'How to Govern in a Diverse Society'

As OKC’s youngest chief executive since 1923, Mayor David Holt is changing the city’s leadership dynamic.

As OKC's youngest chief executive since 1923, Mayor David Holt is changing the city's leadership dynamic.

Photo by Brent Fuchs

The country’s youngest mayor in a city with more than 500,000 people promotes diversity as the key to socioeconomic prosperity.

He’s not a liberal from California. He’s not a Democrat from New York. He’s Oklahoma City-born-and-bred David Holt, whose term as head of municipal government enters its eighth month in December.

“Quite frankly, we’ve been led by white males from northwest Oklahoma City for a long time,” says Holt, a 39-year-old who served two terms in the state Senate as a conservative Republican. “We need to break down walls and get out of our bubbles. Everybody needs to be at the leadership table.”

Holt says he delights in OKC’s nonpartisan election policies “because I would not have been elected if I had been a firebrand ideologue. I got endorsements from Democrats and Republicans alike.”

Holt won with 78.5 percent of the vote, the highest victory for a non-incumbent in OKC mayoral history. As the youngest mayor since 1923, he replaced 14-year veteran Mick Cornett, for whom Holt was chief of staff from 2006 to 2011.

The son of a teacher and a social worker says embracing diversity comes not necessarily from his parents, but his own experiences.

“In Washington, I was often the only person of my race on the subway, which is unusual for many white men,” he says. “I’ve lived in places where I’m the only white male. I lived for seven years in the District of Columbia, which has long been a minority-majority city.

“It’s also the virtue of being younger. My Senate district [in northwest OKC] was already transitioning to what the rest of the city looks like by the time I left. In Oklahoma City as a whole, 60 percent of those under 18 years old are non-white. Because Oklahoma City is still largely segregated racially and economically, I felt as mayor that this is an issue I could get out ahead of.”

Two steps – one symbolic, one strategic – illustrate Holt changing OKC’s leadership dynamic. In his office, he removed (and placed in another room) the photographs of previous mayors, all white men. He replaced them with portraits of 20 OKC children from all walks of life.

“When I talk of diversity, I mean everything – racial, gender, age, geographic,” says Holt, the first member of the Osage tribe to become OKC mayor.

In October, Holt rolled out the first of many appeals to OKC residents about what to do after the Metropolitan Area Projects Plan 3 (known by locals as MAPS 3) is completed in 2020. He wants to know if they want to extend a penny sales tax for a fourth time and, if they do, what they want to improve next.

“I want to keep an open mind and have people offer their ideas,” Holt says. “I know people want to see more of the projects spread around the city and address social issues. We want to see what everyone has to say.

“I have tried to prove that there’s room in American politics for consensus. In Oklahoma City, our success in the past 20 years has been to set aside what divides us. We need to double down on what unites us.

“I’m trying to set an example for the world on how to govern in a diverse society.”

BRIAN WILSON