I moved to the Tulsa area from OKC in 2007. Reading the Tulsa World editorial pages and the online response forums told me I wasn’t in Oz anymore. The political spectrum definitely shifts leftward here. I guess the best indicator was the previous mayor felt it was OK to join Bloomin’Idiot’s anti-gun group and now she’s decided she’s still politically viable so she’s planning on running again.
I moved to Tulsa from OKC in 1989, having lived in OKC the previous 7 years. Even back then, Tulsa was considerably more liberal than OKC. But, at that time, the Tulsa World editorial staff was (or at least seemed) sane, the city seemed to be well run, and, of course, Tulsa was (and is) a much prettier city than OKC. It seemed a pretty normal place to live.
I moved away in 1991 (transferred to the Texas panhandle) and didn’t return again for any length of time until 1998. Liberalism had set in strongly by then (or at least the results were more visible). Although I worked in Tulsa, we made a point to live outside of town (and tried really hard to, but couldn’t make it outside of Tulsa county).
The local city politics are insanely weird, and it seems that only cookie-cutter, non-functional, rudderless politicians are able to get into office. (Strange, since Tulsa is supposed to be in the Bible belt. Never understood that...) It has gotten very non-functional since the start of the Susan Savage years. It seems to me, in my totally amateur analysis, that things changed significantly during the Clinton years, so I blame it on them and their totally corrupt Arkansas-style politics and all that comes with it.