know how many, four or five thousand independent oil and gas operators in this state, and most of them are pretty small, but they all know me, and they all know what I stand for. And so I don't know what the percentage is, but the biggest single percentage would be from that group. And then there's friends and family in the broader business community, and then just, I'm getting checks from people I've never heard of before. Why specifically did you decide to try to enter politics? I mean, have you thought about this for a very long time? You know, that's, I get that question frequently the first time I was asked was for my wife, who after raising six children, thought maybe the empty nest years were going to be something a little different than we served up here, but the answer is a good one. I've been in and around policy making in politics, but never, we had all these children. I didn't think it was right for me to leave the home and do that.

But when I served in Frank Keating's cabinet of Secretary of Energy in an appointed position and held over in the Brad Henry's administration for 11 months in 2003, it's during those 11 months that I watched the way he works and doesn't work and I decided I wanted to do something about that. And so I was motivated by what I saw. And I have a track record you can look at back of problem solving. I see something that needs fixing. I go do it. I have a long history of that and I'm pretty determined and goal oriented. So it really arose out of my desire to just make it better. We've got all these kids and my children and this is, I'm not real proud of this. They're all adults now and they're all out of the state of Oklahoma. No one here. And Congressman is took as five children, none of them in Oklahoma. He and I have talked about this. We're driving our youth out of this state. We're exporting these young folks and that's our tomorrow. We can't do that.

So I want to fix some of the fundamentals that will keep them here. You're still lagging more than 20 points behind in the latest poll numbers. I've seen how do you plan to kind of surge ahead in the remaining time left until the July 25th primary? Well, that big block of people who have not made up their minds. We hope that our messaging, which will be on the airwaves primarily, but also just daily, hourly, hand-to-hand combat and on the ground, we hope to get our message out so that they kind of, when they do make up their decision, which all the pundits would say is in the last few days, that they will choose something different, something bold and innovative rather than the same old type of politician. Most of the political analysts, I guess you call them, would say that one of four people is going to be the next governor. It's either going to be Brad Henry on re-election or Ernest is took Jim Williamson or Bob Sullivan on their public side. Of those four people, three of them are attorneys, one's a businessman, three are career politicians, one's spent 35 years in the private sector, growing jobs in capital.

We're electing the chief executive officer to state of Oklahoma. Why don't we elect someone who is a chief executive officer? Bob Sullivan is a Tulsa oil man and former Oklahoma secretary of energy who's running for the Republican nomination for governor. Tune in tomorrow at this time to hear a conversation with US representative Ernest Ista, who's also in the race. And stay tuned to KGOU over the next week for more special coverage in advance of next Tuesday's primary election. On Thursday, we'll feature a profile of Iraqi-born physician and Republican candidate Johnny Roy, who's running for Congress in the fifth congressional district. Our regular political commentator Keith Gatti will join us again this Friday for some final analysis before voters head to the polls. And on Sunday at 11, we'll broadcast a debate between Sullivan, Istuk, and the other Republican candidates for governor, Jim Evanoff, and James Williamson. As always, if you miss any of this or you want to listen again, you could always visit our

online audio archives at KGOU.org. I'm KGOU News Director Scott Gourian.