The voice you've been hearing delivering local Tulsa news to you bright and early for more than a year is departing. KWGS' Elizabeth Caldwell sat down with KWGS' Zach Boblitt to hear about his new job at the statehouse in Kansas. Listen above or read a transcript below.
Transcript:
Elizabeth Caldwell:
I’m Elizabeth Caldwell, the news director here, and I am with Zach Boblitt. Say, hi, Zach.
Zach Boblitt:
Hi, Zach.
EC:
So this is our, well, this is the first time we’ve done something like this. And also the last time, ’cause you’re about to leave, right?
ZB:
Yes, I am going to be going north pretty soon.
EC:
And our listeners, you’ve been the Morning Edition host for like the past year, right?
ZB:
Year and a half. Yeah, it’s been, it feels like it was yesterday, but it also feels like it was three or four years at times.
EC:
Yes. Doesn’t it? Because you really learned a lot when you were here. So tell us about your new gig.
ZB:
I am excited. I’m gonna be the statehouse bureau chief up at Kansas Public Radio. I’ll be working in the Kansas State Capitol interviewing legislators. They have supermajorities in both state legislatures, and then they have a Democratic governor. So it’s kind of a different makeup there, slightly, than Oklahoma, where it’s supermajorities and then a Republican governor. So just kind of be watching what gets vetoed, what they’re able to override the veto up there when it comes to their legislation.
EC:
Okay. So it’s sort of an important job, right? Because we’re seeing states with different policies now, right? Like for instance, abortion’s illegal in Oklahoma. What’s the status in Kansas though? ’Cause I actually don’t, do you know?
ZB:
Yeah, there was a state vote on abortion and that passed to where it’s pro-choice, basically. You’re able to have access. It’s kind of become, Kansas has become kind of a haven for some other states around the area. You’ll see some people maybe from Oklahoma go up there, Missouri, states like that, that maybe don’t have the same access. I’m not sure if Missouri — I know Oklahoma doesn’t have access, but I’m not positive about Missouri.
EC:
Yeah, there’ll probably be more issues like that. I was just reading this morning that President Trump is trying to get the voter rolls from every state. But I don’t know what will happen with that. But the statehouse seems like a really important position. So I think it’s fitting that the last big story that you kind of wrote for us here was about a piece of legislation, right? The Survivors' Act.
ZB:
Yeah, we did the feature on the Oklahoma Survivors' Act. I’ve done extensive reporting on that, kind of going to every Survivors' Act case I can get to here in Tulsa County. And just kind of seeing what’s going on in the courts, why these cases are being denied. Women, a lot of them over 20 years in prison for these crimes they committed against their abusers. The law is supposed to make it to where they can be resentenced under it, but they’re staying behind bars. And a lot of that is due to the way the legislation was either written or how it’s being adjudicated in court. So it’s kind of causing issues.
And then, obviously, recently last week we just had the announcement of Colleen McCarty, who’s now gonna run for Tulsa County district attorney. And she was on the other side of a lot of these Survivors' Act cases with the survivors. So she’s running against Steve Kunzweiler, who she’s been on the opposite end of the spectrum in many, many of these OSA hearings. So it’s kind of, it’s a story that’s evolved over time and it’s still evolving, even though I’m gonna be moving north. So, yeah.
EC:
Yeah. And you spent months reporting that. I mean, if you put together all the hearings that you went to, you spent months writing out that story, right?
ZB:
Oh yeah. Yeah. It was a lot of writing it out and then trying to find what state kind of has a decent enough history to kind of compare from Oklahoma to another state that has similar Survivors' Act legislation. And I chose Illinois partially ’cause I’m from there, but also they had basically a decade of having a Survivors' Act in place. And we saw that they, according to someone who works in the criminal justice field, they said they only know of eight people who were resentenced under their Survivors' Act in the decade. So Oklahoma has had one person resentenced, basically let out of prison, in the little over a year now that they’ve had the Survivors' Act in place. So kind of similar numbers in Oklahoma and Illinois.
EC:
Well, everyone really appreciated that story. And tell us, what was your favorite thing about Tulsa?
ZB:
I just, I really loved, there’s so much culture here. There’s a lot of great music. I know it’s kind of become a cliché, but they’re trying to kind of promote Tulsa — the city — and various people are trying to promote Tulsa as kind of like a new Austin or something like that. Yeah. And it does kind of have that vibe where you have the old-school country music. You have a lot of Indigenous roots as well. You have kind of, there’s jazz music downtown. There’s a lot of different elements here in Tulsa and it makes for great music, great food, portions that are offensively large.
If you go to a lot of restaurants, that’s something my wife Kylie and I have talked about, where we’ll just go across a state line up to Kansas and be like, why are the portions so small here compared to Oklahoma? Everything is giant. But yeah, it’s just a great place to be. And if it wasn’t this type of opportunity, I would not have left. It just kind of took a great opportunity in a state in Kansas where I have family there. So yeah, it took that kind of opportunity for me to want to leave Tulsa.
EC:
Well, I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess. Well, thank you for all your hard work, Zach. I know that our listeners, our loyal morning listeners, will miss you.
ZB:
Yeah. I won’t miss waking up that early, but I will miss hosting Morning Edition every day.
EC:
Okay.
Well, keep in touch.
ZB:
Yep.
