Editor's Note: The Tulsa World will feature a day on the campaign trail with each of the leading mayoral candidates this week. Mayor Dewey Bartlett was featured Tuesday; Thursday's paper will feature Kathy Taylor's campaign.
View A day on the campaign trail with Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett.
View A day on the campaign trail with former Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor.
The sun has yet to rise and Bill Christiansen is already talking trash.
"When I go around - when I'm touring - people hate the trash system," he says. "You need to be a Philadelphia lawyer to understand the trash regulations, and you have to gift-wrap it for them to take it."
Christiansen, 65, is sitting behind the wheel of his burgundy Chevrolet Tahoe, winding his way through the quiet south Tulsa neighborhood he lives in with his wife of nearly 43 years, Veretta Christiansen.
Dressed in green shorts, a gray sweatshirt and sneakers, the former city councilor-turned-mayoral candidate is going for a run. He does it three or four times a week, always at the day's start, along the River Parks trail.
"It kind of energizes you all day," he says of a run. "If I don't do it, I don't feel 100 percent."
The first hurdle for candidates in the city's first nonpartisan mayoral election comes Tuesday, when voters will go to the polls for the primary. Christiansen announced his candidacy for mayor last year and has been on what he calls a "Listen and Learn Tour" ever since.
"I love going out and meeting the people," he says. "The least thing I like is what other candidates say about me."
After his run, Christiansen heads to the Health Zone at St. Francis, where he lifts some weights, then it's home for a shower.
Veretta Christiansen, 64, is there to greet him.
"He's honest. He's sincere. He's a self-made man. He's focused." she says of her husband. "I need to put this first - he just has common sense."
The couple met at the University of Oklahoma. She was in the Alpha Phi sorority, and he was the house boy. It was the spring of 1969, and they were juniors.
Veretta Christiansen says she was attracted to his sense of humor. After a summer of letter writing - she was in France studying, he was back home working in River Edge, N.J. - they were engaged. A year later, they married.
A longtime kindergarten teacher, Veretta Christiansen jokes that she's better in a room full of 5-year-olds than she is in a room full of adults.
"I'm a more private person, and I don't know if I would assume the role of first lady as it's been in the past," she says. "I would rise to the occasion and have an education platform."
Bill Christiansen downs a Nutrisystem shake before heading to Tally's Cafe for breakfast with his campaign manager, Josh McFarland, and former City Councilor Roscoe Turner.
A longtime Democrat, Turner says Christiansen, a Republican, is the only candidate he trusts to do the job of mayor.
"I figure I value my name more than anything else I've got, so I must trust Bill an awful lot," he says.
On the campaign trail, the former Marine and successful businessman seems always to be walking a fine line between expressing what he genuinely feels and suppressing what he knows he best not say.
More often than not, he follows his heart.
"To be honest with you, it pisses me off, too," Christiansen tells a man at a mid-morning meet-and-greet at St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church.
The topic: Why and how the city changed its trash service.
After the event, Christiansen slips his blue blazer onto a hanger in the back seat of his SUV and heads downtown.
"I'm putting my heart and soul into this," he says. "These things always take longer than you are expecting, and you can't just say, 'I'm out of here.' It's tough."
Christiansen styles himself as the candidate of the disenfranchised, saying he does not believe that "being mayor is rocket science."
"They are not asking for too much. They're just asking to be part of the process, to be listened to, to be heard," he says.
Candidate Bill Christiansen and businessman Bill Christiansen can be hard to distinguish. Christiansen is the founder and owner of Christiansen Aviation, and after lunch at the Will Rogers Rotary Club, a radio interview and the taping of a radio commercial, he is off to Jones Riverside Airport, where the company is based. He seldom misses a day at work.
"When your chips are on the table, you have to be involved," he says.
The company, which Christiansen established in 1972 with the help of a loan from his father, Gordon Christiansen, sells, leases and maintains small planes, gives flying lessons and sells jet fuel.
"I struggled for 13 years," he says.
These days, the company is a success, with Christiansen quick to thank his family, including his sons, Ken and Bryan, for helping make it so.
And that's an important part of this story, for without that success, Christiansen would not have one of his most often-used campaign pitches - one he proclaims with great pride and conviction.
"Unlike the other two candidates, I started my own business," he says. "I didn't marry into it, and I didn't inherit it."
A day with Bill Christiansen
Former City Councilor Bill Christiansen's May 6 schedule:
6 a.m.: Run along River Parks Trail
8 a.m.: Breakfast at Tally's Restaurant with campaign manager
10 a.m.: Meet and greet at St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church
Noon: Lunch, brief speech at Will Rogers Rotary Club
1:30 p.m.: Radio interview at Clear Channel
2:30 p.m.: Record radio commercial at KFAQ building
3:30 p.m.: Go to work at Christiansen Aviation
5:30 p.m.: Private meet-and-greet at local CPA's office
Kevin Canfield 918-581-8313
kevin.canfield@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: Running for common sense
