By Steve Byas

In 1962, Henry Louis Bellmon's election as Oklahoma's first Republican governor marked a turning point in state politics. Only four years earlier, the Republican nominee for governor had garnered only about a fourth of the general election vote. Counting the 1962 election, Republicans have won five gubernatorial elections; the Democrats seven.

Two mistakes can be made in assessing the historic political career of Henry Bellmon. One, is to give him too much credit for transforming Oklahoma politics, and the second is to give him too little credit.

In 1962, Oklahoma was in the early stages of a political transformation from a southern Democrat state to a southern Republican state. For years, the Oklahoma Democrat Party had so dominated state politics that it really contained two political parties within its house. One party was the forerunner of the modern Oklahoma Democrat Party -- liberal, in a word. The other party was a large part of what became the modern Oklahoma Republican Party -- conservative, in a word.

The Democrats had split in 1962, with former Governor Raymond Gary narrowly losing to the Democrat nominee, W.P. Bill Atkinson. Governor Gary told this writer in an exclusive interview back in 1986 that he believed the Democrat nomination was stolen from him, in Tulsa, with some rigged voting machines. I have no way judging the validity of his charge, but thousands of southeastern, rural Democrats believed Gary's view of events.

Gary was from the conservative wing of the Democrat Party. To read his speeches in his 1964 race for U.S. Senate, one wishes that Republicans today were that conservative. Atkinson's wing was more in line with the national Democrat Party, which was moving inexorably leftward.

For the first time, many southeastern Oklahoma Democrats began to consider the unthinkable: vote Republican. One Republican rally in southeastern Oklahoma was held at an outdoor movie theater because many in Little Dixie did not want to be seen at a Republican event. So many of these Democrat voters were the grandchildren of those who had lost the War Between the States (the Civil War for those raised on Yankee textbooks), and grew up hearing stories of Sherman's March to the Sea, the carpetbaggers and the like.

The stage was set. Atkinson and Bellmon squared off in a debate. The debate drew a great amount of attention. Atkinson called for a tax increase to fund some new programs (I don't recall right now what these new programs were, but Democrats always seem to have these wish lists). Bellmon resolutely opposed raising taxes.

Atkinson was asked what he would do should the Oklahoma Legislature refuse to give him the tax increase. Atkinson shrugged and said that, well, then he would just have to cut out waste, fraud, and abuse, to fund these needed programs.

Bellmon pounced. Now, you see what is Atkinson's position, Bellmon said. He wants to raise taxes to keep from cutting out waste, fraud, and abuse. Bellmon won the debate, and the election.

After Oklahomans voted Republican once, it was easier to do a second time. Four years later, Bellmon could not run for reelection, and Republican State Senator Dewey Bartlett won by an even larger margin than Bellmon did in 1962.

Oklahoma's move from a Democrat to a Republican state was probably inevitable, with or without Bellmon. Maybe not. What is sure is that Bellmon seized the moment in that debate in 1962, and Oklahoma went Republican in 1962, instead of some later date. For that, he deserves a great deal of credit.

Those things that the Democrats and RINOs love him for -- two tax increases the second time he was governor, the votes for bussing and giving away the Panama Canal while in the Senate, his support for liberal causes like abortion on demand -- would come later. In the words of liberal media types, Bellmon "grew" over the years. I liked him better in 1962, before that growth.