Alice Leuck throws hat in mayor race

Reese Gorman, The Norman Transcript, Okla.
·3 min read

Dec. 5—A fifth Norman native has thrown her hat into the mayoral race, with a focus on homelessness and police funding.

Like other candidates in recent city elections, Alice Leuck decided to get involved in city politics following the City Council's decision to reallocate $865,000 from the Norman Police Department's proposed budget increase to community projects in June 2020. Now, after more than a year to think about it, she's decided to run for mayor.

One of the issues most pressing to Leuck is addressing homelessness in Norman. Although there is no data to back it up, Leuck said she believes the main reason for the rise in the city's homeless population to be Riverwind Casino drawing people to the city.

According to Leuck, if elected mayor, she wants to get the casino to pay for a "state of the art homeless shelter."

"The casino needs to step up to the plate and should have a long time ago to build a state of the art homeless center," she said. "Because I know for a fact many homeless are drawn here as a last ditch effort to win big at the casinos. Many with substance abuse issues."

Another of her top priorities, if elected mayor, would be to "strongly support" the NPD.

"'I'm very strong for the police," Leuck said. "And in fact, I don't know if it's legal, but if it's legal, I will just keep enough of the mayor's salary to pay my federal and state taxes and my essential needs and what's leftover donate to the police, because the police need a new police car."

Leuck believed the Norman mayor made an annual salary of $156,000. She said she wanted to be like former President Donald Trump and only keep enough of the salary for essential needs and taxes, then donate the rest of the money to the NPD.

The Transcript informed her the mayor does not make $156,000 a year, and only makes a maximum of $100 a month.

Her third priority if elected would be to focus on "essential needs" of Norman, including infrastructure, sanitation, recycling and animal control.

"Norman leadership needs to focus more on essential needs rather than non-essential that you entertain only 'after' have attended to essential needs," she said in a statement.

Leuck also said she will not be asking for any donations for her campaign for mayor, because she does not want to be "bought by donors." She will accept donations until she receives $1,000 and then decline, she said.

"I don't want any donations to my campaign beyond the equal coverage everyone's getting, because I don't want to be beholden to any donors," she said. "I'm running for the city of Norman, the voters and the residents ... I'll be running as the good deeds candidate. If anyone supports what I stand for, then I hope it'll inspire them to do good deeds and if they want to make donations to homeless, they can, or if they want to make donations to the Norman police, [they can]."

Reese Gorman covers politics and COVID-19 for The Transcript; reach him at rgorman@normantranscript.com or @reeseg_3.