A civil engineer who worked in Iraq. A former college football player. Students eyeing political careers.
The people who run Tulsa's mayoral races behind the scenes - those handling the candidates' talking points, coordinating phone calls and arranging appearances - have diverse backgrounds and different reasons for doing the job, but they all share one belief: They're working for Tulsa's greater good.
"It's tough, but it's tough for all the right reasons," said Monroe Nichols, a city staffer under former Mayor Kathy Taylor's administration who now serves as her campaign manager. "You do get to come to work every day, and you know you get to do what you're doing for the right reasons."
Mayor Dewey Bartlett, 66, a Republican, will face Taylor, 57, a Democrat, in the Nov. 12 general election.
The candidates outsource some of the work needed to run their campaigns to advertising and political consultants, but they also have full-time campaign staff members and a mix of regular and occasional volunteers who work from campaign offices to develop strategies and communicate messages, manage finances, review polling data and talk to news media.
These workers often see the candidates as friends. Some have relationships that go back years. And on both sides, there are deep Tulsa ties.
Nichols and Bartlett Campaign Manager Dan Patten, for example, are University of Tulsa graduates.
"Tulsa's my home and I missed it, so I really wanted to come back," said Patten, who had been looking for a job back home after a year of campaign work for the National Rifle Association.
Team Bartlett
Patten felt intimidated walking into his job interview with Bartlett. From the news stories he'd read, Tulsa's mayor seemed serious, all business.
"That is not the Dewey that I met," Patten said. "He's a funny guy. He jokes around a lot. He's level-headed."
BARTLETT
Dan Patten: Dewey Bartlett's campaign manager previously worked for the NRA.
That lined up more with Patten's personality. He describes himself as "a jokester," always pulling pranks - particularly on Bartlett's wife, Victoria Bartlett, whom he once riled by telling her that top campaign intern Matthew Faeth had quit.
"Dewey will get me back from time to time," Patten said.
On one such time, Bartlett joked that he said in a speech at the Woody Guthrie Center that Woody Guthrie, who is known for his socialist leanings, had shaped Bartlett's own political views.
"I was like, 'Oh, my - Dewey!'" Patten said. "He started laughing after that."
Patten, 28, graduated from the University of Tulsa in 2010 with a political science degree and went on to work for a group opposed to state ballot question 744, which would have required Oklahoma to boost per-pupil education spending to levels of neighboring states, and then for the NRA in Pittsburgh.
Bartlett's campaign is the first Patten has directed for a person, as opposed to an issue, he said.
"There were points in the (June 11) primary (election season) where I thought I was in way over my head, but we have a great team and great volunteers that have really made my job a lot easier," he said.
Bartlett's other full-time paid staff member is campaign coordinator Brandon Collins, a "southern Missouri farm boy" who says he handles "the ground game," with duties such as coordinating door-knocking and making sure the campaign office is staffed with volunteers.
Collins, an Oral Roberts University student nearing a degree in government, said he manages about 40 regular, dependable volunteers and "I don't even know how many" less-frequent volunteers.
Team Taylor
Anna America volunteered for Taylor's victorious 2006 mayoral campaign, and, as she puts it, "got caught in a whirlpool" of 70-hour weeks after catching onto "the energy and the excitement around her."
She served, like Nichols, as a mayoral aide for a part of Taylor's 2006-09 administration and grew close to her, eventually considering her a friend and mentor.
TAYLOR
Matt Stiner: The political director is one of Kathy Taylor's nine full-time, paid staff members.
Over the years, Taylor has helped America through various personal crises, including a period after America's mother had a heart attack.
"She is that kind of person who reaches out and really is incredibly supportive, and that's probably something that's not as well known about her - how strong she can be when someone's dealing with a challenge like that in their life," America said.
America, 50, has been a newspaper reporter and Tulsa school board member and is often the face of Taylor's latest campaign as its communications director.
In the hierarchy of the nine-member full-time campaign staff, she works closely with research director Joey Wignarajah, who fact-checks and helps craft news releases, speeches and advertising.
Wignarajah, 31, a native Tulsan who is often described as the brains of the group, has degrees in computer engineering, public policy and business administration and has been a civil engineer in the Navy, where he worked at Guantanamo Bay and in Baghdad.
Above them is Nichols, 29, a former wide receiver on the University of Tulsa football team who worked in education and finance administration after Taylor's term in office.
Nichols met Taylor during her first campaign and put up signs, knocked on doors and made phone calls. This time, he's the top decision-maker - although on most tasks, such as speechwriting, everyone participates, he says.
"We have folks who have these incredible areas of expertise, so ... it's important that everyone has an opportunity to look at that and weigh in on it, because everybody brings so many gifts and everybody's local," he said.
Bartlett's paid full-time staff
- Dan Patten, campaign manager
- Brandon Collins, campaign coordinator
Taylor's paid full-time staff
- Monroe Nichols, campaign manager
- Matt Stiner, political director
- Daniel Regan, finance director
- Anna America, communications director
- Joey Wignarajah, research director
- Sean-Paul Mauro, field director
- Greg Robinson, field organizer
- Eric Smith, field organizer
- Autumn Worten, scheduler
Zack Stoycoff 918-581-8486
zack.stoycoff@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: Campaign workers see candidates' other sides
Elections 2013
Every Monday through Nov. 4, the Tulsa World will publish answers from Tulsa mayoral candidates on questions about major issues leading up to the Nov. 12 election.
Tulsa's mayoral race entered its home stretch on high school students' terms Friday as the candidates tackled student-submitted questions in the first campaign forum of the general election season.
