The late Theodore White was a journalist who is perhaps best known today for the series of books that he wrote about presidential elections in the U S for the period from 1960 through 1972, and he subsequently was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for those incisive works that were titled “The Making of The President.” In the final book, he wrote of how Richard Nixon, who was reelected to the presidency in 1972, had a strained relationship with the print and visual media that was based in both New York City and Washington D C , and told of how Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who also often faced a hostile print media, used the then relatively new media of radio to reach out to the American people over the heads of the editors and publishers in the American heartland of what White described as the “proprietary press” that was owned and operated by Republican leaning individuals. FDR’s “Fireside Chats” reassured a nation that was struggling in the depths of the Great Depression and allowed him to explain the policies that he was intent on pursuing to jump start the economy and to assist the less fortunate. And in recent years, the Democratic Party of Oklahoma has used a somewhat similar means of reaching out to the citizenry directly through social media and bypassing the conservative media that is in place in the Sooner State. On a weekly basis Scott Hamilton, a Democratic activist and operative, has hosted a presentation on YouTube and Face Book in which he interviews members of his party who are currently seeking election to office. One such candidate that Hamilton interviewed was Nana Dankwa, who is running for the Oklahoma House of Representative’s District 90 seat that is located in Oklahoma City. The aspirant is the children of Ghanaian immigrants who came to Oklahoma City decades ago and he was born here in 1981. Like many of those born to Africans who have enriched Oklahoma in recent decades, he has distinguished himself by pursuing the higher education opportunities that are found here, and after obtaining an undergraduate degree from the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, he was subsequently awarded both a law degree and masters in business administration from Oklahoma City University. He currently advises banks on their obligations regarding regulatory matters. He is married and has two young children, and faces a Republican incumbent opponent who will be term limited in two years time in the event that he is reelected. Dankwa previously made an unsuccessful run for the Oklahoma City Council, and learned during that race that the people of Oklahoma City are concerned with issues such as homelessness, and aging infrastructure, and the need for more fairness and equity in society, and he has promised to address those issues if he is elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives in November of this year.
Against the Grain 