Oklahoma's newspapers - yesterday, today, tomorrow and the next century

OKLAHOMA'S NEWSPAPERS
THE HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA NEWSPAPERS:  Battle for the capital

Part 3: Battle for the state capital

BY M. SCOTT CARTER

The governor hated the publisher. The publisher hated the governor. And their fight changed state history.
As Oklahoma's first duly elected governor, Charles N. Haskell, a Democrat from Muskogee, had his work cut out for him. 
The first elected governor of the country's newest state, Haskell - a stubborn, hard working, but thin-skinned politician - wasn't supposed to be governor. A late entry in the 1906 race, Haskell had emerged the victor in a rough, three-way primary election that saw the 47-year-old attorney give 88 speeches in 45 days.
Despite the fact that prominent Republican presidential nominee William Howard Taft (who would later become United States president) had campaigned against him, Haskell would astound Oklahoma's well-established Republican base by becoming governor and derailing some of the GOP's most ambitious plans.
Well-schooled in the art of Oklahoma politics, Haskell had vanquished most of his political enemies.
Except one - Guthrie newspaper publisher Frank Greer.
A sharp, well-educated and ambitious man, Greer - a staunch Republican - was raised in Leavenworth, Kansas. As a boy, Greer grew up at his brother's newspaper, the Winfield Courier.
"After nine years with the 
Courier, Greer reached the position of city editor and manager," wrote newspaper historian L. Edward Carter. "Young, intelligent and ambitious, he became discontent with second place on the newspaper and dreamed of establishing one of his own."
And Oklahoma Territory was calling.
Arriving with just $29 in his pocket, days before the run of 1889, Greer pre-printed the opening day edition of the Guthrie Daily State Capital in Kansas. The Capital "praised the future town and surrounding lands and invited settlers to come there," Carter wrote.
Then, two days before the land run's April 22 opening, Greer slipped into Oklahoma Territory by paying a railroad employee to help smuggle himself and two others to a spot near Guthrie.
"The trio jumped from the moving train about a mile south of the Guthrie station," Carter said in his book, The Story of Oklahoma Newspapers. "The young 'Sooner' spent the evening of April 21 waiting on the outskirts of Guthrie studying the town and deciding where the choicest lots were located. At noon on the 22nd... Greer walked out of a grove of cottonwoods and onto the town site. Within 15 minutes he claimed a homestead and a business lot."
From there, Greer moved quickly.
In just a few years, his Daily State Capital had become the territory's most influential newspaper - and Greer became the territory's "principal Republican leader."
Of course, the newspaper wasn't Greer's only revenue source; along with his publication he had a lucrative printing contract with the state - courtesy of his Republican pedigree.
"Guthrie had been a Republican town since its founding," said Dr. Bob Blackburn, executive director of the Oklahoma History Center and an expert on state history. "Guthrie had big money and big corporations like the Santa Fe Railroad behind it."
That fact - plus the ongoing push to make Oklahoma Territory a state - lured investors, dreamers and entrepreneurs.
The investors came, Blackburn said, "because Guthrie had a very Republican atmosphere."
And into that atmosphere rode Frank Greer.
"For years he dominated every session of the territorial legislature," Carter wrote. "His control of Oklahoma politics brought him national recognition and he even became a power in the national Republican party."
Greer's power - and his news-
paper - had stroke because the Republican party dominated the political landscape in Oklahoma Territory.
The Republican territorial governor, George W. Steele, helped ensure Greer's newspaper was made the "official" newspaper of the territory and Greer became the government's first official printer.
"His newspaper carried all the territorial legal printing and his commercial printing firm did all the territorial job printing," Carter noted. "It was a lucrative prize."
But that prize, like Greer's beloved Daily State Capital, wouldn't last.
Greer's first problem arrived in the form of the Democratic 
Guthrie Daily Leader. Established as the morning newspaper by Roy Hoffman, then later sold to Leslie G. Niblack, the Daily Leader would fire some of the first shots at the Greer monopoly.
A 1902 fire would cause even more headaches.
But Greer's biggest nemesis came in the shape of a Muskogee attorney named Charles N. Haskell.
A surprise winner in Oklahoma's first gubernatorial contest, Haskell brought solid Democratic credentials to an otherwise hard-core Republican town.
"Haskell was from Muskogee, in Indian Territory," Blackburn said. "And Indian Territory was strongly Democratic."
Arriving in Guthrie as a delegate to the state's Constitutional Convention, Haskell wasn't a big fan of the territorial capital or its most prominent newspaper.
"Haskell at one time, contemptuously referred to Guthrie as a Republican nest," Carter wrote. Quoting then-Daily Leader publisher Niblack, Carter added that Haskell "doesn't like Guthrie and doesn't mince words in saying so."
Haskell proved that dislike when, in 1906, he forced a fellow constitutional convention delegate to withdraw a resolution that would incorporate a clause from the territorial Enabling Act stating that Oklahoma's capital should remain in Guthrie.
Within a few years, Haskell would be elected governor and those dislikes - along with booming economy and the growth of Oklahoma City, Guthrie's southern neighbor - would cause a political earthquake in the territory.
"At that time, Oklahoma City was the fastest growing city in the nation," Blackburn said. "Its population went from 10,000 to 64,000 in a decade."
That growth, he said, drew aggressive, ambitious leaders.
"Oklahoma City was the Silicon Valley of its day. That's the reason it attracted the Gaylords, the Braniffs and others. Governor Haskell didn't want to miss the train."
Already edgy because of  Logan County's political atmosphere and envious of Oklahoma City's growth, Haskell began looking for a new capital city.
And Greer, Blackburn said, pushed him even further south with every edition of his newspaper.
"Haskell is under the daily criticism of Frank Greer," he said. "Having won two elections and now, facing a (political) minority, he's ready to get out of Guthrie."
Greer's criticism would reach a crescendo in 1906.
With delegates in town for the constitutional convention, Greer waged a "daily harangue" against Democratic party leaders - namely Haskell and House Speaker William H. 'Alfalfa Bill' Murray.
Using blazing red headlines, Greer would blast the delegates calling Haskell "boss" and nicknaming Murray "Cocklebur."
According to Carter, a cartoon in the July 23 edition of Greer's newspaper said the convention took "240 days doing what our forefathers did in 85..."
The newspaper's fate was sealed.
Continuing his daily broadsides after Haskell became governor, Greer's criticism became so harsh that a group of local residents - from both political parties - urged him to tone down the rhetoric.
"A delegation of prominent Guthrie citizens, including Democrats and Republican had called on him and warned him to be cautious as the town might have been insured in a commercial way if the governor were driven to great anger," Carter wrote.
That statement was underscored by the Daily Leader's publisher when he said Haskell had "valid ground" for his anger.
"The governor has some valid ground for personal dislike of Guthrie by personal actions of certain citizens... and by the constant abuse of the Republican daily paper here," Niblack said.
A short time later, the Democratic-controlled Constitutional Convention would pull Greer's printing contract and award it to his arch enemy. That action would cost Greer more than $50,000 and deal his company "a major economic blow."
"Right then, he lost his insider position," Blackburn said. "Greer was one of the good ole' boys, part of the network. Then the Democrats took over and suddenly, he's on the outside looking in."
Things would get worse.
An election, held in June 1910 to determine the capital's location, returned overwhelmingly in Oklahoma City's favor. With more than 98,000 votes for Oklahoma City to Guthrie's 24,000, Haskell now had the legal authority to move the capital south.
Greer went ballistic.
Following Haskell's secret, overnight transfer of the state seal to Oklahoma City, Greer launched his most vitriolic attack yet on the new governor.
"Czar Charles Issues His Imperial Ukase at New State 'Capital,'" Greer's headline screamed.
It was the last gasp of a once mighty newspaper.
"Greer was bright, opinionated and a very good writer," Blackburn said. "And in his opinion, moving the capital was all wrong."
Greer's fight, Blackburn said, was full of "black ink and vitriol."
But the losses - both political and financial - were more than he could overcome. Exactly a year after Haskell's proclamation calling for an election to move the capital, Greer quietly closed his newspaper and sold his subscription lists and advertising contracts to the Daily Leader.
Defeated, Greer moved to Tulsa and established an investment company. He died on Aug. 8, 1933.
Yet even with his gut-wrenching loss, in many parts of Oklahoma - and particularly in Guthrie - Greer remains a hero. 
"The town didn't blame Frank Greer for the loss of the capital," Blackburn said. "To them, he was their fighter. He was their champion."
While most state historians decline to make Greer's editorials and his newspaper solely responsible for the removal of the state capital from Guthrie, many do agree that he played a major a role in the capital drama.
"Frank Greer wasn't the only reason the capital was moved," Blackburn said. "But he was the most visible one."