Tune in to Morning Edition and All Things Considered Friday morning and afternoon to hear excerpts of this interview.
KWGS' Ben Abrams sat down with outgoing Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum at city hall to talk about his political tenure. Bynum was asked about the commemoration of the 1921 Race Massacre, the McGirt decision, welcoming immigrants to Tulsa, elected officials' salaries and public transit.
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[FULL TRANSCRIPT]
BEN ABRAMS:
Mayor Bynum, thanks so much for taking some time for us. We really appreciate it.
G.T. BYNUM:
Sure. Thanks for having me.
BA:
Right outside this room, in the hallways are the portraits of every mayor of the City of Tulsa. Past mayors get them in black and white.
GB:
That's right.
BA:
How do you feel about your portrait soon to be in that same category?
GB:
Well, it's kind of like visiting a mausoleum. I had a group of kids up here yesterday. I was like, ‘In two weeks, I'll be in black and white down in the corner over here.’ No, I mean, it’s— I love that wall. I'm so glad— Kathy Taylor had that installed when she left office and it's— one of my favorite things to do as mayor has been having student groups up here, and that's probably one of the best… I would say, other than them getting to see the mayor's actual office, that's probably the thing that they find most interesting there: all the different pictures, the different mayors and their biographies and the things that they did. And, so, I love having that out there and I'm just honored I'll be a part of it. I even noticed, I think on the bottom row, I think it'll be my granddad, Mayor Crawford, my cousin Bill LaFortune, and then myself. So again, yeah, kind of life after death sort of a thing, politically.
BA:
The family all in line.
GB:
Yeah, exactly.
BA:
And, interestingly enough, I know that right after you entered office in 2017, volunteers in the city clerk's office found a signature of your great-great grandfather, R.N. Bynum on a document over a century old. So, at the end of your term, how do you feel you've affected your own family's history in this office?
GB:
I haven't really thought about that. I mean, well, I think if anything it’s that I've tried to continue the same spirit and mindset of service, in particular that I got from my granddad. I mean, I didn't really know my great-great grandfather. He died 50 years before I was born, but my grandfather's been my hero my whole life and I've tried to conduct this office of mayor for the eight years I've been in here in a way that I think he would've done if he had been here as the mayor during this time. And, so, a lot of the things that we've done kind of, I think, strike people as maybe old-fashioned in the current political environment as far as, you know, believing that you ought to try and have a broad diversity of viewpoints around the table when you're making decisions. You ought to try and listen to as many different vantage points and life experiences as you can before you make a decision. That you shouldn't be doing this job to try and climb the political ladder, you should be doing this job to do everything you can for Tulsa because this job is the greatest honor that Tulsans can give one of our neighbors. And, so, that is how my grandfather approached it. He never ran for anything else after he left city hall. I have no intent of ever running for anything else after I leave. That was never the point of doing this job. The point of doing this job was to do as much as we could for Tulsa in the eight years that we had.
BA:
Right. And I wanted to ask a question about public service in particular. I know that recently the city council approved raises for both the mayor's office and the city councilors… but salaries—I got to say, in terms of big cities—are still quite low, and I know you're moving on to the healthcare sector, which I'm sure does pay what is quite, I don't want to say quite handsomely, but of course a good salary. I'm wondering from you: how can municipalities—how can cities hire qualified people who are going to represent their communities when the private sector, of course, still puts up stiff competition?
GB:
Well, in my mind, there's always a key difference when you're looking at salaries for people here at the city. There are the city employees in which I've always felt we need to be competitive with the private sector and be focused on doing everything we can. And I would say that’s—I know it is—it's the thing that we have increased funding for the most in the time that I've been mayor across the board. We've funded the largest pay increases, in particular, for police and fire in the history of the city, but we've made a point to make sure that we're competitive with all our employees from a private sector standpoint and have found ourselves especially, I would say post-2020, in a very competitive environment. So, that's not just wanting to do it from a goodwill standpoint, it's also doing it from just a free market standpoint, realizing that if we want to be able to hire people, we have to be competitive.
So, I've always viewed that in one sense and then I’ve viewed elected officials as totally different. And again, perhaps this is antiquated, but I feel like this is public service. I took a 60% pay cut to be the Mayor of Tulsa when I got elected. I don't think anyone should pursue these jobs viewing it as ‘I should make as much in elected office as I could in the private sector.’ It should always be a sacrifice if you're going to do it. And also it's not something that you ought to plan to do as a career for your whole life. It's something that you lend the knowledge and skills you've developed in a career to give back to the community and then go back to what you were doing before. I mean, that's what most of my heroes that I can think of who've been in elected office have done in their careers and what I'm doing now.
So, I was—I've been both an advocate of increasing pay for our city employees within the balanced budget we have, and that's the greatest limitation there, that we don't print currency or go into debt. We can only spend what we bring in. But I've also been opposed really consistently to the increases in elected official pay that I thought were getting way too far out there where you're then incentivizing people to run for office because they might get a pay raise, which is not why you want anybody in one of these jobs.
BA:
I mean, there are certainly, one could argue, a lot of career politicians out there.
GB:
Yes.
BA:
And do you think they could learn a thing or two regarding your philosophy on sacrifice in public office?
GB:
Well, I'll give you a great example. Tulsa County has an outstanding pension program, and I know many people who have run for county commissioner hoping to get onto that pension system. Now, they didn't run with a passion for improving the park system or county roads in unincorporated areas. They were wanting to get a county pension. Well, that is exactly the wrong reason you should ever want somebody to be in an elected office for you. So again, I just feel—I think we're in a good place here at the city.
I've supported the increases that we made more recently because they were just keeping up with inflation from when they were established. Like, the mayor's salary hasn't been increased since 2002, I believe, when Mayor Savage was the mayor. And, so, it made sense to look at, okay, well what has the consumer price index increased by in the last 22 years? And I can support increasing that. Mayor Nichols ought to be making the same for buying power as what Mayor Savage was making in 2002. No issue there, but there were some who wanted to compare it to city managers or something beyond that. And city manager is a profession that people get advanced degrees and do as a job, and that's different I think, from being in an elected office.
BA:
Talking a little bit about your term in particular now: there have been so many moments during your tenure as mayor that the city of Tulsa has really been in the national spotlight, and of course I can't think of anything less than the centennial of the 1921 Race Massacre.
You apologized on behalf of the city a hundred years after the massacre. You have started 1921 Graves searches for more victims. Of course, with C.L. Daniel being the victim that was first identified by DNA. You stood with Councilor Hall-Harper informing the Beyond Apology Commission.
Noting all of that, I do have a question on my mind, which is that the last two survivors of the massacre are 110 years old. There is a chance that they may die without seeing some kind of direct payment or reparations. And I know there has certainly been so much already talked about this topic, but I'm wondering at the end of your term, do you feel comfortable with how things have been left currently?
GB:
Unfortunately, my entire relationship with those two women has been informed by the litigation that they have against the city of Tulsa, and that's one of the, I would say, restraints on this job that has taken a little getting used to, because I didn't ever have to deal with this as a city councilor. The mayor has settlement authority for the city, and so there've been a number of times where you have individuals who are involved in litigation against the city that I'm not allowed to meet with them. I'm not allowed to talk with them. I'm not allowed, in this instance, to comment publicly on them or the merits of what they're saying because we're still in the middle of a lawsuit with them. So, I'd be happy to talk about any of the other stuff, but I can't talk about that particular case.
BA:
Right. Not even now as you're on your way out of the mayor's office?
GB:
Nope. Unfortunately not because I'm, at least for 13 more days, I'm still the representative of the city, which is the entity that they're in litigation with.
BA:
Sure. Well, I guess then—
GB:
And that, again, that's part of the challenge in this job is it puts you in a position where you, as the representative of the city, and given entrusted with this authority by the citizens, you have to do things and take a position that if it were just me, G.T. Bynum, guy who loves Tulsa and feels strongly about righting wrongs from that, I would've loved to have met with them and talked with them, but first time they ever popped up on my radar is when this litigation began. And, so, I haven't had that opportunity, which is a shame.
BA:
Sure. I mean, then, I guess my next question is more of a philosophical one rather than a policy one, but a bit of still of a policy one, which is that: you've said in the past that you don't think, and other people have too, that those today should be directly paying for things that happened in the past. And I guess philosophically what drives that for you? Because there are areas of Tulsa that are not predominantly Black that are better off than say areas of Tulsa, north Tulsa, that are predominantly Black. And I'm wondering in your mind, should there be a way to pay that back?
GB:
Well, you're speaking to the very reason that I decided to run for mayor in the first place… was reading the article that Gerry Clancy wrote in the [Tulsa] World about the life expectancy gap between north Tulsa and the rest of the city. I mean, reading that was the day I decided to run for mayor. And we've organized so much of the work that we've done in the time that I've been mayor around trying to address that gap, creating the resilient Tulsa strategy, creating the Mayor's Office of Resilience and Equity to follow through on it, creating the Tulsa equality indicators to measure how we're doing, creating PartnerTulsa/Tulsa Authority for Economic Opportunity so that our economic development work is aimed towards creating a quality of opportunity. Because one of the things that we identified clearly, we should not be surprised that the part of the city that took a backseat to the rest of town for half a century, at least, when it came to economic development and job creation, is also the part of the city that as the lowest life expectancy rate.
All of those are also reasons why I supported establishing the Beyond Apology Commission by executive order, because I do feel strongly that we as Tulsans need to be identifying, and I think most Tulsans want to identify, what we can do to help our neighbors and the descendants of our neighbors who were murdered or were victims of the worst thing that ever happened in the history of our city. The nuance here is what I've been opposed to, which is a lawsuit that is asserting that Tulsans have benefited from the Race Massacre and therefore a tax needs to be levied to make up for that benefit that our community received from having a race massacre. I unequivocally reject the notion that Tulsa benefited from having the Race Massacre occur. I can't think of how much better Tulsa would be today if that had never happened. So the notion that the city or the chamber of commerce or the county benefited from this happening, I just—I fundamentally don't agree with that premise.
And, so, I can't support settling a lawsuit based on a premise that I think is fundamentally untrue, and that is the dilemma there. It's also why I think, much to my regret, we lost a lot of time on talking about reparations in the broader sense. We got so hung up on this one thing driven by trial lawyers when, thanks to the work of the group that put the Beyond Apology Commission report—er, the Beyond Apology report, together, they showed that reparations can mean so much more. It can mean work around economic development and housing opportunities, educational scholarships. Well, these are all things that I think Tulsans want to have that discussion as neighbors. Not in a courtroom with lawyers fighting with lawyers, but as neighbors talking those issues through, and that's why we created this commission.
BA:
Right. But as my last follow up to that, I'm guessing, and I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but is there any implication from what you're saying as I'm understanding it, that the litigation, in a way, slowed down actual reparations for the community?
GB:
Again, I can't speak to that litigation at all. What I'm saying is that I don't want us as a community falling into the trap of deferring to trial lawyers arguing in a courtroom over this when we, as a community, should be talking through this together as a community. And I want to give her a lot of credit, that's something that Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper worked with me on establishing this commission. I think, out of a similar belief, the court deal will follow its own course and will work out however the courts decide it's going to work out. But while all that's happening, and going through whatever machinations occur there, there's still a community dialogue that needs to be occurring around this. And the Beyond Apology Commission is our vehicle for doing that.
BA:
Springboarding on the same topic of community: under your tenure as mayor, Tulsa has been certified as a “Welcoming City.” You've established more commissions based on the diverse populations of our city. You added to Tulsa's list of sister cities, the first on the continent of Africa. And then, personally, one of my favorite reporting jobs was going to ceremonies where children took the oath of citizenship. And I'm wondering, and this is a bigger national picture, at a time when the Republican party in particular has been criticized for some harsh rhetoric regarding immigrants—and not talking about immigration policy, but immigrants themselves—as a registered Republican, why do you differ so starkly, you think, from a lot of the rhetoric and sometimes the policy positions of the party you belong to?
GB:
Well, first of all, I'm a registered Republican, but I ran for mayor as a nonpartisan. Ran for mayor, commit with Republicans and Democrats and Independents all believing in what I wanted to accomplish. I've had Republicans and Democrats and Independents all serve in my administration. And, so, party identification has had zero to do with the positions that I've taken in this job. Also, I think when we started a lot of the new Tulsans work, around our work around immigrants, I was very mindful of the fact and bothered by that the way that all immigrants were being painted as illegal immigrants. We would announce we've had to put out a number of different incorrect assertions, whether it's creating our immigrant business incubator in east Tulsa and having people come out and say, ‘Oh, this is for illegal immigrants to start businesses’ and having to say, ‘No, this is for immigrants to do this’ or our work to open a new customs facility at the airport.
And again, just lies online saying that we're creating some giant illegal immigrant detention facility in Tulsa that we're going to let people escape out of and run around the city. Ridiculousness. And I wanted us to be able to, again, coming from the position of being a descendant of immigrants to our country, having children who are the descendants of immigrants to our country—and by the way, pretty much everybody in Tulsa other than our Native Americans, also the descendants of immigrants to our country—I wanted to challenge us to remember where we came from here and think about what kind of a city would you have wanted your ancestors if you weren't born here in Tulsa, what kind of city would you have wanted them to come to? And we should make Tulsa that kind of a city. I also think having the citizenship ceremonies that you referenced has been incredibly important both for the city government but also just for me personally to meet those folks every month when I speak at those ceremonies, and to be reminded that there's so much politically-oriented nonsense thrown around immigration in the United States right now and has been for the last eight years, at least that I've been in this job. And yet, you meet folks who've risked everything they have, and done everything by the letter of the law, and have come here because they still see America and Oklahoma and Tulsa as this beacon of freedom and opportunity. It makes you want the city to live up to all of that hope and risk that they've given and taken. And that's driven so much of the work that we've done
BA:
Switching, and I know it's a harsh switch, but to strictly policy for a moment: a topic that dominated this year's mayoral race, and for good reason, was the topic of homelessness, which has come up time and time again during your tenure. After serving as mayor of a growing city and with a growing homeless population, what do you think is the best philosophy for government leaders to follow when it comes to resolving homelessness in the long term?
GB:
I think there's a couple key policy— foundational elements that we've tried to stick with on this. Number one, we as a city, we are in a moment right now, not just in Tulsa, but nationally—any mayor that I talked to of a major city around America is dealing with the same thing we're dealing with here in Tulsa—which is that you see this surge in a homeless population in major cities around the country. And, historically, the role of cities was not very engaged in this. It was to be a pass through for federal funds that we would then allocate out to nonprofits and they'd take it from there. And that was basically the extent of our involvement. And what we're seeing now is that is not enough. That problem— things are getting worse just doing what we were doing historically. And so cities are now having to think through, ‘Okay, well how do we get engaged, but not in a way that we're duplicating something that's already been done and not in a way that disrespects the local expertise of service providers who've been in the trenches on this stuff for decades?’
And, so, the council and I have really tried to focus in that space. One of the key things, though, is you can't expect somebody to get and keep a job, or to get counseling, or to get drug and alcohol rehabilitation, if that's what they need, if they don't have a place to live. And, so, we've really focused on… the notion of housing first has gotten sort of poo-pooed by some folks who don't understand it, who think that we're saying, ‘Well, we just want to get everybody off the street and stuff 'em in hotel rooms and hope things pan out.’ Well, that is not the idea. The idea is we want to get 'em off the street and into shelter, into housing, but then after that, they can get the help that they need to get on their feet and stay on their feet on a sustainable basis.
But you can't expect somebody who's sleeping under a bridge or in a park to be able to do what's necessary. Any of us, if you or I were having to do that, would you expect either of us to be able to come to work during the day and function in a successful way? I know I couldn't. And so you have to start with housing first, and that's why we put so much into the Improve Our Tulsa program, the largest allocation the city's ever put into housing in our initiative that passed last summer, last year. And that'll give Mayor Nichols and the council moving forward, the resources, not everything that's needed, but a great starting point to focus on how the city can be a better partner in addressing this issue.
BA:
And you say a housing first policy, and if I may interject, a housing first policy has been maybe politicized even, sort of on one side or the other. And I want to ask you something that I was thinking of earlier when you correctly mentioned that you ran a nonpartisan race, as are municipal elections here in Tulsa: in a time obviously when partisan divisions are so entrenched, do you think the rest of the country has something to learn from Tulsa having strictly nonpartisan elections?
GB:
Absolutely. I mean, and by the way, again, we're not unique in this. Most major cities at this point—Oklahoma City's the same way—it's rare to find, at this point, major cities where they have partisan elections. And, in my opinion, the great hope for our country isn't in D.C., it's at the local level, because it's kind of the last level of government where people are still expected to not just sit and philosophize and debate with each other, but actually work together to solve problems. And we've focused on that here in Tulsa. It's also a reason that I'm a big supporter of the open primaries movement in Oklahoma, because I think people ought to be able to vote for whoever they want regardless of what political party you are in as a voter or the candidate’s in, and I think we as a state would be much better off if we didn't have these silos that people are forced into voting within, and these monopolies… those ought to be torn down and you ought to have greater voter choice out there.
But I'm a big believer that government works better when you have, as I was mentioning earlier, a diversity of viewpoints at the table. And I think nonpartisan government lends itself best to that. I mean, there was a while there where—I mean I don't know of any other office in Oklahoma where you had Democrats and Independents employed other than ours. And it was at a time when we were achieving some of our greatest successes as a city because you had Republicans and Democrats and Independents. I was reminded the other night, at a kind of farewell dinner for people who worked in our office, that my very first day in here you had Jim Inhofe’s old field director, Michael Junk, working across the hall from Kathy Taylor and getting stuff done, working as a team. That is how it ought to be.
BA:
Right. And you mentioned the difference in perspective from D.C. over to the local level like here in Tulsa. And something that sticks out to me in terms of D.C. making a decision for Tulsa has to do with the Supreme Court, and I'm sure you know where I'm going with this. It was the McGirt decision.
GB:
Wait, what? [Laughs]
BA:
I know that you in particular, and again we're dealing with litigation, but hopefully since it's past litigation, maybe we can talk about a little more openly. I know you submitted a brief supporting the reversal [of the McGirt decision] and the decision has passed. I'm wondering in your mind, from the start of that process when it was at the Supreme Court to now, do you think that the implications of the McGirt decision really have been that bad for the city of Tulsa? Have they really panned out to something that has been a net negative or have you been able to make a net positive out of it?
GB:
Well, I think that the challenge is that the net impact of it is not yet known because it is still being litigated. And, we're only— to date, we've really only been looking at issues around criminal justice. I mean, we haven't even gotten into land use planning or policy or regulatory authority or, the big one, taxation ability. And those are all— I mean, I remember asking our city attorney at the time when the decision came out, David O'Meilia, who'd been a United States Attorney here before, knew federal law very well… And I was like, ‘Dave, when are we going to know what all this means?’ And he was like, ‘About 20 years from now.’ I mean, that's how long it's going to take if— and this is the big if— if the state and the tribes or Congress, if all those three fail to work something out, then it will take decades to work through the courts.
And we as a city have found ourselves pitted between the tribes in whose reservations we reside and the state in whose state we reside. And both saying different things and [we’re] finding ourselves as a city government torn between two groups that we both want to work with, we're both honored to be a part of, but getting conflicting legal statements as to what the right thing to do is. And, so, I've been frustrated that Congress, when the Supreme Court issued that decision, sort of the offhand part of the opinion that was written by Justice Gorsuch was basically like: ‘This is what it is, and if Congress wants to fix it, it's up to them.’ And Congress has done nothing on this, and the state and the tribes have been unable to reach any sort of agreement on this. My hope is one of those things will change and that we won't be stuck in this sort of limbo for decades to come working through each issue as it comes up because I think it's an asset to Tulsa that we we're the largest city in a tribal reservation in America now.
And our tribes have been great partners to the city in the time that I've been the mayor. Where I thought you were going with this question, and I certainly feel like: are there things I wish I had done differently on how we did that? Absolutely. I mean, I wish I had had a better, more open line with the chiefs, each of whom I have tremendous respect for from the very beginning of that process and why I think the way Mayor Nichols is going to approach it by having that on the front end. It is good. It's very smart on his part. And it'll be good for the city
BA:
In the time that we have remaining, I think [there are] two more [questions] that I have for you, one of which has been something that I've reported quite a bit on, and that's the city's transit system, which has been expanding over the last several years. I remember you made it clear, especially at the name changing ceremony when it became MetroLink Tulsa, that you want the city's transit to be, and I have the quote here, you want it to shift from being “a vehicle of last resort to a vehicle of choice.” And I'm wondering now, at the end of your term, but still looking toward the future and future administrations, how much more infrastructure and also importantly funding is it going to take to get the transit system to be that vehicle of choice for Tulsans?
GB:
Well, I remember when I was a city counselor, we had the vision program coming up and we wanted to do something in that for public transportation. This would've been in 2014/15. And we had a meeting with transit enthusiasts and supporters and we're like, ‘What should be in this?’ And they were like, ‘Light rail, light rail!’ And then I went to other town hall meetings and I was like, ‘Okay, we're looking at doing light rail. Who in here has ridden the bus in the last 10 years?’ And not a hand went up in any of these town hall meetings, and we realized we're wanting to make this giant leap into an extremely expensive infrastructure investment when we had no proven ridership other than as a vehicle of last resort. And, so, we realized bus rapid transit could be that sort of bridge to build greater comfort with and ease of accessibility for riders.
We installed the first line up and down the Peoria corridor, because that's the most densely populated corridor in the city— at least when we built it, one in seven Tulsans lived within a mile of Peoria, one in five Tulsans worked within a mile of Peoria. And so that made sense. And then we had approved in the Improve Our Tulsa program now to do the east to west corridor along Route 66, which is in design, and the work is being done on that right now. But I think this is something that you don't change everyone's habits and opinions overnight. It has to be done gradually by providing great service and service that's easily accessible. I think we're getting there with bus rapid transit, but we have a long way to go on it.
BA:
Right. And I mean, how do you think that the MetroLink Tulsa staff, Scott Marr as general manager, have done so far with the expansion? Because they've touted a lot more ridership and a good recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
GB:
They have. And one of the interesting trends that they've shifted toward that, just in the time I've been the mayor, is around micro transit and improving that. I mean, it used to be that the Lift was basically the only way that you could get micro transit in Tulsa, and that was for a very limited population. That's changing now. I have great respect for Scott. I've really— my designee on that board, James Wagner, he's been— I recruited him from INCOG as their transportation planner. He's the guy that came up with the, really, initial proposal for bus rapid transit in Tulsa. He then became our finance director, now runs the Department of City Experience here at the city, one of the best public transit minds we have in Tulsa. So I feel really good about the board that we have there and the authority, and Scott has done an excellent job in that role.
BA:
Last question for you, which is that when you were at your joint press conference with Mayor-elect Nichols, which, I know you specifically said you hate the term mayor-elect, so you just started calling him mayor.
GB:
That's right. He doesn't like it, but I'll keep doing it. [Laughs]
BA:
I'm wondering… you've known him for a long time. You very clearly call him a friend. And I'm wondering, in addition to a friendship, noting, even though that maybe parties technically differ, but the fact that it's a nonpartisan race, do your visions align for the city of Tulsa?
GB:
Well, I think Mayor Nichols has things that he'll do differently than I've done. And that is to be expected with different people coming into the job. And as I mentioned at that, I think he's better prepared than I was on issues around education. He is much better equipped at this point to do a reboot with tribal governments than I am. He has a better understanding of the state legislative process than I did when I came into this job. So he brings a skillset that I didn't have. I had different skills that he doesn't have. But there'll be a change in that regard. But I think that the most— the thing that's most important to me, it's not ‘Where are you on one policy or another,’ it's ‘What's your level of ambition for Tulsa? Do you expect Tulsa to be great and do you hold yourself and the community accountable for moving it toward that?’ And he has that 100 percent. I mentioned [in] my state of the city speech last week that people knowing that we were friends were reaching out to me during the campaign like, ‘Hey, how do you feel about Monroe talking about how great everything's going to be after he wins and you're out of office?’ And as I told those folks, ‘I love it!’ That's exactly what I want to hear someone seeking this job saying.
BA:
You can take the backhanding in grace.
GB:
Absolutely, yes. I would not want a mayor saying, ‘You know what? We did it. We've achieved it, and now we just need to maintain the status quo,’ because cities don't maintain the status quo. They're either getting better or they're getting worse. And I'm grateful that we got a mayor coming in who will disagree with me on different things, but we both have the same belief that we just want things to be getting better and we'll work very hard to achieve that.
BA:
Alright, well, Mayor G.T. Bynum, that's all the time we have. Thank you very much for spending some time today with us.
GB:
Well, I appreciate KWGS over all the years, the 16 years I've been at the city. just doing such a great job on reporting on city hall. Thank you.
BA:
We appreciate that. Thank you.
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KWGS' Max Bryan contributed to this interview.
