God, I Need a Drink

From the earliest days of Indian Territory through the 1950s, Oklahoma had strict laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol, but they were usually lightly enforced. In this episode, Trait Thompson and Dr. Matthew Pearce trace Oklahoma’s history with alcohol regulation and the social and political forces that shaped the state’s relationship with booze. Their guest is Congresswoman Stephanie Bice, who authored new laws which modernized alcohol policies during her tenure in the state senate.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
(upbeat music playing)TRAIT THOMPSON: Hello,
and welcome to “A Very OK Podcast.”My name is Trait Thompson.
I’m the executive director of the OklahomaHistorical Society,
and usually with me is Dr. Bob Blackburn.
But he is not able to make it this timebecause his wife, Debbie, recently
passed away.
But we have a great person who is steppingin for him, and that is
Dr. Matthew Pearce.

(00:25):
And, Matt has been with the OklahomaHistorical Society for quite some time.
You’ve heard him on this podcasta couple of different times in his role
as state historian,as recently as our April podcast,
where we talked
about the history of the state flag.(MATT PEARCE) Right.
(THOMPSON) Matt, it’s great to be with you again.(PEARCE) Thank you for having me.
I’m glad I was able toto fill in on such short notice.

(00:46):
There are some big shoes to fill
for stepping in for Dr. Bob,but happy to happy to support.
(THOMPSON) Well, it is big shoes to fill,but I know you always do
a great job on this podcast,
and if there’s anybody who knowsand understands this history, it’s you.
And so I am thrilledto have you with us here today.
And it’s been a little bit of a wildand sad week

(01:10):
kind of here as we’re recording thisat the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Of course, Governor George Nighpassed away a couple of weeks ago,
and then, Dr. Blackburn’s wifeDebbie has passed away.
And then we just found out recentlythat Jeff Briley, a long-time
Oklahoma Historical Society staff,who was deputy director of the museum

(01:33):
and was in charge of our collectionsfor many, many years and,
there wasn’t a collections itemin our building that Jeff Briley
didn’t know the story behind it and didn’thave a good story to tell about it.
And, I will just start off talkinga little bit about Jeff, and those of you
who knew him know he came to workevery day excited to come to work.

(01:55):
He it was such a brightand just a light.
Always enjoyed talking to himand hearing him his stories.
And he retired last year, and it wasit was great for him.
He’d worked here for so many years,and he had so many projects
that he wanted to do.
Mostly that revolvedaround fixing his cars,

(02:17):
and we are going to miss him a lot.
(PEARCE)He always,
one thing that always struck me about
Jeff was how excited he was aboutthe History Center, about the collections.
And in that regard, I think it made him,he was a great advocate for the OHS
and the types of things and programsthat we can offer to the public.

(02:39):
That’s something I always was struckby with, with him,
even though I really never had a chance
to interact himmuch with my day-to-day work.
But to have someone like thatwho was passionate about what they did
and was eager to share those storieswith anyone
who was wanting to listen,something I always take away from him.
(THOMPSON) Anybody who knowsJeff knows that an encounter

(03:00):
with him in your dayalways made your day better. Yeah.
And then,
and then, Debbie Blackburn passed away, and
she had been battling some illnessfor quite a while
behind the scenes.
And Debbie served in the state houseof Representatives for 12 years.
She was a passionate advocatefor historic preservation,

(03:21):
and she passed a bill allowingfor the 20 percent state historic tax credit.
(PEARCE) Yeah, yeah.
And I think we’ve just, again, it’sanother one, and we’ve lost some,
some very good friends of the OklahomaHistorical Society.
And especially speaking about the statetax credit for someone like me who was
involved in historic preservation,

(03:42):
that state tax credit is essential.
And so her role in getting that statetax credit enacted in some in,
in some respects,I wouldn’t be where I am without,
you know, individuals being able
to take advantage of that tax credit,which provided that job for me.
And, to help people navigate that process.(THOMPSON) Well,

(04:02):
and you talk about economic developmentin the state, the preservation
of some of our most iconic buildings,like the Skirvin Hotel.
None of that happenswithout the work of Debbie Blackburn,
and she was well-respectedon both sides of the aisle.
And so it’s a big lossnot only for Dr. Blackburn
and his family,but for the entire state of Oklahoma.

(04:22):
And then finally, Governor George Nigh,which he has been on this podcast twice.
I'm so thrilled we were ableto have him in here to talk with us.
But just a giant in Oklahoma
politics. A man who beganhis public service career
in 1950, was the youngest statelegislature, legislator

(04:44):
in the state houseand then, in 1958, elected the youngest
lieutenant governor in the nationand then went on,
he served two full terms of governor thathe was elected to and two partial terms
due to resignations, and he was a manwho was always encouraging.
He was always friendly.
He loved being in a room full of people.

(05:05):
He loved talking about the adoptionof the song “Oklahoma!” as our state song.
And there wasn’t,if you knew George Night for five minutes,
George Nigh was your friend.
(PEARCE) Yeah.
And again, Oklahoma’s four-time governor.
And you have someone whodedicated his life to public service.

(05:26):
You know, I was reading,
something that I didn’t knowuntil after was reading about
more about George Nigh after his passing,but the fact that, he hitched rides
to like campaign stops or,
you know, when he was first runningfor the state legislature.
And that’s just something that was just,
I was struck by that.
Just by someone who was, you know,that dedicated to

(05:49):
running for public officeand to serve and relying on the
the generosity of othersto get to where he needed to go.
And that was something that that justkind of stuck with me and made me think
about maybe how that helped influencehis, his style
and politics and his, his, his ideology.

(06:09):
(THOMPSON) Well, and he wasmaking public appearances
right up to about three weeksbefore he passed.
You know, he loved Oklahoma.
Of course, anybody who’s ever heard himspeak has heard him
talk about Oklahomawith an exclamation point.
And he was promotingand touting this state
and going and speaking to groupsright up to the very end.

(06:32):
And, at 98 years old, he passed away,
and we will sorely miss him.
He was just such a lightand such a good person.
And of course, our condolencesgo out to his wife, Donna,
and the rest of the Nigh family
because he was a friend of the OklahomaHistorical Society.
We inducted him a couple of years agointo the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame,

(06:55):
both he and Donna.
And well-deserved, by the way,that wasn’t just an honorary thing.
He loved history.He was a history teacher.
But he also, in the 1980s, dida lot for the Oklahoma Historical Society
when he worked with usto rewrite our constitution and bylaws
and state laws governing usto bring us into the modern era.

(07:17):
And it was, it’s somethingthat has shaped our future from the 1980s forward.
So, George Nigh,we’re going to miss you for sure.
(PEARCE) Yeah.
(THOMPSON) Well, let’s get into our topic for today, and we have a great one.
I’m really excitedabout talking about this with you.
And we’ve kind of talkedin the corridors off and on as we’ve

(07:38):
found things in our research,but we’re going to be tackling the weird,
wild history of alcohol policyin the state of Oklahoma.
And just like almost anythingwe touch in this podcast,
it is not just your typical straightdown the line history.
There are crazy characters,there are interesting laws,

(07:59):
and the pathway to get from there,
starting in the territorial era,both Indian Territory
and Oklahoma Territory, to get to uswhere we are now.
You know, later on,our special guest on this
podcast will be CongresswomanStephanie Bice, and she’s
going to tell us about her effortsto modernize Oklahoma’s alcohol laws

(08:21):
after long last,that finally came about in 2018.
So we havewe have a lot to cover, don’t we?
(PEARCE) Yes, we do.
And and in many cases,think of this as maybe a taste of
maybe some potential topics to come,
because there’s so many different avenuesthat that we could go into.
But hopefully, you know,we can provide some good context

(08:42):
on the history of alcohol, you know, inwhat is now Oklahoma.
And, you know, and again, I think with,with Congresswoman Bice’s interview,
you know, bringing us into the present,I think it’s a good example of how,
you know, the,how relevant history can be.
I mean, the the state question was only,you know, approved

(09:02):
or ratified in 2018,not even 10 years ago.
And, and so just kind of how, how,how relevant
history can be for some of these topics.(THOMPSON) Well, we just mentioned George Nigh.
And he presided over the senatewhen the senate
was debating puttingthe referendum on the ballot.
And then he was governorwhen liquor by the drink was passed.

(09:24):
So just, he was inthese two major decisions
that happenedthroughout his time in public service.
So I thought I’d start outwith a quote here because there’s a famous
philosopher named Homer Simpson,who was once giving a toast,
and he said, “To alcohol, the cause ofand solution
to, all of life’s problems.”

(09:47):
And I think no one could put it inquite that way.
But, Homer, I think encapsulatedall the issues that we deal with.
Alcohol can certainly be, a, relaxing. It can be a respite.
But of course, we knowmany of the struggles
that people have with alcohol,and it can cause many, many problems.

(10:07):
And we don’t want to gloss over thatduring our discussion.
(PEARCE) Exactly.
(THOMPSON) And another quote that I found, and,this is by Will Rogers.
Will Rogers was quoted as saying that “Winehad such an effect on Noah’s health that
it was all he could do to live 950 years.
He was the first to discover a use forwater, and that was to float a boat on.

(10:27):
But as a beverage,he knew it was a total failure.”
And then the
other Will Rogers quotethat many people are familiar with
is “Oklahomans will vote dryas long as they can stagger to the polls.”
So Matt, let’s get into, let’s go back.
You know, Oklahoma starts as Indian Territory.
And let’s talk a little bitabout some of the things that you found

(10:50):
in your research abouthow does alcohol policy start.
And, and the federal government took,
you know, took a pretty strict viewof dealing with alcohol
as it related to our Native Americantribes and and the interaction with them.
So let’s start there.
(PEARCE) Yeah.
Well, I think it’s important toto note how, you know, alcohol,

(11:11):
we can look at alcohol in the context of,
of colonization, and settlementand how those forces were imposed
upon, upon Native peoples,even in the 15th and 16th
centuries, where,you know, alcohol is part
and parcelwith efforts by colonists to obtain land,

(11:33):
to obtain resources,such as furs, deer skins,
and so forth.
Alcohol or perceptionsof alcohol is influencing
especially how missionariesperceived
the perceived impactsof alcohol on Native societies,
that that perception is influencingthe efforts of missionaries

(11:54):
and their efforts to, quote unquote,civilize and educate American Indians.
And then, you know, as you mentioned,alcohol and the regulation of alcohol
is integral to the, you know, initial
you know, federal Indian lawsand colonial laws that were never meant
to try to regulate trade and commercein Indian country.

(12:15):
And the liquor trade
was quite lucrative for Europeansand later American settlers and traders
in obtaining resources and in turn,you know, the liquor trade
could be absolutely destabilizingand devastating to Native communities.
Native societies such as the Cherokee,the Choctaw, the Chickasaw,

(12:37):
they would have been exposedto the ill effects of alcohol
as early as the 17th century inwhat’s now the southeastern United States
because of of forcessuch as the deerskin trade,
which was really valuableand fairly highly profitable trade
during the colonial period,because deerskin could be used
for so many different, different thingsin terms of fur, for leather, and so forth.

(12:59):
And, so you had European huntersgo into the, you know, the,
the interior of what’s now the southeasternUnited States and work with Native groups
to, to hunt down, herds of deerto where you had hundreds
of thousands of deer skins being exportedfrom Charleston and Savannah.
And one of the key ways that that tradersused to obtain, you know, to obtain

(13:21):
hides and, and so forth was by tradingalcohol with Native groups.
And so, and it wasn’t uncommon
for fur traders to use watered down rum,
or watered down whiskey, you know, to,
you know, to their advantageto trade with Native peoples.
There’s one British merchant who remarkedquote, "it is certain there’s nothing the Indians

(13:43):
like better than rum and nothingthe traders have have rather to give."
And the exchange of alcoholfor deer skins, furs,
those things were occurringeven though you had colonial governments
such as the British government and later
the American governmenttried to prohibit the trade of alcohol,

(14:03):
or to prevent unlicensed tradersfrom even operating in Indian country.
So it’s within that context thatNative peoples are having to to grapple
with the forces, they’re already having to grapplewith the forces of colonization.
You know, thesome settlers’ desires for land,
interacting with a, with a market economywhere,
which of course, they recognizethere’s tremendous value in that

(14:26):
because there’s
a number of goods that they can obtainthat can make their lives,
their lives easier.
But there’s also the presence of alcohol.
And that kind of upsets the scales,and it has some devastating effects.
(THOMPSON) Well let’s be quite honest.
We have never been a teetotaling peoplein the United States.
Alcohol was prevalentfrom the very beginning.

(14:46):
And of course there weresome religious groups
who eschewed alcohol,but for the most part it was prevalent.
It was available,it was consumed heartily, and even
we almost fought another revolutionover alcohol, the Whiskey Rebellion.
(PEARCE) Right.
(THOMPSON) And so this was somethingthat has been prevalent.

(15:07):
And then as we get ready forIndian tribes to be removed
into the Indian Territory,we have alcohol playing a part in that.
(PEARCE) Right.
And so I think, you know, your pointabout alcohol’s prevalence.
I mean, there’s a, there was a bookthat came out in the early 1980s,
I forget the author’s name,but the title of the book is called

(15:29):
The Alcoholic Republic.
And it the whole argumentis about the importance of,
of alcoholto American politics at the time.
And, and also alcohol was integralto the agricultural economy.
Of course, so much of early Americanagriculture centered on corn cultivation.
And there’s there are really two waysthat a farmer could get corn to market.

(15:53):
One was they could use it to fattenlivestock, namely hogs.
And of course, you could transportthose animals on hoof
to where they needed to gofor slaughtering and distribution.
The other was whiskey.
And so that wasn’tall that uncommon for farmers to,
you know, they, or for merchants to set upa grist mill so they could process
corn meal, but also a distilleryso that they could make whiskey.

(16:16):
(THOMPSON) Right.
(PEARCE) And so it was, you know,it was just everywhere.
And, and again,kind of tying back to these forces of,
of colonizationand ultimately Indian removal,
and you have, have traders and merchantsthat are seeking to take advantage
of Native peoplesduring forced removal.
There were constantly reportsof whiskey

(16:40):
peddlers who set up shopalong the various Trails of Tears,
as Native peoples were forcibly removedinto Indian Territory.
Literally taking,
merchants taking advantage of peoplewhen they were at their absolute worst
and when they were at their absolutemost vulnerable.
And bear in mind,this is when even at the time when

(17:03):
the US government had signed treatieswith various nations
to facilitate processesof the process of forced
removal, and included in those treatieswere provisions that the US government
was going to assist Native peoplesin prohibiting the,
you know, the sale and transport of alcohol
in Indian Territory. The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit, for instance, had that provision in it.

(17:27):
And also those treaties would also empower
Native nations to set up their own policeforces to regulate and
and try to restrict the transport of,of alcohol in their, in their nation.
So it's
alcohol, whiskey, rum.

(17:47):
It’s tied to American agriculture.
It's tied,
it’s just integral to American politics.
And, even as the USgovernment is negotiating and establishing
treaties and establishingfederal legislation
to try to try to dictatewhat can go on in Indian country,

(18:08):
alcohol is certainly playing a role in that as well, in terms of how it
how it can be regulated.
(THOMPSON) You know, alcohol was prohibited.
So once we get the Five Tribes
that move into Indian Territoryand they set up their
their own reservations,alcohol was prohibited in there.
And in 1824 you have the establishmentof Fort Gibson and Fort Towson.

(18:28):
And both of those forts
were tasked with keeping out of alcohol,
out of the territoryand with, you know, if they did
find whiskey peddlers of arresting them,
confiscating or destroying the liquorthat they were carrying.
And, but it was a case of

(18:50):
not enough manpower to do the job
and kind of a slap on the wristonce somebody would get caught.
(PEARCE) And I think also they’re recognizing how
the alcohol trade is, is furthering,could help facilitate,
broader aims and broader goals
for settlementand, and subjugation.

(19:11):
And so because you have these fortsthat are established in Indian Territory,
when one of their responsibilitiesis to police, you know, help police those,
those reservations.
But the sutler store,you know, owner might,
had no qualms with,you know, sending an order for whiskey,
you know, to a distilleryalong the Red River or or in Arkansas

(19:32):
and, or you had, you know, therereports of army,
you know,army officials at Fort Leavenworth
who would you know,they would constantly report
how many barrels of whiskey
were heading up the Missouri Riverto fur trading outposts,
and also recognizing thethe pallets of furs that were coming
back down the Missouriand just fully recognizing they knew

(19:53):
alcohol was involvedin those negotiations
and in those trades,but also looking the other way
because they recognizeit was facilitating American expansion.
(THOMPSON) Yeah.
And so, we even have an example.
You were telling me this storythe other day
as we were preparing for this podcast ofa Lighthorseman
who had confiscated some alcoholthat had been ordered by the Army.

(20:16):
(PEARCE) Yes, and so this was in, you know, thewithin the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations.
I forget the the yearI think it was around 1850, and it was,
it was an order.
So for context, of course, there were,you know, we might talk about this
little bit later, but, you know, one,
you know, folks familiarwith Oklahoma history might,

(20:37):
might know about the whiskey townsthat were along the the border of Oklahoma
and Indian Territory.
Well, prior to that, you know, priorto the Twin Territories era,
you had whiskey towns
that were alongthe borders of Indian Territory,
including the Red River.
So it wasn’t all that uncommon for armyofficials to comment and complain about,

(20:59):
you know, the presence of distilleries
and, and whiskey peddlersthat were just come across the Red River.
And in one of these cases, it was the, it was the,
sutler for Fort Arbuckle,that had
of course, had submitted, an orderand included a few barrels of whiskey.
And so the whiskey is comingacross the Red River and being transported

(21:21):
through the Chickasaw Nation,if I recall correctly.
And, a Lighthorseman stops
the trader, confiscates and destroysthe whiskey, as was per their,
their tribal constitutionwithin their in their tribal
laws, states that that Lighthorsemanhad the authority to do that.
And the

(21:44):
army officials were upset
that the Lighthorseman had had done thisand ordered
that that individual be arrestedand held at Fort Arbuckle
and the Chickasaw Councilultimately had to pay damages for,
for just the fact that a Lighthorsemanwas doing their job
and keeping whiskeyout of the reservation.

(22:05):
Whiskey that,
you know, the sutler had had ordered.
And so then that just goes to show
the, the dynamicsthat were at play in terms of federal,
you know, federal law, tribal law,
Indian law and, you know, merchants,

(22:26):
individual ambitions and economic goalsand trying to make a profit.
And it creates a very messy
legal landscape in Indian Territory.
(THOMPSON) In 1890, you have OklahomaTerritory that is created
out of the Unassigned Landsbecause of the 1889 land run,
and alcoholflowed freely in the territory.

(22:49):
And there were saloons, and this isone of the things that I find funny.
If any of you watched the Bass Reevestelevision show that was done by
Taylor Sheridan,
you can see in when he goes to Checotahto, there’s
a saloon in Checotahwhich would not have been there.
Not that there would have been alcoholin Checotah,
but it wouldn't have been a saloonthat someone could have gone into

(23:10):
and gotten alcohollike your traditional Old West town.
But that would have been the casein Oklahoma Territory.
(PEARCE) Yeah.
And so it wasn’t all that,you know, it was pretty common for,
you know, during the land openingsthat oftentimes
that was the first business
that was established would be the saloon,whether it was in, you know,
Guthrie, Oklahoma City, Enid,any of those towns

(23:34):
that were associated with land openingsthat those, you know, the saloon
was usually one of the first businessesthat opened.
And again,because it was a highly profitable business,
because alcohol was fairly,was tied to everyday life.
Now, there were some accountsof alcohol usage
by the late 19th centuryseem to be somewhat on the decline

(23:56):
compared to during the, you know,during the era of the early republic.
You know, for,for a variety of reasons.
But still,it was a very lucrative business that
especially if someonewas looking to make money fairly quickly,
they could do so.
(THOMPSON) In 1890, the federal governmentpassed the Wilson Act,
and the Wilson Actmade all intoxicating liquor subject

(24:19):
to the state or laws of the territory,before it had really been regulated mostly
by the federal government.
And they realized that this wasa difficult proposition at best.
And so this act said that each stateor territory
could regulate alcohol how it saw fit.
It allowed that any state or territorycould regulate alcohol
where or how it saw fit,regardless of where it was produced.

(24:43):
And so this was key to Oklahoma
eventually being able to have its own lawsregarding alcohol.
But I want to talk aboutthe political situation in the 1880s,
1890s and early 1900s,because this is a pretty fascinating time.
We’ve talked about this many times,but Oklahoma was formed in the zenith

(25:06):
of the Progressiveand the Populist Movement,
but entrenched in that progressiveand Populist Movement
is the temperance movement.
And this idea of, you had the Anti-SaloonLeague, you had the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union,and they waged war against legalized
sale of alcohol in Oklahoma Territoryand many other states across the nation.

(25:30):
But these movements,
so you had the temperance movement,the Progressive Movement,
and even the women’s suffrage movement,they were all tied in with each other.
And there was this sensethat people were recognizing that alcohol
contributed to social evils, drunkenness
among men, abuse of women.

(25:52):
You had people that would not show upto work because they were incapacitated.
And so these temperance movements got tied
in with the suffrage movement,which is the ability
to give women the right to voteand the Progressive and Populist Movement.
And, of course, Oklahoma’sgrowing up all during the middle of this.
And we’re grappling with this. Yeah.

(26:13):
(PEARCE) So I mean, by the by the 1890s,the Women’s Christian Temperance Union
is the largest female politicalorganization in the United States,
had a very,
tremendous influence,especially in states across the Midwest
and into the Southern Plains,including in Oklahoma.
And it was a fairly significanttransformation because temperance

(26:36):
as a movement emerged in the 1830s.
It is kind of a product of, itwas an outgrowth of all those different
reform movementsthat came out of the
Second Great Awakening and of of that era and was but was largely on the margins.
But then by the 1880s, 1890s had really,

(26:57):
you know, picked up steamand picked up support,
for a number of reasons, not just the,as you mentioned, the you know,
there was always those moral concernsabout, concerns about public drunkenness
and especially from women’s perspective,the effects
that that could haveon the household about,
you know, concerns about their husbandscoming home, coming home
drunk and so,so concerns about domestic violence

(27:21):
and also concerns about just the economicwell-being of the household.
If the husband’s outspending all of their well-earned money
on on alcohol, how can theyhow can they provide for his family?
There’s also significant changesgoing on in terms of, of
of urbanizationduring the 1880s and 1890s,
immigration,
So new groups of peoplecoming in, new groups that have their own

(27:43):
traditions and, and uses concerningconcerning alcohol use and,
and so a number of just other changes
and also just women are finding waysto become more politically active.
Bear in mind, this is all beforewomen have the right to vote.
And so, you know, alcoholor temperance was one way in which,
you know, you had womenthat could express

(28:04):
their political voice and, and it could
they could do so in waysthat business is still very much
within this era of of separate spheres,where politics was seen as,
that was the realm of men,because it was rough and tumble.
It was you know, it wasseen as just that
was where men need to be.
Whereas women were responsiblefor, for the home.

(28:26):
But they saw temperanceas, as a means to kind of extend their,
their moral, women’s perceivedmoral authority,
you know, into the political spheres,like how much smoother would politics
be if men were, were not having,were not drunk all the time and so forth,
and so it was a it’s really a tremendoustransformation that takes place

(28:47):
during the late 19th century.
And then you also have kindof the influence of of corporate interests
as well.
You had the Anti-Saloon League,which is more of the corporate business
side of temperance, because you have,you know, the Rockefellers
and those individuals that are recognizingthey’re all about efficiency
and all about making workersmore efficient.

(29:09):
And one way they see of doingthat is well, by preventing,
you know,by prohibiting the use of alcohol.
(THOMPSON) And proficiency improveswhen you’re not drunk.
(PEARCE) Exactly.
So, so you have so you havethis kind of confluence of events,
and also because the workplaceis becoming much more dangerous.
And so because these are
you know, this is industrialization,industries.

(29:31):
And so, so there’s just thisyou just have this confluence of,
of kind of traditional Midwestern
evangelical moral concerns with
efforts to
adapt to a more modern industrial society
and seeing the potentialill effects of alcohol in that society.

(29:53):
And so you just see a growing
and broadening coalitionthat helps contribute to Prohibition.
(THOMPSON) Yeah.
And if you want to,you can go up to the Oklahoma
Territorial Museum in Guthrie,and you can see one of
Carry Nation’s hatchets on displaythat she used to bust up
beer barrels and whiskey barrelsand all of those kinds of things.
And, you can see that at theat our museum up there.

(30:14):
Yeah, but I want to talk about how, so 1906,
the Enabling Act was passedand it mandated Prohibition
in, in Indian Territory,or what was the former
Indian Territory for 21 years.
Now this is interesting
as you’re trying to form a stateand you’re trying to come up with a,

(30:37):
a constitution and a set of laws.
And this is one of the manycomplicating factors
of joining Indian Territory and Oklahomatogether to form of state.
And we’ve talked about a few of thosein the past before, but
how do you say you can’t have any alcohol
in one half of the state,and the other state,

(30:57):
the other part of the stateis a free for all.
And so the, the tide was, and the drys,you know, you’re going to hear
this phrase, the wets and the drys,but drys were for Prohibition of alcohol.
The wets were for,you know, liberalization of alcohol.
And so the drys really
were better,better connected politically.

(31:20):
They were better organized politically,and they were able to get it together.
A lot of people think that that Prohibition was ensconced
in what we voted on in the constitutionon September 17, 1907.
Actually, it was a separate measure.
And so that separate measure ended uppassing

(31:40):
by a vote of 130,000 to 112,000.
That made Oklahomathe only state to enter the Union
with prohibition of alcoholin the constitution.
(PEARCE) And as I recall,
they they added it as a separate measurebecause they were concerned
that the issue might sinkthe constitution, if I remember correctly.

(32:00):
And so that was partly why they added itat, you know, had it after the fact.
(THOMPSON) That’s right.
(PEARCE) And so and again,like this, the idea of having separate
laws for Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory, again,
a lot of that’s a product of, of history,the fact that Indian Territory
was already subject to this mess of these,

(32:22):
these different sovereigntieswhere you had federal regulations, you had
the Native nations with their respectivelaws in terms of of regulating this.
And then you have the establishmentof Oklahoma Territory
through the Enabling Act and, you know,more liberal alcohol laws there.
And so you just have a mess of,of a messy legal framework

(32:43):
that tries to try to regulate this, that,that statehood.
Statehood ultimately resolved, but did so in favor
of outright Prohibitionacross the state.
(THOMPSON) In 1908,the Billups Law was passed by the state,
and that set up a dispensary systemwhere you could get a prescription
if you were quote unquote“ill” and be able to get liquor.

(33:06):
And, of course,that was never very successful
because bootleg liquor was so prevalentin the state that it ultimately ended up
being, in 1911,this whole thing was killed.
And so, over the next few years,there would be many attempts
to repeal Prohibition in Oklahomathat were not successful.

(33:28):
And then, of course, in 1919,you have the 18th Amendment
that’s ratified, which bringsProhibition not only
to Oklahoma, which already had it,but the rest of the country.
And that sets up the whole underworld.
You know, if you’ve seen The Untouchables ,you know about Al Capone.
That was all alcohol.
That’s it was underworld bootleggingof alcohol during the Prohibition era.

(33:53):
(PEARCE) Well, it’s important to remember withwith Prohibition,
and nationwide, it was enacted
as a wartime emergency because of course,it was enacted,
the initial Prohibition laws were enactedduring World War I.
You know, when the United Statesenters the war and you have, you know,
you know, a couple of reasons for that.
One was anti-immigration sentiment,namely, anti-German sentiment.

(34:17):
So, you know, oppositionagainst German brewers.
And then second, because,you know, the things that you need
to make alcohol, grain in particular,
was also valuable for food and,you know, other things.
So, you know, it was implementedas a wartime measure to,
you know, redirect productionfrom alcohol towards food.

(34:37):
And initially, you know, initially seenas a wartime emergency,
but because you had these varioussocial forces behind Prohibition
at various state levels,including Oklahoma, you know,
it was the war that kind of gavethe final push to enact
Prohibitionat the national level.
(THOMPSON) Yeah.
In 1932, Prohibition is repealed.

(35:02):
And in 1933, Congress passes the Cullen-Harrison Act, which redefines beer
and wine with an alcohol contentlower than 3.2 percent
by weight as non-intoxicating.
And so in Oklahoma,
in 1933, the legislature passes
a law that approves the sale of 3.2 beer,

(35:24):
and that goes to a referendum,
and the summer of 1933,and it passes by more than 95,000 votes.
So now we have the ability to buy 3.2 beer,
which is called non-intoxicatingbeer, in Oklahoma.
And this is sort of the first chinkin the armor
if you want to say of Prohibitionin Oklahoma.

(35:47):
But we would vote several moretimes up to 1959.
1959 was the sixth time that we votedas a state on the repeal of alcohol.
And, all of those times leading upto 1959, there was a vote in 1940,
there was a vote in 1949, in the 1950s,there was an attempt

(36:09):
by the legislatureto do the county option on 3.2 beer.
And so,all of those attempts really failed.
The drys really controled the state.
But as you mentioned before, we startto get into more after World War II,
more urbanization, more peopleare adjusting their attitudes on alcohol.

(36:29):
And that sets the scene for 1959.
And of course, it starts in 1958with the election of
Governor J. Howard Edmondson, and there was a state senator named George Miskovsky,
who made alcohol one of his issues
in running for governor in that 1958 race.

(36:51):
And that really caused Edmondsonto embrace this as an issue.
And he promised within 90 daysof being elected
that he would senda referendum to the people.
(PEARCE) Yeah.
And I think you’re starting to see,you know, with alcohol becoming
a campaign issue at the governor’s level,
and you’re starting to see this tensionemerge between,

(37:13):
you know, the traditional moralisttake on Prohibition and, you know,
alcohol, drunkenness as a, as a sin
versus
concernsor interest in economic development.
I mean, one of the main reasons
Prohibition is repealedat the national level in the 1930s

(37:34):
is because there was that,you know, federal officials
recognized that there could besome tax revenue with involved with that.
And so you’re starting to see,even in Oklahoma, by the 1950s,
you’re starting to see this tensionbetween, you know, making Oklahoma
more modern and its alcohol laws,because there’s
recognition of a potentialfor revenue, but it’s still coming up

(37:55):
against those traditional moralisticinterests as well.
So the 1959 debate really seessees that in contrast.
(THOMPSON) One of the things that Governor Edmonson was so frustrated about is
you had a state that repeatedly went to the pollsand voted dry, just like Will Rogers said.
We’ll stagger to the polls and vote dry.

(38:18):
But alcohol was everywhere in the state,and we had this Prohibition
law on the booksand it wasn’t being enforced.
There were bootleggers everywhere.
Bootleggers would hand out cards with their name.
And so if you were in Oklahoma Cityand you were having a party at your house,
you would just call your local bootleggerand you would have
whatever delivered to your house—

(38:39):
whiskey, rum, you know, strong beer,whatever you wanted.
And they had it, and they had it in spades.
And most ofit was coming in from out of state.
So we weren’t getting the economicbenefits of manufacturing any of it here.
We weren’t getting the tax revenue offof selling it here.
And Edmondson finally said, you know what?
Enough is enough.

(39:00):
If we are going to have Prohibition,
I am going to enforce Prohibition,
and we are going to make ittough on people.
And he did this as a way to sort of forcethe hand
on having a vote on this once and for all.
And so he hires, the MuskogeeCounty attorney, Joe Cannon,
as safety commissioner with instructionsto dry up the state.

(39:22):
And what happens,
so this is 1959,what happens over the next few months
leading up to the April 7 vote in 1959is he goes on a rampage,
and there are sheriffsthat are complaining that he’s
intruding on their jurisdictions,police officers complaining about this.
But he says, I am charged with this.

(39:43):
I am going to enforce state law,and so he starts really hitting.
Hitting people where it hurt.
In other words, he’s not just bustingthe poor people and the back alley clubs.
He’s starting to bust
where the rich people hang outand where the elites of society hang out.
And he’s startingto impact their business.
And one of the ways that he didthat was by setting up roadblocks.

(40:07):
On January 18, in a roadblockhe set up to catch a bank robber,
they confiscated 29 cases of whiskey,and they said,
okay, this is a great wayto catch alcohol coming into the state.
So they essentially opened warfare
on the importation of whiskeyinto Oklahoma.
The next night, 50 officersblocked the entrances

(40:29):
along the Missouri border and searchedall of the cars entering the state.
One night, 50 to 100 highwaypatrol officers set up
roadblocks on every roadentering Oklahoma on 50 miles of border,
and they are confiscating thousandsand thousands of gallons
of whiskey and liquor in these raids.(PEARCE) Yeah, making it a public issue.

(40:52):
Bringing that into the public eyefor everyone to see.
Really,
Is this what we want, if we’re going to enforce Prohibition,
this is what it can potentially look like.
Is this something that’s just clearlythat’s something that’s not sustainable.
(THOMPSON) Right.
(PEARCE) And so bringing that into the public eyeI think was very important.
(THOMPSON) And it also got rid of the illusion. (PEARCE) Yeah.

(41:14):
(THOMPSON) That this is a dry state.
And it it made sort of maybe ma and pawho weren’t paying attention,
it made them aware that we say we’rea dry state but we’re not a dry state.
And really what happensis when he starts to raid those clubs
and those restaurantswhere the elites hang out

(41:34):
and he starts to affect the businessof the hotels,
the conventions, the parties,then that becomes
that becomes that groundswell formaybe we ought to do something about this.
There’s a Chronicles of Oklahoma article that was written,
and this is one of the quotesfrom that article,
and it says, “A yes vote by Oklahomans

(41:55):
a year earlier would have meant makingliquor more expensive and harder to get.
Cannon managed to change that.
In some Oklahoma towns the crackdownsactually
drove bootleggers out of business.For the rest of the state, Cannon
made businesshard for bootleggers and drove up prices.”
So there’s the other part of that is nowyour whiskey is costing more

(42:15):
because it is harderto import in the state,
and he’s actually confiscating so muchof it, it’s starting to make a dent.
(PEARCE) Right.
(THOMPSON) So we get into the repealof the legislature
and just as promised,
Governor Edmondson put up, he
he had suggestionsabout what they wanted to do,

(42:36):
and they had a referendum billand the that started out in the senate.
And, he actually askedLieutenant Governor George Nigh
to preside over the senate
because he wanted the senatepro tem to be debating on the floor.
And, Governor Edmondsonactually set up shop in offices
that were right next to both the houseand senate legislative chambers

(42:59):
so he could be working the bill as it’sbeing brought up for questions and debate.
And this was a great storythat I found in my research here.
But, State Senator Ray Fine,he was speaking before,
a very impassioned speech and comparingalcohol to Satan and all of those things.
In fact, there’s a quote here from his debate.

(43:21):
He said, “There is no way to justifythe evils that will be done
to the youth of our nation.
I won’t vote here today to make it easierfor the boys and girls to buy liquor.”
And, George Nigh recalls that he was presiding
on the desk behind Senator Fine.
And Senator Fine was up in front.
And after he had finished his debate,

(43:41):
Senator Fine turns around and mutters to himself,where only Nigh could here,
and he said, “God, I need a drink.”(laughter)
(PEARCE) Well,
and that kind of speaks to the,
the two sides or the
like the the two faces that one could,that one could show in terms
of, of, of Prohibitionand because you mentioned that were,

(44:03):
Oklahoma was always a wet state, eveneven if we were quote unquote “bone dry.”
(THOMPSON) Right.
(PEARCE) And how, you know, you know, onthe one hand, someone could publicly say,
you know, that they are for Prohibition,for moralistic reasons
or for what have you,but it’s very difficult to regulate
one’s private choice or one’s, you know,

(44:23):
what they choose to do with their privatetime.
And so, and, you know,
that’s a great, that’s a great storythat kind of speaks to that,
you know, someone who could publicly saythey’re for Prohibition,
but then privately, privately admitting,even if maybe they did
not drink personally,but at least acknowledging that
being in such as momentlike that, how alcohol could help (laughter)

(44:47):
after, how one
might need something toto bring them down after that debate.
(THOMPSON) Right.
So the senate passes the measure 31 to 13.
It goes over to the house.
And, the house about a weeklater takes it up.
It’s a tense 6.5 hour debate on the housefloor, and it ends up passing.
But there were 27 attemptsto amend the bill, each one of them

(45:09):
that was rejected by the membersof the house and
Representative William Gotcher said, “you can’t get something good out of whiskey.
You can’t get somethinggood out of something so morally bad.”
And, but this ultimately became a question of,
the legislators understood
that they could either pass this

(45:31):
referendum and send it to the people,or there would be intiative petition.
And they understood if they did it,
they had the ability to control itand to set up the parameters around it.
But if other people, if it becameas a result of an initiative petition,
you never know what you’re going to get.
And the Oklahoma Legislaturefound this out a few years ago with the
marijuana laws that were passed.

(45:51):
And it was something that, you know,they didn’t address
when they had the opportunity to do it.
And now we got very relaxed marijuana
laws here in the state of Oklahoma becauseit came through an initiative petition.
And so in the house, Prohibitionpassed 81 to 37,
and the vote came on April 7, 1959.

(46:14):
Oklahomans voted 396,000 to 314,000.
So a fairly closevote to repeal Prohibition.
We were the last state in the countryin 1959 to repeal Prohibition.
A Dallas bootlegger told the Tulsa Worldreporter,
“Just like that, it happens just like that.
After building my businessfor years, those damn Oklahomans

(46:37):
go to the pollsand vote to make me bankrupt.
I tell you, it just ain’t right.”
(PEARCE) I think that speaks to, you know, again,we’ve we’ve talked about this
a lot about the prevalence of,of alcohol in Oklahoma,
despite Prohibitionand the, the ways in which individuals
and businessesmade that situation work.

(47:00):
And then how they could even profit from,from the status quo.
And then when you change the status quo,then you have then people have to adapt.
(THOMPSON) Right. Right.
So I don't want to belabor this
one too much because we’re getting towardthe end of this segment here.
But, by 1984,
Oklahoma is the only statethat doesn’t allow liquor by the drink.

(47:24):
And so, once again, Governor George Nigh
was involved withliquor by the drink.
There was a group called Oklahomansfor Responsible Liquor Control
that submitted an initiative petitionto allow liquor by the drink.
And, the attempt had been made 1959,1972, in 1976,

(47:45):
and it failed all of those times.
But on September 18, 1984,it passed
426,000 to 397,000 votes,
which finally allows liquor by the drink,which had been called liquor by the wink.
Because all of these so-called bottleclubs, you had to take your bottle there
and you had to buy a membership,which was usually sold for 50 cents

(48:08):
or a dollar to be able to drink.
But once again, it was so prevalent,it was almost unenforced.
And so this was an attemptto bring the law in compliance
with what people were already doing.
(PEARCE) And you’re seeing, by the late20th century, when about how
our, how

(48:28):
social mores and, and our even justthe morality that was, the moral debate
that was surroundingalcohol was changing.
And so as a result,the laws needed to change as well.
It just takes, it just took Oklahoma
a bit longerthan, than other states to do so.
(THOMPSON) Well, we will take a short break.

(48:49):
And after this, Congresswoman Stephanie Bicewill tell us all about how she worked
when she was in the state senateto modernize our alcohol laws once again.
(ANNOUNCER) Step back in time and enjoythe ice cream social at the Fred and Addie
Drummond Home in Hominy on Saturday,September 13, from 1 to 4 p.m.

(49:10):
Enjoy homemade ice cream after touringthe beautiful Victorian home.
While you’re there, meet authorRoseanne McKee at a special book signing
and listen to captivating storiesfrom Osage storyteller Dianne Fallis.
It’s the perfect blend of history,flavor, and community,
all included with regular admission.

(49:32):
For more information,please call 918-352-5583.
History never tasted so sweet.(upbeat music playing)
(THOMPSON) Well, Matt,
I’m really excitedto welcome our guest into the podcast.
Today we have CongresswomanStephanie Bice with us.
She is a fourth-generation Oklahoman, currently serving in the

(49:53):
US House of Representatives for Oklahoma’sfifth congressional district.
She was elected to Congress in 2020and was chosen by her colleagues to serve
as the 117th Republican freshman classpresident,
the first female ever to be electedto that role, and prior to her
congressional service, which is the partwe’re going to be talking about today,
she served in the Oklahoma statesenate from 2014 to 2020.

(50:17):
She earned a bachelor’s degree inmarketing from Oklahoma State University.
And before entering politics,she worked for almost 20 years
in the private sector,gaining experience in business
development,financial oversight, and sales.
She currently serves on the AppropriationsCommittee, where she was named
vice chair of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Subcommittee.

(50:37):
Additionally, she is the chairwomanof the Subcommittee on Modernization
and Innovation within the Committeeon House Administration.
And she was also named to a seaton the US Military Academy
at the West Point Board of Visitors.
Stephanie and her husband, Geoffrey, arethe proud parents of two adult daughters,
and I’m so glad to have you with usas our guest today, Congresswoman Bice.

(51:00):
(STEPHANIE BICE) Well, thank you for having me.I have a little scratchy voice
from allergies,but I’m thrilled to be with you all.
(THOMPSON) Well, we are excited to have you as well.
And I got to know youwhen you first came to the state senate
because I was working in Pro Tem Brian Bingman’s office at the time.
So we’ve known each other for a long time,and I’ve seen you rise up from freshman
legislator in the statesenate to now look at you in the

(51:23):
fifth congressional district.
So you, you have gone to bigger and better places.
(BICE) Well, being in politicswas really never part of my life plan.
I kind of stumbled upon all of this,and it’s been a real blessing.
(THOMPSON) Well, I wanted to start outby asking you about that.
What got you interested in running
for the state senateand getting into this world?
(BICE) Well, I had always followed politics.

(51:44):
I was one of those folks that would turn
on the news in the morning and watchwhat was happening in the world and,
you know, banter with my husbandabout the latest political happenings.
And in 2014, I was approached by
a gentleman that I had gotten to knowwho happened to be in the state senate
at the time. He had recently married

(52:06):
a dear friend of mine,and he knew that I liked politics.
He had run a billthat had to do with craft
beer, allowing for tastings of craft beer.
And I’ll never forget, I texted himand I said, hey, I read about this,
this new proposal that is being consideredby the legislature.
You should vote for it.
And he responded and said, well,I wrote the bill.

(52:28):
And I thought, okay, you know,I don’t know how this works at all.
But he called me and said,I’m not going to run for reelection,
and you should run for my statesenate seat.
And my first question was “why?”
And he said, “because we need more women.”
And what I didn’t knowat the time was that,
he shared with methat there were six women

(52:51):
out of 48 in the state senate,13 out of 101 in the state house.
That made us 49th in the countryfor the number of female legislators.
And me being the mother of,as you mentioned, two daughters.
I thought, why not?
Why not do somethingbig and bold and outside of the box?
So I did.(THOMPSON) And that’s great.
And how did you get interested in,

(53:14):
you know, I guess that caughtyour attention, that craft beer law.
But how did you get interestedin the issue of alcohol policy?
(BICE) Well, it was sort of happenstance.
Years before my husband startedbrewing, homebrewing beer,
and I realized that I wasn’t necessarilya fan of
sort of your traditional domestic beersthat you would buy at the grocery store.

(53:36):
But I did like craft beer.
So I would start testing out craft beerswhen I would eat at restaurants,
and then I would like itso much I’d want to go buy some.
But it was always warmat the liquor store,
and I thought that was an affront,frankly, that I couldn’t buy anything cold.
So the original billthat I filed for alcohol,

(53:56):
what became alcohol reform,
was Senate Bill 384,
and the entire bill was to refrigerate,
allow for refrigerationof cold beer at liquor stores.
And I remember it got a lot of attention,
and people started emailing me saying,you know, you should do something bigger.

(54:20):
You should really change our alcohol laws.
And that was kind of the beginning.
You know,this was really about cold beer and,
to that end, when I started this journey,some of my colleagues
in the state legislature decided to dubme, Madam Cold Beer because of it.
That was the first bill was the cold beerbill, and they called me Madam Cold Beer.

(54:41):
(THOMPSON) That’s fantastic.
Did you have any ideawhat you were getting yourself into?
(BICE) I did not. I actually said to people before,
had I known now, you know,
had I known then or what I know now,I probably would have not done it
because I didn’t realize how

(55:02):
much there was going to bein getting it done.
So in some ways, it was a blessingthat I didn’t know anything.
I was going into this very blind.
I didn’t know the players.
I didn’t know the dynamics.
I didn’t know what had been done beforeand what had failed or what hadn’t failed.
So in a way, I think that naivetethat I had really was beneficial,

(55:23):
because I can go into it with,
you know, a blank slate, eyes wide open,and try to figure out how do we navigate
this really complicated topicand make it good for Oklahoma.
I think the other thingthat is important to mention is that for
me, this was never about alcohol.
It was really moreabout economic development.
And the reason was,I mentioned my husband like craft beer.

(55:47):
We would travel across the country.
We went to Arizona one year and
went to a brewery.
And they were had,you know, big, huge kettles.
They were brewing right on site,but it was also a restaurant,
and you could purchase the beerand take it home.
And they also had an advertisementfor like a brewery tour in town.

(56:07):
And I thought, we can’t do that.
The way that our laws are structured,it’s impossible to do that.
So this wasn’treally about alcohol at all.
It was about economic development
and agritourism, in some ways, whenyou’re talking about rural communities,
think wineries,which used to be very prolific
in the western part of Oklahomabefore the Dust Bowl,

(56:28):
there’s so many opportunitiesthat Oklahoma was missing out on.
For me, that was part of the calculus.
(THOMPSON) And I think you've seen that bear outnow, you know, this
this will fast forward.
You know, we’ll jump ahead to the spoileralert that it ended up,
you know,we ended up modernizing our alcohol laws.
And we’ll get into the story herein just a second.
But you can go into almostany mid-size town in Oklahoma.

(56:51):
You can find a craft beeror a brewery place that serves food,
and it’s,some of them are community hubs.
They have, you know, board game nightsand all of those kinds of things.
But it has become a big partof the economic development of the state.
(BICE) Yeah.
I mean,when we started this journey in 2015,
you had about fiveish microbreweriesacross the state.

(57:14):
Think Krebs, you know, and others
that were, you know, trying to navigatea complicated framework for alcohol
in Oklahoma, Mustang being another herelocally.
Now, the last numbersI saw were over 70
breweries exist across the entire state of Oklahoma.
That is jobs. That is tax revenue.

(57:35):
That economic development for,you know, small communities that doesn’t
include the wineries and distilleries,which didn’t exist almost at all
before the law passed.
(PEARCE) How did you,
or when you were starting to broachthis issue,
did you come across the,you know, the traditional like,

(57:56):
economic development versus thethe morality behind alcohol modernization?
And how did you, when you came across your,whether it was in the legislature
or out in the public,
you know, coming across individualswho were opposed to this on moral grounds?
How did you
counter or how did you make thatthat argument for modernization?

(58:18):
(BICE) Well, I think it was easy for me,interestingly enough, because I am
Catholic,
and the joke that I would tell peoplewhen we were talking about
sort of the religious or evangelical spin onthis was I’m Catholic, and I drink
wine on Sunday, and I want everyone elseto have the same opportunity,
whether or not they’re Catholic,you know, but,

(58:39):
you know, itwasn't as big of an issue for me in 2015
as it had been for, you know, priorattempts to try to change it.
I think it took the nice Catholic mom,if you will, to sort of
bring down the rhetoric to say,look, we’re not looking
at putting hard liquor in storesnecessarily.
I was willing to put a cap on beerbecause there is a concern

(59:01):
about young people getting access to high-alcohol volume beer.
So there were some negotiationsthat happened.
There were more, I think, concernsabout the licensing side.
How old do you have to be to serve?
You know, how old do you have to be to goto the establishments?
Those were the types of thingsthat I think maybe played into it

(59:22):
a little bit more than the evangelical side of things.
(THOMPSON) My first year working in the state senate,
the legislature had passed a task force,and it was a 21-member task force
that was going to look at selling beerand wine in grocery stores.
And I remember there were two meetings.
I remember going to these meetings,and I had no idea how,

(59:45):
how difficult this was going to be,how entrenched people were.
And it goes to the complexityof Oklahoma's
alcohol laws that people had carved outtheir own little fiefdoms
and kingdoms in this area,and they did not want any changes to this.
And I remember
you had the convenience store owners,you had the package store owners,

(01:00:05):
you had the wholesalers and the retailersand all of these different groups
that were together in this room.
It was a 21-member panel.
And I just remember thinking,this is way more complicated
than I ever thought it would be.
You know, John Q. Consumer
just wanted to be able to go intoa grocery store and buy a bottle of wine
and had no idea about all of the spiderwebof complexities that were this.

(01:00:30):
And this is kind of a funny story,but, and I asked my wife's permission
to tell this story, but she whenmy son was a toddler, she, no, was a baby.
Like, she had him in the baby carrier,and she went into a liquor store.
Just wanted to buy a bottle of wine.
And the guy that was runningthe liquor store almost, like,
sprinted to her and said,you can't bring him in here.

(01:00:54):
You know, he's not 21.
You've got to get out of here.
And he's a baby.
I mean, but that is how,
that's how hardcore this stuff was.
And that task force met
twice and adjourned
and the second meeting and went,we're going home
and we don't want to talk about thisanymore.

(01:01:15):
(BICE) Well, a couple of stories on that front.
So right after I filed the original cold beer bill, I started
getting emails from moms who said,
fine, put refrigeration in liquor stores.
But for all of things good and holy,please let wine be sold
in grocery storesbecause I want to go, to your point,

(01:01:36):
buy a package of diapers
and a package of goldfish crackersand a bottle of pinot grigio.
And being a mom, I get it, you know?
And so that was part of the,I think, calculus.
When you talk about the meeting,I will never forget
the meetingI had in February of 2015.

(01:01:58):
I filed the bill, got a lot of attention.
And my colleague, Clark Jolley,who is the appropriations chair
at the time, had workedon this sort of legislation prior.
He came to me and he said,would you like my help
in putting together a meetingwith all of the players?
Well, again, my naivete,I was like, sure, let's do it.

(01:02:20):
And I didn't know who that meantor what that look like.
But I showed up on a Wednesday morningand walked into a room that was packed.
People were overflowingout of his conference room.
There must have been about 40 or 50 peoplepacked into this small room.
(THOMPSON) Wow.(BICE) And it was, as you mentioned,

(01:02:41):
convenience stores, liquor retailers, distributors,
wholesalers, you know, the Wine Institute,
wine spirits wholesaler,I mean, everybody that you could think of
packed in this room, grocersbecause they were a big part of this.
And I remember, I walked in

(01:03:01):
and kind of stood there and looked aroundand thought, oh, no.
And Clark looked at meat the head of the table and he said,
please come sit next to me.
And that was the beginning,
and it was very obviousthat it was going to be a heavy lift.
There were a lot of playersthat had, as you mentioned,
very entrenched ideas of what it shouldor should not look like.
And my favorite storyis that a gentleman

(01:03:24):
by the name of Brad Naifeh, whohas since passed away
and became a great friend,but Brad was at the meeting.
He was probably the largest distributor,
wholesaler, I’m sorry, in the Oklahoma City area.
He got, he was the last personto speak at this meeting,
and he got really fired up and said,“I don't know what I want.”

(01:03:47):
So I was asking the question, “What do you want to see out of this?
What changes would you like to see?”
And he got real angry and he said, “I don't know what I want to see out of this.
And I don't know why we're,you know, even talking about this.”
And he kind of got a little angry.
And then he said, “I bet
you know, youI bet you don't have never been in a,

(01:04:08):
a liquor warehouse before,and you have no idea what I do.”
And I said, wait a minute, Mr. Naifeh.
Actually, my father bought Tad Shadid’s warehouse
several years before. Tad Shadid is another wholesaler
in town that I had gotten to knowactually pretty well.
I said, so I have been in a liquor warehouse.
I've seen it. And he kind of

(01:04:28):
huffed a bit,
and then he kept going.
And then he said, you know,I've lived in this community for 60 years
and been a supporter, and I betyou can't even spell my last name.
And I said, excuse me, Mr. Shadid.
I've also lived in this townmy whole life,
and I knowexactly how to spell your last name.
It was a bit of a contentiouswrap up to the meeting.
So the next morning his lobbyistcomes to my office and she says,

(01:04:49):
Ms. Brice,
Mr. Naifeh wants to apologizeand wants to see about a meeting.
And I said,
Mr. Naifeh can apologize directly to me.
He doesn't need to do it through you,
an intermediary, and I'm happyto have lunch with him or coffee.
And actually, what's amazing is that heand I,
just the two of us, went and had lunch one dayand became the greatest of friends.
We had a mutual respect.

(01:05:11):
It was a Persian woman,me, and a Lebanese man, him.
And we could be very fieryif we needed to be.
But we also had a mutual respect.
I knew that he had,
you know, this has been a family passionand business for decades for him.
But I think he also saw the writingon the wall that things had to change.
So he decided to come to the table andas I said, became a really great friend.

(01:05:33):
There were rocky roads, you know, as wetraveled that year-and-a-half time frame.
But, you know, it was it was greatto develop that friendship with him.
(THOMPSON) Talk about how did you navigate,
you know, convenience stores, package stores,
you know, the package store folks didn'treally want. They had a good thing going.
(BICE) Yeah.(THOMPSON) You had to go,

(01:05:53):
if you want wine, you got to go to them.
There's no place else to get it, you know?
And listen, I'm not talking down on thembecause that's their business
and that's the model that they establishedtheir business under.
So can you talk about a few of thedifferent players and different groups,
and how did you get them to the tableto start talking?

(01:06:13):
(BICE) Well, I think the hardest, the hardest
nut to crack was probably the retailersbecause as you said,
they sort of had a monopoly,if you will, on the market.
You could only buy beer over 3.2
in a liquor store, you could only buywine and spirits in a liquor store.
But what was interestingis that they couldn't sell anything else.

(01:06:38):
Think about
buying a mixer or party supplies.
You know, anything that you would wantto buy to go along with that.
At the time, liquor storeswere not allowed to sell any of that.
So my offer to them was, whatif I allowed you to sell other things?
Can I give you the opportunity
to make up some of the revenuethat you think you may lose

(01:07:00):
by allowing you to sell other productsthat are going to be,
you know, needed for somebodymaybe if they're hosting an event.
They initially, wanted me to commoditizealcohol licenses.
And what that means is that you would puta cap on the number of licenses
that were issued on a certain date.

(01:07:20):
So in Oklahoma,there was about 630 licenses
that had been issued across the state forliquor stores.
They wanted me to put a cap on that.
And then if someone, wanted to buya liquor license, they had to buy it
from an existing businessthat was wanting to sell.
The problem with that model, and New Mexico does it,

(01:07:40):
is that when you commoditize licenses,they become wildly expensive.
A $5,000 license just traditionallynow becomes $1 million license
because there are only so many issued.(THOMPSON) Restricting the supply.
(BICE) That's right.
And that means that really the only peoplethat are going to be able to buy
those are big, are big,

(01:08:04):
grocery stores or grocery store chains,
maybe convenience store chains that thinkthey could make a lot of revenue
out of it or a commercialized liquor
store, like a Spec’s or a Total Wine.
So I said, I'm not doing that.
They also didn't want corporatelicensing in Oklahoma
because they didn't want Spec’sand Total Wine in Oklahoma.

(01:08:26):
They didn't want usto sell spirits in store,
so they were probably the toughestnut to crack, frankly.
But over time,I kind of got them to a good place.
But it was tough.
I mean, they fought me at every turn.
The other, I think, hard part was the distribution piece

(01:08:46):
because every brand think,
Modelo and and Tito's, for example,
they sign a contract with a wholesalerto distribute their product.
Well, if we change the laws,those contracts were sort of
going to be null and void,and you have to renegotiate all of them.
It's a long process.
There's a lot of back and forththat would give

(01:09:08):
the manufacturer of that product,the option to go to another distributor.
So you had a lot of that piecethat had to be worked through.
Those are probably,
and then, and then the last partwould probably be the
Oklahoma Department of Mental Healthand Substance Abuse at the time.
(THOMPSON) I was going to ask about that.
(BICE) Yeah.
They were not in favor of anything.They wanted us to make everything

(01:09:30):
pretty restrictive.
Actually tried to kill the billon a couple of different occasions
because they were in opposition to it.
So that made ita little bit of a challenge.
(THOMPSON) How about working with your colleagues in the legislature?
How was this received?
Because you're getting pressure,of course,
and you're trying to work on the bill,but they're hearing from all of these

(01:09:52):
same people, and they're hearingfrom their constituents as well.
So how did those conversations with your
your colleagues go in caucusand that kind of thing?
(BICE) You know, for the most part,they actually went really well.
Some of my rural legislatorswere a bit cautious
because they may not havehad the type of support that many of us

(01:10:13):
in the metropolitanor urban suburban areas had.
So I had to find waysto make it more palatable for them.
And a great example ofthat was Sunday sales.
You know, in Oklahoma, prior to the lawchange, you couldn’t sell alcohol on Sunday.
And so what I decided is that

(01:10:34):
maybe we make that a county option
that the counties could can look at that,
those blue laws, because some countiesdidn't want to do it.
Same thing for, you know, brunch sales,like there were things like that
that I could givea little bit of local control,
let them make those decisions themselvesto bring them along in the process.

(01:10:54):
And I was willing to do that.
I recognize that Oklahoma Cityis very different from, let’s say McCurtain County,
right down in the southeasternpart of the state,
and I think that helped, helpedmove the needle with some of those folks.
(THOMPSON) Yeah.
Was there
any points of contentionthat you had to get over?
(BICE) Oh, every day.(laughter)
Depends on the day.

(01:11:15):
I think it was,
you know, here's another piecethat hasn't been talked enough about,
and that's the craft beer scene.
You know, all of thesehomebrewers are really excited
about the opportunityto start a local brewery.
But there were a lot of conversationsaround, if you are a local brewer,

(01:11:36):
would you be forced to use
a distributor to distribute your beer?
And,
I fought hard for the craft brewersbecause I wanted them to be able
to make as much profit as they possiblycould as a small sort of mom
and pop business
before they had to really enterthe corporate market, if you will.

(01:11:58):
So there was a big fight aroundwhether or not,
if we would allow self-distributionfrom these craft beer retailers, but
also once they hit a certain threshold,then they'd have to use a distributor.
And if that if that was the case,what would that look like?
That was a big fight.
And then the other onethat most people may not have known about,

(01:12:20):
which was very, important, was years prior
to looking at alcohol monetization.
There was a family,the Cresap family, that had started
a Anheuser-Buschdistributorship here in Oklahoma.
And because of the laws,they were only able to distribute
the low 3.2 beer to the grocery storesand convenience stores.

(01:12:44):
Well,they wanted to sell their distributorship,
but nobody wanted to buy itbecause they didn't,
they weren't sure there was going to beany value in it
given that they could only distribute3.2 at the time.
So Anheuser-Busch actually came inand bought the distributorship.
And it's unusual because most states
have a prohibition on a manufacturer

(01:13:05):
buying a distributorshipor owning a retail store.
It's called a violationof the three-tier system.
You don't want a manufacturer
owning all three tiers because then theyhave sort of a monopoly on the market.
But in this case,there is sort of the argument
that this distributorshipdidn't have any value
because it could only sella certain product.

(01:13:27):
So Anheuser-Busch sold, or bought it from the Cresap family.
And when we were moving through alcoholmonetization,
there was a push to make Anheuser-Buschdivest of the distributorship.
The problem wasthey only bought it five years prior,
and they paid $150 million for it,
and they were not going to get their moneyout of it if they sold it.

(01:13:50):
And so we had to come tosome sort of agreement
to let them either keep it or not.
I was on the side of letting them keep it,but not ever allowing them
to acquire any more distributorships, or
couldn't acquire any if they ever soldthe ones they currently have.
My colleague who worked on this with me,Clark Jolley,
was actually of theopposite side of that.

(01:14:12):
He wanted to force them to divest.
And so it did becomea little bit of a hot button topic.
(THOMPSON) How is this issue in the house?(BICE) A little bit different
Insurance commissioner,I think,
former house member Glen Mulreadywas actually my house counterpart.
I think he did

(01:14:33):
a really, really great jobof navigating this in the house.
The contentious issues, in many cases,sort of got hammered out in the senate.
So, and if there were contentious issues,
the lobbyists or others would go to Glenand sort of try
to get him on board, and he would pushback and say, look, we're getting there.
We'll get to work this out.

(01:14:53):
But we had a great relationship.
I mean, it really did work out well.
And there wasn't a lot of,I think, conflict
between house and senate,which is a little bit unusual.
(PEARCE) Was there any point
where you worriedthat the whole thing would derail?
(BICE) Yeah,I think there were a couple of points
where I thought that was a possibility.
One of them was that

(01:15:15):
Oklahoma Department ofMental Health and Substance Abuse folks
didn't like some of the provisionsin there, and they were really
pushing for Jeff Hickman,who is the speaker of the house.
At the time, they were asking for SpeakerHickman not to have the bill heard.
And I think
there was
a point where I was a little concernedthat that may actually happen, but

(01:15:37):
I think that Speaker Hickman knew thatthe huge economic development potential, and
this had a positive impact on the economy,and that I had been really thoughtful
in how I had addressedcertain aspects of this.
Still had to be 18 to sell,even in a grocery store,
which was a point of contention, 18to serve it, even at a restaurant,

(01:15:58):
21 to actually make the drink, 18to go serve it to the table.
Still had social hosting laws on the table,you know, that
were part of the conversation.
So I tried to be sensitive to the fact.Look, you know,
I know family members that have battledsubstance abuse, I get it.
So I did, I think, put a lot of emphasison making sure

(01:16:19):
that we were being cautious about that.
And then the other piece of this is,I think the
the craft brewersand the large, large corporate breweries
had some, some clashes with
how come you're giving them a little bitof a benefit or they get an extra,
you know, whatever,and I don’t. That sort of thing.

(01:16:40):
That became a little bitchallenging towards the end.
But, fortunately wewere able to work it all out.
(THOMPSON) So we get it passed in the legislature, and then now it's a campaign.
Yeah, it's a big battlebecause that's, the first
half is just getting itthrough the legislature. Yeah.
(BICE) And I think it's important to, to,for your listeners to, to know that when

(01:17:01):
we're getting it through the legislature,that is just to put it on the ballot.
(THOMPSON) Right.(BICE) Yeah. So now we get it on the ballot.
It's going to be on the ballotin November of 2016 to pass.
So this was May of 2016 when we were ableto get it across the finish line.
So we have a very a short six-month windowto sort of advocate for its passage.

(01:17:21):
(THOMPSON) And the reason this had to be on a ballot
is because we were changing constitutional provisions.(BICE) Correct.
(THOMPSON) A lot of our alcohol policiesare ensconced in the constitution.
So it isn't justa matter of the legislature passing a law.
The people had to vote on thisto change the constitution,
which is, you know, kind of wildthat all of this is in the constitution.

(01:17:42):
But that's a podcast of a different day. Yes.
And, so let's talk about the campaign
and trying to win over the heartsand minds.
(BICE) Yeah.
I think my favorite story fromthe campaign is
I was invited to come talkto the Municipal League,
their summer meeting, the Oklahoma Municipal League.

(01:18:02):
So this is city leadership, of all the cities around Oklahoma
come and have a few day conference.
And, so they allowed me to speak to a panel.
Room was packed.
Cities were interestedin what this was going to do for them.
There was tax revenue implicationsin a positive way for them.
So I went and kind of laid outall of the provisions,

(01:18:24):
and then I askedif there were any questions in the room.
And this older gentleman in the backraised his hand
and he said, Ms. Bice,my name is Martin Dyer.
And I was, I was Representative Dyer of
Carter County in 1959 when
when we passed the repeal of Prohibition,

(01:18:44):
and I was in the room when we were negotiatingall of the constitutional provisions
that you are about to changewith this state question.
And I want youto know it's about damn time.
And it was really
I mean, I my mouth flew openand I was like,
Mr. Dyer, can we talk after this?
It was amazing.
He talked about how there was a speakeasyin the basement of the Skirvin Hotel

(01:19:08):
that all of the judges and politicianswould go to, to drink
before 1959,because we were still Prohibition state.
He had a wealth of knowledge.
He talked aboutwhy 3.2 is sort of that threshold.
So it wasit was a really amazing moment for me.
(THOMPSON) You also mentioned some of the,you know, some of the people that got,

(01:19:30):
we were talking about this before,some of the people that bought advertising
in this campaign.
(laughter)(BICE) Yeah.
Well, right before,
we were able to pass itin the legislature, there was a
this big contentious issueabout Anheuser-Busch owning
the distributorship,and they knew I had sort of gone
to them quietly and said, look, I'mnot in favor of forcing you to divest,

(01:19:53):
but I know my colleague Clark Jolley,you know, wants to force this issue.
I just I wanted them to knowI wasn't in favor of that.
So a couple days later, I comeinto the Capitol at 9:00 in the morning,
and my assistant looks at me and she says,“Boss, have you seen the paper?”
I said, “No. Why would I?” And shesaid, “You should see this.”

(01:20:13):
It is a front pageadvertisement in the paper and
banner ads on every website,
the locally owned news stations, saying,
you know, don't stopalcohol modernization, #StopClark.
And they had created an entire$250,000 campaign to push back on

(01:20:38):
Clark Jolley for trying to force themto divest of the distributorships.
It was I mean, mymy office is getting phone calls,
but Clark's poor assistant at the time,Gayla, was just getting bludgeoned.
And I remember going overand apologizing to her for the chaos.
It was wild. There were,

(01:20:58):
not only was it banner ads on websitesin the front page of the paper,
there were billboards as you droveinto the Capitol that had #StopClark.
(THOMPSON) That's fantastic.
And I should say,we're big fans of Clark Jolley.
(BICE) We are big fans.
(THOMPSON) I just I had lunch with himabout a month ago and,
and he was a great legislator,a great appropriations chairman.

(01:21:19):
(BICE) And let me also say, Clark was integraland getting this done, too.
I mean, he, there were two parts of thisthat we had to really figure out.
One was the constitutional piece.
And for those lawyersthat may be listening,
you know how important it isto get “a” or “the” correct.
I mean, you have, to it's that nuancedand “a” or a “the” makes a big difference.

(01:21:43):
So Clark was very importantin making sure that
constitutional questionwas written correctly.
I also had to look at the statuteand title 37,
an entire rewrite of a title of law and so
he was an important part of this process,given his legal background.
(THOMPSON) Yeah.
There was a companion bill, Senate Bill 383, that went into effect with the

(01:22:05):
passage of the referendum allowing directshipment of wine into Oklahoma,
increasing the age of the clerkselling beer from 16 to 18.
And, I pulled up the Tulsa World editorial.
It said “some liquor storeowners are concerned that the passage
of State Question 792 will hurttheir strong beer and wine sales.
Well, it will hurt their monopolyof that market,

(01:22:28):
but it ought not killwell-run, viable businesses.
Oklahomans want cold, strong beer wineto be available at all levels of retail.
That's what they ought to get.
State Question 792 is a fair state question.
It will be Oklahoma'sfirst step towards sensible alcohol laws
since liquor by the drink was approved in the 1980s.

(01:22:48):
Let the free market decidewhere customers will shop. It’s time.”
(BICE) Amen. Well, a couple things. You said
Senate Bill 383.That's the right senate bill number.
I couldn't remember the numberwhen we were talking earlier.
It was really incredible to me,
the number of groupsthat came out to support the initiative.
I vividly remember the TulsaYoung Republicans group.

(01:23:12):
I'm sorry.
That's not right.
The,I vividly remember the Tulsa, the TYPROS,
young professionals groupwho were connected to the Tulsa Chamber.
They actually drove to Oklahoma City,set up a meeting with me
and said, “What can we do to be helpful to you?”
Which was shocking to me.
They didn't know me,but they knew how important this was

(01:23:33):
for quality of life,frankly, for young people.
These are, you know, 20and 30 something professionals
that want to be ableto go to a brewery and hang out.
So you had, the TYPROS were very integral in it.
You also had the craft brewers,they created a little craft
brew coalition.
They were advocating at every turn.

(01:23:54):
They had a point person.
Jeremy Hall was kind of the person thatwas in charge of a messaging for them.
And, it was kind of cool.
I did, I decided to do a debate with the
president of the retail PackageStores, Liquor Store Association.
And about, I don't even remember
how many, a bunch of these craft brewersshow up to support me.

(01:24:18):
And they all had made shirtsthat said “The Bice is Right.”
And that was the
campaign that they were using to tryto push passage of
State Question 792 and Senate Bill383 was “The Bice is Right.”
(THOMPSON) Well, I see your assistantthat you have with you
is giving me the eye and saying,we have to wrap things up and

(01:24:39):
get on to your next thing, but I want to, just, wrap up by saying the,
November 8, 2016, it did pass 939,848
votes to 492,422 votes.
So that's with 65% of the vote,which is overwhelming.
(BICE) Yeah.
(THOMPSON) At that time, allowed for groceryand convenience stores to sell wine

(01:25:02):
and high point beer, allowed
liquor stores to sell refrigerated beerand alcohol accessories,
allowed multiple beer and wine storesto be owned by one corporation,
and ownership was limited to two storesper person if spirits were sold,
and it went into effecton October 1, 2018,
and thanks to yours and many otherswho worked hard in the trenches

(01:25:23):
here, we have modernalcohol laws in Oklahoma.
And as we've talked about leading upto this interview in the podcast,
Oklahoma's alcoholjourney is weird and wild and crazy.
And, you know, the fact that we're herenow is a testament
to your hard workand your ability to build coalition.
(BICE) Well, I couldn't have done itwithout Clark and Glen Mulready’s help.

(01:25:46):
It was a journey.A fun journey, actually.
There's not a lot of opportunities whereyou get to see the fruits of your labor.
You know, and for me,the day October 1, 2018, was a Monday.
I got up really early.
I went to the Capitol.
Anheuser-Buschbrought the Clydesdales to the Capitol.
(THOMPSON) Oh, I remember that.
(BICE) To celebrate, they gave me a award.

(01:26:09):
It's actually a Clydesdale horseshoethat I still have in my office.
They, then after that, I thought,what am I going to do?
It's like Christmas for me.
This was like the,you know, pinnacle of all of this work.
So, I went to Trader Joe's because, think about it.
You couldn't buy Two Buck Chuckat the time at Trader Joe's.
And so I remember vividly it was 11:30-ish on that Monday morning.

(01:26:34):
And the Trader Joe's was jam packed and five people deep.
Every cart was full of wine.
And I happened to see the mayorcome in, and I said, now, he said,
“What are you doing here?”
And I said, “Admiring my handiwork.”
And he laughed,and I said, “I'm sorry for the chaos.”
And he said, “Ma'am, this is tax revenue.
It's all good.”

(01:26:54):
And so it was fun to be a part of.
I couldn't have done itwithout a lot of support
from a lot of folks out there, and I'm thrilled that we were able to get it done.
(THOMPSON) Well, thank you so much for making time with us today, and this is great.
I really enjoyed hearing the behindthe scenes of how this came to be.
(BICE) Thanks for having me.
(THOMPSON) Well, Matt, that was a great conversation with Congresswoman Bice.
I loved hearing the behind the scenesof how she and her colleagues

(01:27:17):
worked to get thoseState Question 792 passed.
(PEARCE) I think I was really struck by her
emphasis on the economic developmentangle, and that was something that
always struck me because
I grew up in Colorado and camecame to Oklahoma from Colorado.
And so I had seen that economicdevelopment through, like the craft

(01:27:39):
beer scene firsthand, where you would goto the old mining towns.
And that was one of the first thingsthat could, that would come up in
some of those old buildings and was the,you know, someone who put up a brewery
or distillery as a way to generatesome economic revenue for the town,
and was quite, usually quite lucrativein doing so.

(01:27:59):
And, and so hearing her talk,talking about that angle of it and how,
you know,
you know, earlier in our conversation,you know, we spent a lot of time
talking about the debate overthe morality of alcohol use.
And, and that was something that you seechange by the,
by the 2018 state question and that the,I think that element was still there

(01:28:23):
a little bit of course, you know,but you see the economic development
angle of it, whether it's throughagritourism or through craft beer,
you know, beer trails or, or anythinglike that, or, you know, tax revenue
for, for local cities and counties like,you see, that become more prevalent.
And it's a way that this is not just a wayto it's not just modernizing our

(01:28:45):
our alcohol laws, but it's also improvingthe state's economy.
And that that was somethingI thought was really striking.
(THOMPSON) Well, I appreciate you for pitching in this week
and coming in for Dr. Blackburn,during a very difficult time for him.
And, you did great, as always.
And thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.(PEARCE) My pleasure. Any time.
(THOMPSON) Okay, folks, we will see you next month.

(01:29:05):
Thanks for listening.
You've been listening
to “A Very OK Podcast” hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn.
The podcast is produced by the OklahomaHistorical Society.
Visit us at okhistory.org,and find us on social media
by searching for @okhistory.
I encourage you to purchase a membershipto OHS to help us continue our mission

(01:29:30):
to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma'sunique and fascinating history. (upbeat music playing)