Voters in southwest Tulsa will choose between incumbent District 2 Councilor Anthony Archie and perennial candidate Aaron Bisogno in the Aug. 25 election. Both Archie and Bisogno campaigned for the seat in 2024, with Archie ultimately victorious and Bisogno pacing last in a five-candidate primary.
Bisogno is on his fifth campaign for the Tulsa City Council, and he emphasized he was motivated to run again owing to the lack of any other candidates willing to file.
“The main thing I want everybody to know is they have an option. You always have a choice,” Bisogno said. “It just drove me crazy that the year after an incumbent had been there 12 years and there is a new incumbent, and nobody else was going to challenge him. I had to challenge him because you always have to give a choice.”
Archie emphasized his political philosophy of simply liking your neighbors, and he said that makes him the best fit for District 2, which runs along the Arkansas River south to the boundary of Jenks.
“This is my philosophy in politics,” Archie said. “People are asking two things: Do I like you? That is, are you somebody who is likeable? And do I think you like me? And I think that people know that, regardless of whether you are left or you are right, I like them. I genuinely want to see their family thrive.”
Tulsa transplants square off in Tulsa City Council D2 race
Bisogno was born in Phoenix, Arizona, but his family moved to the Tulsa area when he was 2 years old. He graduated from Jenks High School, where he played football, and Tulsa Community College before working as a loan officer. In 2016, two years before voters passed medical marijuana into law, Bisogno was charged with misdemeanor possession and driving under the influence in Sand Springs Municipal Court for allegedly possessing about 14 grams of marijuana.
Bisogno said his primary motivation for campaigning is a belief that incumbents should not go unchallenged in elections. He has previously campaigned for District 2 in 2014, 2016, 2022, and 2024.
“I always think it is weird when somebody hasn’t drawn a challenger. And I’m not some great politician or anything, but that is part of the reason I keep running. The first time I ran, it was me Jeanie Cue and this lady named Lydia D’Ross in 2014. In 2016, it was just me vs. Jennie Cue. Then in 2015, my dad had passed away, so I stepped away for a few years. I jumped back in in 2022 because I woke up one day and saw that she had run unopposed during COVID in 2020. So in 2022, I decided to run again because in 2018 and 2020 [she ran unopposed].”
Anthony Archie was born in Chicago, Illinois, and moved to Tulsa in 2006 to attend Oral Roberts University. He said he grew up in a family influenced by minister Carlton Pearson, who had been educated at Oral Roberts and was connected to churches in both Chicago and Tulsa.
“I wanted to be a minister as well. So when thinking through what schools or spiritual influences are drawing me, Carlton Pearson was connected to ORU so I went to my parents and said, ‘Oral Roberts University,” Archie said. “I said ‘Tulsa, Oklahoma,’ and my dad said, ‘I don’t know that we’ve ever said the word Oklahoma in our house.’ It was a bit of a change, culturally and ethnically, but I find Tulsa to be one of the greatest cities in the world in that I wanted to go to school here, start a business here, be a minister here, be a teacher and now as the city councilor.”
Archie initially worked as a minister before working for Tulsa Public Schools. He taught at Robertson Elementary, Edison Middle School and Monroe Demonstration Academy, before starting the Oklahoma Toffee Company, a candy business.
“We make some of the best caramel corn and chocolate covered pretzels and great confections,” Archie said. “We use a portion of our profits to fill the Amazon Wishlists of teachers across Oklahoma. That is kind of where my civic engagement began.”
While working for TPS, Archie met Cue, whom he cited as his political role model.
“I taught at Robertson, and that is where I got to meet Councilor Jeanie Cue, who was my predecessor. Her granddaughter was in my fourth grade class that I taught, and so she came to one of our events. I introduced myself to her,” Archie said. “I began to just follow the way she was working to make investments in the west side and to learn the history of our part of town.”
He said he approached Cue around October 2023 to talk about running for her Tulsa District 2 seat after learning she was choosing to run for county commissioner.
“I said, ‘I would like to continue your legacy of investment in the community. You are such a tremendous servant, and I’ve learned so much from you. I would like to run for city council,'” Archie said. “And she said, ‘It’s going to be hard, but you may do a good job.’ And she was so encouraging.”
Bisogno said Archie’s copying of Cue’s platform did not go unnoticed.
“The incumbent, Anthony, just basically copied [Cue’s] campaign and ran it as his own,” Bisogno said. “He just came out of nowhere. That was the weirdest thing: I had never heard of him.”
Candidates focus on quality of life, transparency
Bisogno also argued that councilors need to be more wary of spending tax dollars on projects they personally support.
“We all have to know exactly where our money is going, even if there is something you really like and are all in favor for, but it requires taxpayer dollars to do,” Bisogno. “I would have to say no. For example, I am a huge art fan. I love Japanese anime and all the modern video games, but I would not spend taxpayer money on a museum just so people could go. (…) I am never going to use the taxpayer dollars for what I want. It has got to be what they want.”
On public safety, Archie argued he responded quickly to safety issues at Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain and secured funding for a future welcome center at the park.
“Shortly after I was elected, there was a sexual assault on Turkey Mountain. And my wife goes out there and walks those trails, so it really rattled the folks within our community,” Archie said. “We doubled the TPD bike patrol — the police riding up and down the trails making sure they are safe — and then we expedited the installation of 24 cameras on the mountain and had them connect those cameras to our real time information center downtown. We had to raise a bit of money for that, and we did it privately.”
While not opposing the Turkey Mountain improvements, Bisogno criticized city officials more broadly for what he argues have been creative uses of city funds and opaque public-private partnership deals.
“The city, they say they’re transparent and they do show everything online, but you never really know where all the money is going because, if you look at their budget online, they have general funds and all these nondescript funds that can be used for anything,” Bisogno said. “It is very odd how they can find the money when they need it but also they need to raise utilities and get more taxes when they don’t have it. When they want something done, they will find the money. When you want something done, they don’t find it somehow.”
He also argued his lack of ties to Tulsa’s philanthropic community makes him an outsider candidate.
“I think I am one of the only candidates that is not affiliated with any charities, or any NGOs, or anyone who takes money from the city,” Bisogno said. “It’s just really weird (that city councilors are affiliated with NGOs the city supports).”
While Bisogno focused on financial transparency, Archie argued the primary focus of Tulsa District 2 voters involves improving the quality of life in the district.
“Most people view Tulsa through the lens of their neighborhood,” Archie said. “If in their neighborhood they feel safe, then their general view of the city is positive. But if their view of their neighborhood is not positive, then it doesn’t matter about some downtown development there is or what the mayor is announcing. It’s, can you provide quality of life for me and mine in my neck of the woods?”
While city council elections are officially nonpartisan, both Archie and Bisogno are registered Republicans, according to voterrecords.com. In 2024, Bisogno campaigned with the slogan “taxation is theft” which is generally associated with the political right. Asked why more moderate and Democratic-leaning voters should support him over Archie, Bisogno stressed his belief in protecting all political speech.
“Most of my thing is just small government and protect everybody’s rights,” Bisogno said. “The main thing I want to talk about is free speech — make sure everybody is getting spoken up for and not trying to push any of your beliefs on other people.”
Asked why voters should support him over a challenger from his political right, Archie stressed his belief in non-partisanship in local elections.
“Our elections are nonpartisan, which I like and I support because the role of the city councilor is to hear the feedback and concerns of all residents, and you have to listen to the solutions that are being offered, which often times the people who are closest to the problem are well positioned to give solutions,” Archie said. “So whether you call yourselves Democrats or Republicans, you first have to call yourself neighbors. Our obligation is to be kind and show compassion to our neighbors as well as everyone. I have wide support from the right and from the left.”
Both candidates also expressed support for the recent closure of Tulsa’s municipal jail.
