Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, this is a little bit unusual. I have comments on my friend Wes Watkins, as well. I want to talk a little bit off the cuff about the man that my good friend and colleague Frank Lucas was talking about a few minutes ago. Wes Watkins liked to think of himself as an ordinary man and a typical Oklahoman. I can assure everybody here he was neither ordinary nor typical. He was extraordinary. Wes Watkins was born, as my friend Mr. Lucas said, in very humble circumstances, yet he succeeded in every single thing he did over the course of his lifetime. He succeeded in college. He succeeded as a businessman. He was a family man, and he was extraordinarily successful at that. He was in the National Guard. Finally, he began a political career, first in the State senate and then in the Halls of this distinguished institution. Wes Watkins served two different stints in Congress, but what my friend Mr. Lucas didn't say was that he served the first seven terms as a Democrat. Then he went home to run for Governor. He is the only person I know of in Oklahoma history, maybe in American history, that ever carried his congressional district first as a Democrat, then as a Democrat running for Governor, and then as an independent seeking the governorship, and, finally, later as a Republican.…”