Frank Frantz - Governor of Oklahoma Territory

Governor of Oklahoma Territory

Governor Frantz assumed control of the Territory during a time when the citizens of the Territory were seeking statehood. Thus his Governorship immediately became routine. However, Frantz would do many beneficial things for the would-be state.

Governor Frantz made an invaluable contribution to the future of Oklahoma's educational system. Immediately upon coming into office, Governor Frantz discovered that oil companies were drilling on land reserved for public buildings after statehood in Pawnee County without obtaining permission. In response, Frantz crafted a policy requiring those companies to lease the mineral rights to the state.

After the United States Congress passage of the Enabling act of 1906, Frantz set his administration into overdrive. Frantz immediately took steps to obtain the remaining amount of land in No Man’s Land, what would become the Panhandle of modern Oklahoma. The Governor’s agents acquired the entire federal domain within the realm of the state. Frantz leased the land to Oklahoma’s farmers, earning the new state millions in revenue.

After the proposed Oklahoma Constitution was completed in early 1907, Frantz sought, and won, the Republican nomination to serve as Oklahoma’s first Governor. To face Frantz, the Democrats selected Charles N. Haskell, one of the proposed Constitution’s main authors. Frantz would accept Haskell’s challenge to joint public discussions throughout the state, and every problem concerned with the administration of the new state came up and was debated during the campaign.

During the course of the campaign, two nationally prominent figures spoke at various locations: Republican presidential nominee William Howard Taft and Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan. Though Taft supported Frantz, Taft’s disapproval of Oklahoma’s proposed constitution and his advice that the people vote against it caused the voters to react in favor of the Democrats. Frantz lost the race to Haskell on September 17, 1907. On the same day, the voters approved the Oklahoma Constitution into law. Soon after, Congress accepted the Constitution and Oklahoma became the 46th State on November 16. Haskell was also inaugurated on that day, resulting in the end of Frantz’s term.

Read more about this topic:  Frank Frantz

Famous quotes containing the words governor of, governor, oklahoma and/or territory:

    [John] Brough’s majority is “glorious to behold.” It is worth a big victory in the field. It is decisive as to the disposition of the people to prosecute the war to the end. My regiment and brigade were both unanimous for Brough [the Union party candidate for governor of Ohio].
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    It is better to have the power of self-protection than to depend on any man, whether he be the Governor in his chair of State, or the hunted outlaw wandering through the night, hungry and cold and with murder in his heart.
    Lillie Devereux Blake (1835–1913)

    I know only one person who ever crossed the ocean without feeling it, either spiritually or physically.... he went from Oklahoma to France and back again ... without ever getting off dry land. He remembers several places I remember too, and several French words, but he says firmly, “We must of went different ways. I don’t rightly recollect no water, ever.”
    M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)

    When the excessively shy force themselves to be forward, they are frequently surprisingly unsubtle and overdirect and even rude: they have entered an extreme region beyond their normal personality, an area of social crime where gradations don’t count; unavailable to them are the instincts and taboos that booming extroverts, who know the territory of self-advancement far better, can rely on.
    Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)