I don’t trust politicians. That’s not a clever opening line; it’s a baseline operating condition. A kind of low-grade allergic reaction I’ve developed after years of watching grown adults in expensive suits perform intellectual gymnastics to justify the unjustifiable. I’ve written my fair share of rants about it. Probably more than my fair share. Politics, as a system, often feels like a theater of bad faith. A place where language is weaponized, empathy is conditional, and reality itself gets negotiated like a used car price. So imagine my discomfort, bordering on existential irritation, when I find myself saying this out loud: I like the mayor of Oklahoma City. Not tolerate. Not “he’s fine.” Not “less terrible than most.” I like him. And that’s a problem for someone like me.
Moving from Boulder to Oklahoma City came with a quiet fear. Not the dramatic kind, no doom spirals or relocation panic, but a subtle tightening. A sense that I was stepping into a place where my already strained relationship with politics might calcify into something more bitter. Because let’s be honest, over the last decade the political temperature hasn’t exactly cooled. It’s stratified, hardened, sharpened into identity. Teams within teams, each convinced the other isn’t just wrong but fundamentally broken. So I expected Oklahoma to amplify that dissonance. Instead, I got… this guy.
What strikes me about David Holt isn’t that I agree with him. I don’t. Not across the board, not even close in some areas. But that’s not the point. The point is that he doesn’t seem to treat disagreement as a moral failure. And in 2026, that’s borderline revolutionary. There’s a kind of presence he brings, one that feels less like governance from above and more like participation within. He shows up. Physically. Repeatedly. Not just for the polished moments or the ribbon cuttings, but for the messy, human ones. The conversations where people don’t agree, don’t align, don’t fit neatly into policy frameworks. And he listens. Not the performative listening we’ve all learned to spot, the nodding while waiting to talk kind, but actual engagement. The kind where you get the sense that the input might matter. Which, again, feels absurd to even highlight. That’s supposed to be the job. But somewhere along the way, the baseline dropped so low that simple human decency in leadership now reads like a standout feature.
Here’s the strange part. I don’t see him as “my guy.” He’s not a proxy for my beliefs. He’s not someone I’d hold up as ideologically aligned. He’s something rarer. He’s someone who appears to take the role seriously, not as a platform for self-importance but as a responsibility to a population. All of it. Not just the parts that voted for him, look like him, or think like him. There’s an underlying assumption in his approach that people, across race, status, and background, deserve equal consideration in the shaping of their city. Not as a slogan. As a practice.
And maybe that’s what’s disarming about it. Because my default lens, the one I’ve honed through years of skepticism, keeps looking for the angle. The hidden motive. The eventual pivot where the mask slips and reveals the same old machinery underneath. But so far, it hasn’t shown up. Or if it has, it’s been overshadowed by something more consistent: a visible effort to engage, to ask, to include.
This doesn’t mean I’ve softened on politics as a whole. If anything, it’s sharpened my critique. Because now I’ve seen what it looks like when someone operates with a baseline of respect for the people they serve. And that makes the absence of that quality elsewhere even more glaring. It raises the standard. It removes the excuse.
So yeah. This Leftist, who has spent a good chunk of his life side-eyeing anyone with a title and a podium, finds himself in the uncomfortable position of offering praise. Not blind praise. Not uncritical support. Just recognition. That leadership, at its best, isn’t about ideological purity or rhetorical dominance. It’s about showing up. Listening. And treating people like they matter, even when they disagree with you.
I still don’t trust politicians. But I trust what I’ve seen. And that’s enough, for now, to say something I didn’t expect to write when I moved here: Oklahoma City chose well.