OKLAHOMA: Sooner Strong Boy

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Oklahoma breeds big, tough, silent men with hearts of gold—some good, some bad, some eccentric—but always men. In Oklahoma's heritage of oil, Indians, covered wagons, shoulder-holsters, pellagra, dust, drought and Bad Lands, there is no place for sissies. Sooners* will certainly not stand for sissies in their Governor's Mansion. Oklahoma Governors must be strong men to get elected, stronger to survive. (Of Oklahoma's eleven Governors, five were targets for impeachment by the ever-rambunctious Legislature. Two got hit.)

No sissy is Governor Leon C. Phillips. 49. One night last week he tumbled his 296-lb., six-foot-plus frame down the steps of the Oklahoma City Mansion, into a big black Buick, hustled over 121 miles of icy highways to Tulsa, banqueted, slept an hour on the way back, snatched two more hours' sleep at, the Mansion, was back at his desk ahead of his staff. That night he was in McAlester, 128 miles away; next night Wewoka, 72 miles, two nights later in Ada, 103 miles.

''Big Red" Phillips has amassed more legal powers than any Oklahoma Governor before him. He rides hard on the Legislature, shoos strays back in line, keeps them milling and mooing. Not once in his first year in the State saddle has he had to head off a stampede.

What "Big Red" says, goes. Oklahoma is constitutionally bone-dry, but licenses 3.2 beer, which is dispensed in the subterranean cafeteria of the domeless State House. But "Big Red" mortally hates liquor, fires out of hand employes who drink on duty. If you were to order beer in the State House cafeteria this week, chances are the waitress would ask guardedly: "Do you want it in a paper cup?" If you were a State employe, you'd say "Yes." She would keep the bottle out of sight and you'd pick up some mints on the way out.

Governor Phillips' first Legislature gave him a "quarterly estimate law." His budget officer, R. R. Owens, a white-topped, soft-answering little Welshman, combs through estimates submitted in advance each quarter, snips off dollars here and there. The two pinchfists, old fighters for economy in government, specialize in slashing salaries. The Senate had given up to "Big Red" its jealously hoarded powers, let him fire appointees pointblank. With these weapons, the Governor had:

>Cut State employes by 2,000.

>Reorganized the highway department, wiped out a $5,000,000 deficit in a few months with cold cash.

>Cut school appropriations from $12,800,000 a year to $11,500,000.

>Virtually canceled a building program —a $1,000,000 auxiliary State office building was left uncompleted inside, a yawning cavern, with temporary walls.

>Earmarked for direct relief two special tax funds (instead of taking relief catch-as-catch-can out of general funds).

>Enacted his entire program with no new taxes.

Last week State Auditor Frank Carter reported that "Big Red" had cut State expenditures $1,570,000 below appropriations since last July 1, that savings should total $3,400,000 by the fiscal year-end.