Our Arklahoma Heritage: Oklahoma House Speaker was elected to three consecutive terms before the fall

Daniel David Draper Jr.

Daniel David Draper Jr. was born on April 12, 1940, in Tahlequah into a family whose roots stretched back through the American Midwest and beyond. His paternal great-grandparents, Daniel S. and Rosann Carpender Draper, had married in Utica, New York, in 1865 and later left Floyd, New York, in the early 1870s to homestead on the plains of Cass County, Nebraska.

 Their son Jesse S. Draper and his wife Bertha Sawtelle continued the westward migration, eventually settling on a farm in eastern Oklahoma near Tahlequah after stops that included South Dakota.

Daniel’s father, Daniel D. Draper II, was born on that South Dakota farm on June 26, 1911. The elder Draper graduated from Bagley High School and Northeastern State Teacher’s College in Tahlequah, earned a master’s degree from Oklahoma A&M College, and spent more than forty years as an educator, including thirty-two years as a public school superintendent in Pierce and then Colcord.

 He also served two terms in the Oklahoma House of Representatives beginning in 1938 as the youngest member of the legislature at the time, later became mayor of Colcord for seven terms, and remained active in ranching, real estate, and local school board service until late in life.

 He married Elva Anderson of Tahlequah, and together they raised three children: Shirley, Daniel Jr., and Marjorie Kay, who died in a California automobile accident in 1976.

Young Dan grew up in that eastern Oklahoma world of small-town schools, farms, and public service. He earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, then attended the University of Oklahoma College of Law before completing his law degree at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.

He settled in Stillwater, where he practiced as a lawyer, served as city attorney, and taught business law at Oklahoma State University. Those professional roles grounded him in both local government and higher education before he entered elective politics.

In 1971 he won election to the Oklahoma House of Representatives from the 13th District, succeeding Bob Shatwell. He held the seat until 1983.

By 1979, he had risen to Speaker of the House, becoming only the fourth person in state history to win election to that post for three consecutive terms. He secured the speakership in a contested race among five candidates by forging an unusual coalition of conservative rural Democrats led by Vernon Dunn and progressive Democrats led by Cleta Deatherage and Jim Fried.

 As Speaker he was widely credited with modernizing House operations: streamlining the legislative process, imposing a dress code, and creating an independent professional staff. During the oil-boom years he directed surplus revenues toward increased education funding, construction of an agriculture building and other capital projects, and the start of a county bridge program.

He clashed with fellow Democrat Governor George Nigh over tax-cut proposals, warning that the high oil prices would not last. When prices later collapsed and the state faced severe shortfalls, those earlier cautionary words were remembered. He also engineered legislative maneuvers that blunted Republican efforts to cut income taxes.

His final year in leadership brought additional personal trouble. In late March 1983, while still serving as Speaker, Draper was arrested early one Sunday morning in downtown Oklahoma City after a minor traffic accident at Reno and South Walker.

Police charged him with driving under the influence of alcohol and transporting an open container. The arresting officer reported that Draper appeared staggering, weaving, and unsteady with bloodshot eyes, and that he admitted he had been drinking whiskey at a local club called Cowboys.

At the jail, he refused a chemical test, put antacid in his mouth, and was described in the police report as profane, cocky, and indifferent. He was booked into the Oklahoma City Jail and later released on bond. Charges were filed in municipal court, and he was convicted on the misdemeanor DWI ciunt.

His career ended abruptly later that same year. A federal jury in Muskogee convicted him and House Majority Floor Leader Joe Fitzgibbon of conspiracy and multiple counts of mail fraud.

Prosecutors charged that the two men had participated in a scheme involving fraudulent absentee ballots intended to help Draper’s father win a 1982 runoff election for a House seat in Adair County.

The elder Draper lost the race and was never charged. Judge Frank H. Seay sentenced both men to three-year prison terms, though he described them as considerably less culpable than other participants who had already pleaded guilty. Draper maintained his innocence throughout, calling the prosecution a politically motivated railroad job.

The convictions forced him from the speakership; Governor Nigh declared the office vacant and Jim Barker succeeded him. Both men were later granted a new trial after several government witnesses recanted their testimony. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the grant of a new trial. The convictions were effectively overturned, and Draper briefly returned to the House but chose not to seek another term.

 In the years that followed he worked as a lobbyist at the Capitol.

He and his wife Judy made their home in Stillwater and raised a daughter and a son, Daniel David Draper III, who later became an Oklahoma attorney specializing in commercial litigation and related fields.

Family remained central even as public life receded.

On the morning of November 18, 2004, Draper became ill at his Stillwater home and was pronounced dead of an apparent heart attack at three o’clock. He was sixty-four. Funeral arrangements were handled by Strode Funeral Home in Stillwater. Public records list him in the national Find a Grave index with matching birth and death details, yet no specific cemetery or plot has been identified in available sources, which usually indicates creation.

Colleagues remembered him as one of the most intelligent and innovative legislators of his generation, a man who understood statutes thoroughly, ran the House with clear authority, and left procedural reforms that continued to shape the institution long after he left it.