It wasn't that long ago. Ronald Reagan became President during those years, but the Attorney General in Oklahoma from 1979 to 1983 was a hard-nosed, uncompromising, principled, old school progressive, Jan Eric Cartwright. Jan appointed me Assistant Attorney General in 1981. Today, Jan Cartwright doesn't even have a Wikipedia page, but I remember him like it was yesterday.
The Attorney General in Oklahoma is powerful. Any state or local officeholder may ask a question of the Attorney General who may then issue an official opinion that has the force and effect of law until overruled by a court. He can intervene in court cases on behalf of the State anywhere in the state. He can prosecute crimes. His powers give the AG great influence over the direction of public policy on a statewide basis. Jan Cartwright used his power to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Jan lived and crusaded for his conviction that the rich and powerful have to follow the rules like anybody else.
Jan left one of his biggest marks when he declared legal war on a common tax dodge used to avoid property taxes by industrial facilities. It was corporate welfare. Publicly, Jan called them boondoggles. Privately, he spoke of the shenanigans more in barnyard terms. The law library at the Oklahoma State Capitol, named for Jan Cartwright immediately after his death in 1986, says this of his place in Oklahoma history:
Cartwright was not afraid to tackle the “big boys” during his tenure at the Corporation Commission and as Attorney General. His Attorney General Opinion ruling that large corporations owed property taxes to support the public schools was the best example of this.That "best example" led to litigation with General Motors that ended in the US. Supreme Court. In 1982, Jan Cartwright assigned me to intervene in a suit just filed by GM to avoid tens of millions of dollars of school property taxes on its vehicle assembly plant in Midwest City, Oklahoma. For more of that story, along with another that illustrates Jan's zeal to comfort the afflicted, continue out into the tall grass.