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Saturday, August 26, 2006 State Legislature Freshmen Recall "Culture Shock"
By RANDY KREHBIEL
World Staff Writer
The job had some surprises in store, say first-termers Sen. Brian Crain and Rep. Jeannie McDaniel.
Freshmen in college and freshmen in the Oklahoma Legislature have at least one thing in common.
They find out, and pretty quickly, that they don't know as much as they thought.
Two first-term Tulsa legislators, Republican Sen. Brian Crain and Democratic Rep. Jeannie McDaniel, talked about their own learning curves Friday during a lunch presentation at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa Schusterman Center.
Rodger Randle, a former Tulsa mayor who served for 17 years in the Legislature, prefaced McDaniel's and Crain's remarks by saying, "For everyone who goes to the Legislature, there is some form of culture shock."
For Crain, the biggest surprise was how few issues broke along party lines. He said he expected all Republicans to agree with him and all Democrats to disagree.
"You can find yourself having opponents in your own party, and you can find you have friends across the aisle," he said.
"Republicans and Democrats in Oklahoma are not that far apart on day-to-day things. There are issues that will separate people . . . workers comp
reform, tort reform, pro-life issues. Those can be very divisive, but those are very rare." Read more...
Posted at 8/26/2006 05:51:00 PM
 
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