President Trump’s micro-rally is being held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, tonight. I couldn’t think of a better #DistrictOfTheDay than Oklahoma’s 1st, where the eyes of the world have converged for the night to watch his first large-scale rally since the beginning of the pandemic.

Oklahoma used to have a strong history with the Democratic Party, but OK-01 is actually one of the districts least historically affiliated with it. Republicans held the seat from 1951 to 1973 and have held it since 1987 with relative ease.

In 1986, this seat was won by Republican Jim Inhofe, who served until 1994 when he flipped a United States Senate seat. His successor was Republican Steve Largent, who resigned his seat in 2002 to run and lose the governor’s race to Democrat Brad Henry.

Inhofe isn’t the only noteworthy figure from this district; another former representative is Jim Bridenstine, who now serves as Trump’s administrator of NASA. When he resigned in 2018 to take that seat, fellow Republican Kevin Hern (R–Tulsa) won the election to replace him.

Even though Hillary Clinton lost Oklahoma by an even greater margin than Barack Obama did in 2012, she actually narrowed the gap in two of OK’s five districts: the first (anchored in Tulsa) and the fifth (Oklahoma City). The rest of the state moved substantially toward Trump.

Sometimes people ask, “Is Oklahoma really that red?” Yes, it is. The last Democratic presidential candidate to carry even a single county in Oklahoma was Al Gore in 2000. Trump would have to be doing horribly for that tradition to break to this year.

If it does break, it won’t be in OK-01. Tulsa County is big, but it’s still a VERY conservative urban area. Trump carried it by over 20% in 2016, and even if it is moving left it’s doing so very slowly. Plus, there are other, more conservative counties in OK-01 than Tulsa County.

There has been a lot of focus on Tulsa recently, between Trump’s rally and discussions of the race massacre that occurred there in 1919. It’s a city with a troubled past, but its history isn’t finished yet. There is time to avenge their city’s tragic legacy in the coming years.

In the meantime, there’s plenty of space in Tulsa for those wishing to visit—or at least that’s what I saw on my TV tonight.