Anti-polarizing strategies from a purple city

DAVID HOLT: What we’ve had is a workforce shortage in Oklahoma City now for basically the whole time I’ve been mayor. So finding people to take these jobs and all kinds of jobs, highly skilled jobs and low skilled jobs. And so the historical American answer to that problem has often been immigration. And yeah, sure, I mean, it has to be controlled and regulated. I mean, it’s not an argument for open borders, but you can’t just close your border either. I mean, you have to find some reasonable middle ground where you are taking in a pretty healthy number of immigrants. If you don’t do that, yeah, you’re going to suffer economic consequences.

BOB SAFIAN:  That’s Oklahoma City Mayor, David Holt. As U.S. cities of all sizes face unprecedented pressure from federal budget shifts, ICE raids and potential National Guard presence, I wanted to talk to Mayor Holt, who’s the current president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Mayor Holt is a Republican in what he calls a deeply purple city. And he offers a refreshing perspective about why cities are thriving and what statewide and national institutions can learn from mayors’ on-the-ground experience. There are plenty of lessons for business leaders too about how to lead and appeal to a broad constituency without being polarizing or alienating. So let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response. 

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I’m Bob Safian. I’m here with Oklahoma City Mayor, David Holt, current president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Mayor, thanks for being here.

HOLT:  My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Bob.

Copy LinkMayor David Holt on Oklahoma City’s transformation

SAFIAN:  So Oklahoma City is the 20th largest city in the U.S. Many people know it because of the OKC Thunder, the reigning NBA champs, or as a hub of Native American culture, oil and gas drilling. Of course, the tragic Oklahoma Mississippi bombing in 1995. When you have to describe OKC in a sentence or two to people who don’t know as much about it, how do you describe it? What do you say?

HOLT:  As a mayor who’s wanting you to take my city seriously, I often lead with:, 20th largest city, because I know you probably don’t think of us as being that big. I’m probably going to talk about the Thunder because that is front of mind.

SAFIAN:  And they are fun to watch.

HOLT:  Yeah, absolutely. What I really want people to know about Oklahoma City is that it has all of the amenities of a great American city, and it’s in a very dynamic growth phase right now. And that this is really kind of our golden age. And we’re offering a very unique value proposition in American life right now, which is we sort of still have all of the ease of living and cost of living of a smaller place. But you can go to James Beard award-winning restaurants, you can watch the NBA champions, you can go to great art museums, you can go to great parks, and you can enjoy all the amenities that you would expect to find in a much larger place. And I think that is a unique combination.

Now, sometimes so many people take you up on it that you start to lose that ease of living and that cost of living advantage. But in the meantime, I say enjoy it. So I think obviously, I spend a lot of time selling my city and it’s a great product to sell, but oftentimes I deal with a lot of ignorance about my city or just kind of a blank stare. And so it’s oftentimes I have a blank canvas upon which to paint.

SAFIAN:  This moment that you talk about Oklahoma City having, where does that come from?

HOLT:  I mean, here’s it in a nutshell. It really begins in the 1980s when we experienced an oil bust. And that was a depression, an economic depression for our city. And then we were trying to chase this United Airlines facility in the early ’90s. It was kind of like the Amazon II of its time. Lots of cities were trying to get this big job opportunity, thousands of jobs, and we didn’t get it. And it went to Indianapolis. And our mayor at the time, this is sort of like a famous story locally, supposedly called the CEO of United Airlines and he asked, “Why didn’t you come here?” I mean, we had passed a tax incentive for it, and we did all these things. And he said, “Well, Mayor, I just couldn’t imagine making my employees live in Oklahoma City.”

And it was that moment that really finally crystallized for us that our quality of life was not where it needed to be. And really that in a modern America, the jobs follow the people, not the other way around. You used to think like, well, people moved where there was economic opportunity, but in fact, people just moved where they wanted to live, and then the people who offer economic opportunity had no choice but to go where those people are, where those talented people are. And so in 1993, we passed a sales tax initiative called MAPS, Metropolitan Area Projects, and it invested just in quality of life stuff. It built the arena that the Thunder just won the championship in. It built a downtown ballpark. It built things that you don’t necessarily need for human survival, but are actually pretty existential to a city’s survival.

And that has made all the difference. And we’re now on MAPS four, that’s my version as mayor. And actually over this 30 years, our voters have voted 15 times, 15 and 0, we’ve never lost one, to invest in our city’s quality of life and core infrastructure to the tune of just under $10 billion. And so that investment in ourselves is really the key to our success. And in my lifetime, we’ve gone from being the 37th largest city to the 20th largest city. And you don’t make that kind of movement in the top 40 without doing something dramatic. And the dramatic thing we did was invest in ourselves and really improved our quality of life. And as a result, the theory has been proven out. Our economy is strong, everything about our city has improved.

SAFIAN:  There was a branding issue for the city, but the way to deal with that was not focus on the branding, but focus on the actual experience and let the brand follow.

HOLT:  It’s true of cities and businesses and products and everything. You can’t always just market your way out of a problem. I mean, sometimes you actually have to address the problem. And I think that we understood that we couldn’t just come up with a flashy TV ad to make Oklahoma City look better than it was. We had to actually make Oklahoma City better first.

Copy LinkHow to avoid polarization in local politics

SAFIAN: So you and I were connected by a mutual colleague, a former guest on this show, Nazanin Ash of Welcome.us. And she talked about you as a sort of unexpected nonpartisan operator. I mean, you’re a Republican, you don’t always toe the MAGA line. Is that a reflection of Oklahoma City? Of you?

HOLT:  Of course, it’s a reflection of me, I’m an authentic person. But what incentivizes me as mayor operates on a couple of levels. One, the city is much more purple than people might think from the outside looking in. I mean, yeah, the state hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since Lyndon B. Johnson. But the city is basically 50/50. In the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, Trump won this county 49, 48, that exact same number in both of those elections, which is a really pretty good microcosm of the country. And we’re also a pretty good microcosm of the country demographically.

But we work together and get things done, which leads me to my second point about, I think, what makes me who I am as mayor of the city. We have an electoral system that is actually pretty common among cities for whatever historical reason. When I run for election as mayor, I don’t go through a closed partisan primary like most people do around the country when they run for governor or U.S. Senate or whatever. They first face the most extreme voters that this country has, who have kind of a different priority list than the rest of us. This is going to be true in a red state and a blue state. If you’re running in a closed Republican primary, you got to be all MAGA, you got to be part of the Trump cult. But if you’re running in a blue state, in a closed partisan primary, especially in a lot of certain really hardcore blue areas, you practically have to pretend to be a communist.

And so here in Oklahoma City, however, I face all of the voters on election day, Republicans, Independents, and Democrats, and it incentivizes me and all of my predecessors to just talk about the issues that are important to the 70% of people in the middle, and really kind of ignore the extremes that are so powerful in closed partisan primaries and build a coalition of normal Republicans, Democrats, and Independents that represent that 70%. So it’s important when I say that the city is a microcosm of the country, both politically and demographically, because we are proving through my elections and through the elections that we have for these initiatives, because I got 78% and 60% in my two elections, and my initiatives have gotten 72%, 71%, and 75%.

If you’re that divided on national politics, but you’re able to come together on these local issues and these local candidates, to me, the only difference between the two is the way that we run the election. And of course, when we elect Congress people here in Oklahoma City, we vote through the closed partisan primary and all of that. But when we elect mayors, everybody gets to vote. And I think this is so critical. So I talk about it a lot because it sounds wonky and sort of like, “Well, that’s obscure. I want to talk about the issues.” But I’m telling you, every issue is built on the foundation of how you elect people, and how we elect people in America is killing us. We’ve got to get back to a system like we have in a lot of cities where everybody votes. And I’m telling you, when everybody votes, we’re not as crazy as we look like we are. We’re actually pretty normal, and we can compromise, and we can work together.

SAFIAN:  When you talk to other mayors, I mean, so much of America has become so polarized, but are mayors not necessarily more partisan than they used to be?

HOLT:  Well, first of all, I reject the notion that Americans are polarized. I believe that those 15% at both extremes that control the primaries are polarized, and they’re producing polarizing candidates. But I would argue there’s still 70% of us in the middle who just want to work together, and we learn how to compromise in kindergarten, and we’re still capable of it, but we’re not getting a chance to do it in our electoral systems. But mayors, for the most part, most of us are elected through what I just described, which is basically a top two system, where all the voters get to see all of the candidates, and all of the candidates have to face all of the voters. Yeah, it incentivizes us differently.

And so yeah, we tend to operate in a much more pragmatic fashion. And I guess, the other thing, of course, that makes us unique is we got to get things done. So I mean, the services we provide to you are literally necessary for human survival. If the water system doesn’t work for about three days, my citizens will start dying. So I’ve got to pick up the trash, produce the water, do all these core services. And so we really kind of have no choice but to just get it done. I can’t settle for this partisan nonsense and bickering.

Copy LinkThe purpose of the U.S. Conference of Mayors

SAFIAN:  So you are shortly going to be convening the nation’s mayors in your role as head of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in DC at the end of the month. Things are pretty intense in some cities right now. What are the top agenda items for this meeting? What do you hope to achieve?

HOLT:  So the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the organization I serve as president of for the next six months, I’ve been doing it about six months. I serve a one-year term as the president. We’ve been around for nearly a hundred years. We advocate as a group. And so that’s why we go to DC every January and why we’re going to DC at the end of this month. We speak as one, and we do so in a very bipartisan fashion. There’s a lot of groups like this for different levels of government. There’s a National Governors Association, there’s several organizations for state legislators and so on, but we’re kind of the only one left that is very and truly bipartisan. And so it’s not to say that we’re all the same, but we sure work really hard to find the common ground and the things that we can advocate for jointly in Washington. So that’s our first purpose. And we’ve been very influential through the years. The second thing we do is we share best practices. Of course, we all face a lot of the same challenges in our cities.

SAFIAN:  And so if there’s a new mayor like Zohran Mamdani coming in New York, is there a welcome process for him, an orientation program?

HOLT:  We work with Bloomberg and Harvard, and there is kind of a new mayor school. It’s two days long, and it happened back in December. And no, the new mayor of New York was not there, there actually were quite a few big city and small city mayors there. The third thing we do is we support each other. I would say that is not insignificant. And I always like to bring it up. I mean, there’s only one person in your city who knows what you’re going through. You need that friend group really of peers who can support you. And we do that for each other. I mean, modern technology allows an almost endless conversation to be happening among mayors.

Copy LinkThe limited power that Mayors have in preventing federal intervention

SAFIAN:  And so in this environment, the White House has gone after some U.S. mayors deploying the National Guard to cities, pursuing ICE raids in LA, in Chicago, of course, Minneapolis. Will you guys all talk about this when you’re together? How do you keep these conversations from turning partisan or rancorous?

HOLT:  Well, I mean, there’s probably not a lot of mayors of any political persuasion who like intervention in cities. I mean, so that’s one thing that’s going to be nonpartisan among mayors. Even a Republican mayor believes in local control. So I don’t think it’ll be particularly rancorous. We’ll definitely talk about it. It’s a challenging situation in so many ways, but not the least of which is there’s no easy solution for a city. You are in our form of government, you’re kind of a subservient level.

SAFIAN:  You don’t have control over everything, right?

HOLT:  Right. I mean, of course, as a mayor, you get emails like when the Whopper didn’t have cheese on it. You get emails when – everything under the sun. And so certainly your residents also believe that when federal government forces are coming into your city, that there’s something you should be able to do. But I mean, the reality of it, it is what it is. There’s not a lot that you can do. I mean, you legally can’t really stand in the way of the federal government. You can try to use rhetoric, but that’s its own issue because that rhetoric doesn’t seem to be doing much to persuade the actions of the federal government and its leadership. And sometimes that rhetoric can actually cause a counter-reaction that’s worse.

Sometimes you have residents who want the emotional satisfaction of you screaming at people, but you kind of know that that’s actually going to be counterproductive. That’s what leadership is.  You’re caught in the middle of those forces. And sometimes you have to suck it up and take it, but you know deep down you’re doing the right thing for your people.

SAFIAN:  It’s really tricky, right? The role that you play beyond your city, it’s sort of how much or what kind of role should you play nationally on policy, on social issues where you should and shouldn’t have agency.

HOLT:  Well, it’s like any leadership position. I mean, you can’t fight every battle. Of course, but there’s always somebody who thinks you should. So that’s the deal, is making sure you exercise your influence where it really exists and when it’s best utilized. And then otherwise, yeah, maybe sometimes you just got to keep your head down.

SAFIAN:  Mayor Holt is pretty outspoken for a guy who talks about keeping your head down. But there are so many unexpected things about him, about Oklahoma City, and about his observations of what the U.S. needs. Next up, we’ll be digging into how business and government should ideally interact, his take on immigration, and how AI is and isn’t trickling down to the local level. Stay with us. 

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Before the break, Oklahoma City Mayor, David Holt talked about the distinctive role that cities play in U.S. politics and economic activity. Now he talks about how business and government should interact, what he sees as the upside of immigration, and how AI is showing up at the local level. Let’s jump back in. 

Copy LinkThe ideal role between business and local government

Our audience is largely business people, entrepreneurs. What sort of relationship should mayors have with businesses, with national businesses, with local businesses?

HOLT:  I’m a believer in Oklahoma City’s history for a very strong partnership between elected city leaders and the business community. Those 15 initiatives that I mentioned, the chamber of commerce ran every one of the campaigns because we can’t really run a campaign. I can have an idea, and I can post about it on my Facebook, but the government can’t pay to run TV ads and mail you persuasive mail pieces about it. Somebody else outside of city hall has to do that legally and practically. And so we’ve had a great relationship with our business community here. And ultimately besides the elections, I mean, you need a strong economy to really enjoy all of your aspirations. When people in my community talk about the very real human challenges that we face like homelessness and poverty, to me, it’s like I don’t really see a pathway to meet those needs and those challenges without a strong economy.

So I’ve got to have a business community that’s thriving. And certainly, I play a role in that, ensuring that we have the regulatory and tax environment that’s helpful to them. And also as a mayor, you’re often out there cheerleading or recruiting. You’re kind of like the business recruiter in chief. So no, I’m a big believer. I mean, sure, you shouldn’t be a tool of crony capitalism. I mean, that’s a different thing. I guess that’s like the fear of it going too far. But to me, at that point, you’re not really supporting business growth, you’re just supporting individual businesses. But overall, a fair and neutral pro business environment is very important to, I think, a city like mine. And that’s probably one of the major aspects of my general philosophy that appears the most Republican. I’m a free market pro business mayor.

Copy LinkBalancing immigration needs with economic demands

SAFIAN:  On immigration, say, where does that fit? I mean, that helps grow your population, but it’s also got a lot of tricky elements to it.

HOLT:  Well, I mean, it can if you want to act like it’s a weakness. But it has actually historically been one of the great strengths for America just from a business perspective. I mean, we need people to take jobs of all kinds in Oklahoma City. We have a record streak right now of unemployment below 4%, 50 straight months. So what we’ve had is a workforce shortage in Oklahoma City now for basically the whole time I’ve been mayor. So I need people. I need people to take these jobs and all kinds of jobs, highly skilled jobs and low skilled jobs.

And so the historical American answer to that problem has often been immigration. And yeah, sure, I mean, it has to be controlled and regulated. I mean, it’s not an argument for open borders, but you can’t just close your border either. I mean, you have to find some reasonable middle ground where you are taking in a pretty healthy number of immigrants, and you will find if you don’t do that, yeah, you’re going to suffer economic consequences.

And then of course, there are these wonderful byproducts of it, great culture, great diversity, that diversity of thought and experience. But really, I think in many ways, if you just want to be practical about it, and probably you could find the greatest consensus around the idea that it’s just an economic necessity to have pretty strong immigration in your communities.

SAFIAN:  Makes me think of what you were saying earlier about the way the extremes of our country drive these policies as opposed to serve the common sense about it.

HOLT:  Right. Sure. 15% of the country thinks there should be no immigration. 15% of the country thinks you should just take the fences down and just let’s all live in one happy world. And then the 70% of us in the middle have a common sense immigration policy that we could probably write if you could just put all of us in a room one day. But we never get to do that because the debate is controlled by these two polar opposites. And again, I just think it looks like from the outside that I guess those are the two viewpoints, and they’ll never reconcile. And the reality is no, there’s a bunch of us who could figure this out if you would just sort of let us speak with one voice. But again, our electoral system doesn’t really encourage that.

SAFIAN:  I’m struck by how much, as you describe it, the role of cities of mayors is like this ballast that is keeping the country from tipping too far towards the extremes.

HOLT:  Yeah. Well, I mean, we are kind of the last bastion of responsible governance in the country. And yeah, God help us if we tip into this insanity and hyperpartisanship and polarization and ultimately just this ineffectiveness that happens at the extremes of the ideological spectrum. And yeah, I mean, I am fearful of that. Here in Oklahoma, there’s a petition right now being gathered. We’ll see if it makes it to the ballot, but it would actually create, statewide, a top-two election system like we do in Oklahoma City. And I’m very vocally supporting that. So I would say I’m not just resigned to the reality that state and national politics have to be dysfunctional. I’m using this platform to push back and hope that we can be a bulwark that is actually pushing effective governance back into the other levels of government in this country. Because I think we provide a great example that it is actually possible. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Copy LinkIs there an urban-rural divide in the U.S.?

SAFIAN:  Oklahoma City, you mentioned economically is doing quite well. U.S. cities overall, do you feel like they’re in a good place, they’re in a tough place?

HOLT:  We are the chief economic and cultural engines of the country. And so I mean, relative to non-urban places, we’re still where it’s at, and I don’t see that changing. And maybe the trade-off has historically been higher levels of crime, but right now, practically every American city is experiencing historic declines in the crime rates. So yeah, I think American cities are in a great place. They are still the place where talented and intelligent and creative people flock, still the place where innovation happens. And right now it’s not a place that’s any more dangerous than other places. That’s not the rhetoric that emanates out of DC. And so that can warp your thinking. “Well, I don’t know. I mean, I keep hearing that there’s a carnage across our American cities.” And that’s not reality. That serves someone’s political purpose, I guess. But no, I think on the ground in reality, cities are actually having a great time.

SAFIAN: And this perception of an urban, rural divide, different lifestyle, different values, different type of work. Do you see that?

HOLT:  Yeah, of course. And that’s okay. It’s a free country.  Why do we have to obsess over the way other people choose to live their lives? So yeah, I don’t necessarily want to live in rural America, but that’s okay. I know people who do. My dad lives on a ranch. I’ve had lots of relatives that have lived in very low population areas, and there are various reasons why that’s very attractive to different personality types. And I think that’s great.

On the flip side of that, why should people judge if you want to live in a city and you want to be around diversity of religion and sexuality and ethnicity, and that doesn’t bother you. And maybe if it bothers you and you want to live out in the country and have a simpler existence and less diversity in the people you encounter, great, right? I don’t think you have to worry about how I’m living my life. There is of course, again, like so many things in American life, these polar opposites that want to create a debate about that. But I guess, it gets back to a word I haven’t yet been able to work into this conversation, which is maybe the most important word in American politics, and that is pluralism. Pluralism is a very political, sciencey sounding word. But it is the idea that we are all going to disagree on our lifestyle choices, where we want to live, our politics, and that’s okay.

Then we’re going to figure it out. And our political system is created for us to arrive at a compromise that probably isn’t exactly what any of us wanted, but it’s good enough, and we’ll move on, and we’ll accept that we’re different. And so the extremes don’t accept that difference. They want to annihilate everybody else. But that acceptance of pluralism is like an inherent value in American government that we have to embrace. And so I guess I apply it to this question of urban versus rural. I just accept it. It’s okay that some people want to live in the country and some people want to live in the city. Live with it. It’s fine. We can all enjoy. There’s plenty of room in this country still. We can enjoy different lifestyles and we shouldn’t have to be angry that other people don’t want to live that way.

As conference president, I asked my fellow mayors to sign the Oklahoma City Declaration, and I would encourage your viewers and listeners to check it out, just Google “Oklahoma City Declaration.” We’ve had over 230 mayors sign it so far, and it is a rebuttal to that extremism and that polarization. It is a three-page statement of the democratic values and behaviors and philosophies that are necessary for this experiment to survive another 250 years. And it talks about pluralism, and it talks about compromise. And it also talks about very practical and explicit daily behaviors because we got to get back to that as Americans. We got to understand civics, we got to understand the way that groups behave and function, and we got to work together again.

SAFIAN: One last question.

HOLT:  Sure.

Copy LinkHow local governments will adopt AI

SAFIAN:  I feel like I have to always ask everyone I talk to about AI and what the implications might be. Do you have a theory of the game, a framework about it?

HOLT:  I think cities are still exploring it. Lots of swirling conversations. Would I say that in Oklahoma City, has it revolutionized anything we’re doing? No. I don’t want to seem like a luddite that I’m cautioning that there’s a possibility this isn’t as big of a deal as everybody’s saying that it is. Because it might be. But the idea that it would severely diminish the need for staff or anything like that, I mean, we’re not seeing that impact yet in cities. 

But to be frank, I mean, governments are not usually the most innovative entities in this country. I mean, we’ll be a little bit of a lagging indicator. We all want to be better than that, but I’ve given up hope that we’re going to be the greatest innovators. I mean, we will be more cautious, and we will wait to see some of these applications in the private sector probably before we’ll fully adopt them into the government.

SAFIAN:  Well, Mayor, this has been great. Thanks so much for joining.

HOLT:  My pleasure. Thanks for having the conversation, Bob. It was great.

SAFIAN:  I can see why Mayor Holt has been popular in Oklahoma City. He’s personable and reasonable, and he isn’t shy about who he is and what he believes. There are a lot of parallels I see between how Mayor Holt talks about running a city and the role of running a business. You need to appeal to a broad community, you need to motivate a group, and you need to prioritize getting things done. The elevation of Oklahoma City’s brand is a testament to both active achievement and well-framed storytelling. What sticks with me most is Mayor Holt’s willingness to stand apart from our national political currents. He acknowledges that sometimes you just have to keep your head down, but he’s brave in pursuing compromise and values of respect.

I’ve used the word bravery in several of my episode commentaries lately, I guess because it seems we need more of it. Bravery in the face of polarization and bullying. Leadership isn’t simply about rallying the faithful, it’s about modeling good behavior for others, even when it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.