By Barbra Murray
Congressional Quarterly

Electoral votes: 8

Delegates: 38

Co-chairmen: Gov. Frank Keating and Casey Killblane

Hotel: Courtyard by Marriott Downtown (215) 496-3200

1996 Election:
Dole – 48%
Clinton – 40%
Perot – 11%

Oklahoma Republicans - already on a roll that has seen them capture all eight congressional seats in a state that used to be a Democratic stronghold - enjoyed the speculation this summer that their two-term governor, Frank Keating, was on the vice presidential short list of party presidential candidate George W. Bush.

By the usual calculations, Keating was not one of the more likely prospects. His state borders Bush's Texas base, and his profile as a conservative Southern governor closely matches that of Bush. The only thing Keating is widely known for outside of Oklahoma is his effort to comfort and reassure his state's residents following the 1995 terrorist bombing of the Alfred Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.

However, Keating has a close working relationship with Bush and served the Texas governor's father, President George Bush, as acting deputy secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. And Keating, who formerly was a U.S. attorney and Treasury official under President Ronald Reagan, has somewhat closer ties to social conservative activists than Bush.

Whether Keating's vice presidential prospects end up as real or a pipe dream, he still will play a prominent role as co-chairman of the Oklahoma delegation. And he won't have trouble rallying support for Bush, who swept all of the state's 38 delegates in the March 14 primary.

State college regent Casey Killblane is the other co-chairman. Killblane is a former aide to Barbara Bush, wife of the former president and mother of this year's Republican standard-bearer.

Senate Assistant Majority Leader Don Nickles is a delegate. House Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts Jr., a deputy permanent co-chairman of the convention, is an Oklahoma alternate delegate.

Yet the Oklahoma delegation consists of a hodgepodge of party loyalists. According to Oklahoma Republican Party Field Director Brian Maughan, there was no effort by the party to engineer any particular outcome.

"Each [delegate] applicant is given the opportunity to give a monologue and take questions," Maughan said. "There's no litmus test - candidate selection depends on how impressed the [selection] committee was with that person. There's no special set criteria."

The result is a contingent in which 35 percent of the members are women and almost one-quarter of the members are under age 40. "We feel like we're the party of the future here in Oklahoma," Maughan said.

Maughan pointed to Shannon Nance, executive sales director for the Renaissance Hotel chain. "She is somewhat new to active politics, but she has made a pretty big tidal wave here in Republican Party politics - she's a real mover and a shaker . . .," said Maughan. "She's representative of the new trend of Republican working women."

Nineteen-year-old Carissa Darling is the youngest of Oklahoma's delegates, and one of the youngest of all the convention delegates. "I got involved in politics at 14 when I started helping out on a House race," she said. "I just really believed in everything the Republican Party stands for and have been working with them ever since."

A Native American of the Choctaw tribe, Darling is a University of Oklahoma student of business and vocal performance (she sings opera). Darling was the Stephens County Teenage Republican Party chairman for two years while in high school and now chairs the revived state Teenage Republican Party, an organization that had been dormant for nearly 20 years.

The Oklahoma Republican Party is markedly conservative on social issues such as abortion. "We have a solid pro-life delegation and I expect Oklahoma to fall lock-step into the pro-life agenda," said Maughan. Anthony Lauinger, chairman of anti-abortion organization Oklahomans for Life, is a delegate.

While Maughan admits that there are some in the delegation who may not be as strongly opposed to abortion rights, he said, "I'm not anticipating any floor fights about it."

OKLAHOMA NOTABLES: Gov. Frank Keating, a delegation co-chairman; state college regent Casey Killblane, a delegation co-chairman and former aide to first lady Barbara Bush; Senate Assistant Majority Leader Don Nickles; House Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts Jr. (an alternate delegate); Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys (an alternate).