Oklahoma election results: Tulsa mayor candidates Keith, Nichols headed to November runoff

The race for Tulsa mayor won't be decided until November.

In an unusually tight race among three candidates, neither Monroe Nichols, 40, a state legislator, nor Karen Keith, 70, a county commissioner and former local news anchor, were able to collect the required 50% of the vote for an outright victory and will face each other in a runoff Nov. 5.

In unofficial results with all precincts reporting, Nichols received 33.1% of the vote, Keith 32.6%.

Brent VanNorman, president of an investment company, former attorney and former pastor, came in a close third with 31.8% of the vote after a campaign in which he stressed his conservativism and Republican party affiliation. City elections in Tulsa are nonpartisan, although Nichols and Keith had run in other elections as Democrats, they did not emphasize that.

Fewer than 500 votes separated Nichols from Keith and Keith from VanNorman in the nip-and-tuck race.

Oklahoma election results 2024: Tulsa mayor race headed to runoff, OKC hotel tax passes

If he prevails in the runoff election, Nichols would be Tulsa's first Black mayor, a significant step in light of the city's legacy of violence toward Black residents. In 1921, according to historical accounts, Tulsa was the site of one of the most severe incidents of racial violence in U.S. history. The massacre left somewhere between 30 and 300 people dead, mostly Black residents, and destroyed Tulsa’s prosperous Black neighborhood of Greenwood, known at the time as “Black Wall Street.” More than 1,400 homes and businesses were burned, and nearly 10,000 people were left homeless.

The winner in November will replace current Mayor G.T. Bynum, first elected in 2016. Bynum is stepping down after two terms to become vice president of community and government affairs for the St. Francis Health System in Tulsa.

Other candidates active in the race were Casey Bradford, a U.S. Army veteran, and owner of Shady Keys Dueling Piano Bar - he received 1.6% of the vote - and John Jolley, owner of an advertising company, who got 0.6%.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Tulsa mayor election results: Two candidates head to November runoff