

Bob Anthony had never been to an Oklahoma Corporation Commission meeting until he was encouraged in 1988 to run for a seat on the three-member utility-regulating panel. Devoid of a political background and lacking ties to the oil and gas industry or utility companies, Anthony — like many Oklahomans — didn’t really know what the agency did. But today, 36 years after taking his first oath as an elected state officeholder, his tenure as a corporation commissioner ends.
During his time in office, Anthony introduced an ethics policy, assisted the FBI in a six-year undercover operation that exposed bribery and corruption, and helped modernize the agency — which didn’t even have a fax machine when he was first elected — by computerizing records.
Because he was not a politician and had few connections with utilities or the oil and gas industry, Oklahoma voters viewed Anthony as being more concerned about their interests, recalls Bill Shapard, a former political consultant and longtime friend of Anthony’s. Utility ratepayers seemed to believe Anthony was looking out for them because he questioned and often opposed rate increases, he said.
“He truly considered it a public service,” said Shapard, founder and CEO of ShapardResearch, a market research firm in Oklahoma City. “I think Bob is the most honest public official that Oklahoma has ever had, but to a fault, and that fault is that he sometimes does not know that he has to work with others. He has to work in a team environment at times.”
Often, other commissioners had to find a way to work with Anthony, Shapard said.
“He had been there for so long that everyone elected after him, if they want to get something done, they have to work with Bob,” Shapard said. “And they know that Bob is the champion of the ratepayer.”
Along with honesty, Shapard said Anthony’s business background and personal wealth made him seem trustworthy to voters.
“He did not enter the office with the idea of growing his own personal wealth at the same time,” Shapard said. “It’s a fact that he is worth less today than he was when he entered into it 36 years ago, and that should be noted. He couldn’t be bought by monopoly powers in the state because he didn’t need the money. There was no way to buy him, so he really in that aspect is the kind of that perfect public servant.”
Anthony is being succeeded by longtime politician Brian Bingman, who was elected to the post in November and who is set to take his oath of office today. Bingman, like the other two commissioners he will join, is a Republican and a former state legislator. After serving on the Sapulpa City Commission in the 1990s, Bingman was elected to the House of Representatives in 2004. Two years later, he jumped to the State Senate where he served his last five years in office as president pro tempore — the body’s leader. Commission Chairwoman Kim David, who was elected statewide in 2022, served in the State Senate and became the first female majority leader and the first woman to chair the Senate Appropriations and Budget Committee. Commissioner Todd Hiett, who was elected to his second and final term in 2020, became the first Republican speaker of the Oklahoma House in 80 years in 2005, leaving office two years later when he could not seek reelection because of legislative term limits.
Over his decades in office, Anthony often sparred with fellow commissioners, usually on utility rate increase proposals, but also on other matters. He has long pushed to overturn the 1989 OCC vote for which a commissioner and a Southwestern Bell attorney were convicted of bribery and sentenced to federal prison. He supported efforts to force Hiett to resign from the board of a bank with customer interests before the Corporation Commission, and he has vociferously argued that the public has been cheated by alleged price manipulations, contract violations and civil conspiracies regarding natural gas companies’ actions during Winter Storm Uri. On Friday, his last full day in office, Anthony filed a 29-page report with 57 pages of attachments. It’s the follow-up to a 74-page report he filed about the 2021 winter storm in September 2022.
For the past six months, Anthony has called on Hiett to step down from the commission following allegations he got blackout drunk and groped an energy industry employee at an out-of-state conference in June.
“Uncovering the truth is part of my constitutional duty to ‘correct abuses and prevent unjust discrimination and extortion,’ and the attempted coverup of both recent scandals illustrates the cancer-like spread of ongoing unlawful behavior at the OCC,” Anthony wrote in a Jan. 3 filing. “I am only sorry that when it came to these and other issues of critical importance to Oklahoma ratepayers and taxpayers, I could not find a second vote at the commission or convince the attorney general to resist political pressure from ‘teammates’ and step up to honesty, truth and justice instead.”
‘Being a corporation commissioner is not a part-time job’

After attending his last Corporation Commission meeting Jan. 7, Anthony said he never intended to run for politics. His first stint in public office was short-lived. He was elected as a Ward 2 councilman on the OKC City Council in 1979, but he resigned a year later to succeed his father, Guy, who had retired as president of Anthony’s, a chain of family-owned and family-operated department stores founded by Bob Anthony’s grandfather, C.R. Anthony, in 1922.
Asked about his time in office, Anthony often referred to a 12-page filing that he posted with the Corporation Commission’s court clerk’s office, which he labeled as his reflections on being a commissioner.
“I make no apologies for my early efforts to root out public corruption at the OCC, or more recently, my ardent attempts to uncover and share the truth about agency failures — especially the 2021 winter storm and the $5 billion ratepayer-backed bond fiasco,” he wrote. “I also offer no apology for similar energy I have expended to find and share the truth about Todd Hiett’s sexual misconduct and the devastating impact it is having on the integrity, credibility and legitimacy of the OCC’s judicial processes and operations. Instead of confronting and exposing wrongdoing, it would always have been easier, on myself and my family, to look the other way. Having the unconditional support of my family — especially my parents, Guy and Christine, my wife of 50 years, Nancy, and our daughters — has been essential to the rigor and longevity of my public service.”
Anthony, the longest-serving Oklahoma statewide elected official and the longest-serving utility commissioner in the United States, was elected to his sixth and final six-year term in 2018, despite refusing to participate in a public debate with his opponent that year — Bingman. He could not seek reelection in 2024 because of the two-term limit that voters placed on statewide elected officials in 2010. The law was not retroactive, which meant Anthony was eligible to seek two more terms after its passage. Anthony, 76, said he would not have sought a seventh term anyway, saying he wants to spend more time with his wife, Nancy, and his family, which includes six grandchildren.
For the past few years, Anthony has been rankled by the three-member panel holding fewer meetings than it has in the past. Commissioners used to meet on most business days, except for holidays. Now, commissioners meet about once a week.
“Let me be clear: Being a corporation commissioner is not a part-time job,” Anthony wrote. “It is the commissioners, not the agency staff, who swear an oath to support, obey and defend the constitution and faithfully discharge their duties as corporation commissioners to the best of their ability. The duties of this office are numerous, detailed and demanding. And as duties, they are required by law; they are not suggestions, and they are not optional. These include ‘the duty of supervising, regulating and controlling’ most energy and monopoly public utility companies doing business in this state ‘and of correcting abuses and preventing unjust discrimination and extortion by such companies.’”
Anthony wrote that “the buck stops with the commissioners.”
“Making sure the laws and the constitution are followed is ultimately the commissioners’ responsibility. The dereliction of these duties my fellow commissioners have displayed in recent years has been horrifying,” he wrote. “This agency’s wholesale failure to investigate the historic prices Oklahoma’s utilities paid for natural gas during the 2021 winter storm, and its ongoing failure to provide lawful audits of either those billions in storm costs or the expenses resulting from the billions in ratepayer-backed bonds it authorized to bail out the utilities is literally an impeachable offense.”
A Republican, Anthony’s bid for the OCC seat in 1988 seemed a long shot. Back then, Democrats controlled the Legislature and occupied all but two — governor and labor commissioner — of Oklahoma’s statewide elected posts. Anthony served as president of Anthony’s from 1980 until 1987 when the company’s shareholders voted to sell it to an investor group sponsored by Citicorp Venture Capital. He agreed to serve the next three years as chairman of the company’s board.
“The ’80s were kind of tough on the Oklahoma economy, Penn Square Bank and all that,” Anthony said Tuesday.
After the sale of the company, Anthony said a friend suggested he consider running as a state representative. He agreed to meet with Tom Cole, then the chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party and now a powerful Oklahoma congressman from Moore.
“Mr. Cole said, ‘Golly, if Mr. Anthony would consider running for office, we don’t need him to run for a state House seat,” Anthony said.
At the time, Anthony’s had more than 100 stores in cities throughout Oklahoma and Cole encouraged him to run for a seat on the Corporation Commission, the only statewide post on that ballot that year, just like last year’s ballot. And just like in 2024, the seat was open in 1988 because Norma Eagleton, a Democrat, opted not to seek reelection.
Anthony served as a captain in the U.S. Army Reserves and before working for Anthony’s, he was a staff economist for the interior committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, and he worked as a consultant for the Library of Congress from 1976 to 1979. He had a background in financing, having studied at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance, and he earned graduate degrees from the London School of Economics, Yale University and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
“I think there are very, very, very few commissioners in all 50 states ever who have an education at the Wharton School of Finance,” Anthony said. “Maybe more significant than that, I don’t think anybody else has ever been the president of a [Security Exchange Commission] reporting company. (…)These companies like [Oklahoma Gas and Electric], [Oklahoma Natural Gas], [Public Service Company of Oklahoma] are all SEC-reporting companies.”
Cole calculated that, in 1988, the Anthony name could trump any Democrat seeking the post, and he figured correctly. Anthony beat Charlie Morgan, a Democrat who served in the House of Representatives for 16 years. He won 53.2 percent of the vote, becoming the first Republican elected to the Corporation Commission in 60 years. He received more votes than any Republican since statehood.
“He campaigned saying, ‘Don’t elect Anthony to a six-year term,” Anthony said of Morgan. “You know, he’ll quit after a year or two and go on and do something else.”
Cole (R-OK4) likely had no idea that Anthony would continue to serve in that post for 36 years.
“Bob Anthony is a consequential public official in Oklahoma history,” Cole said in an emailed statement. “I was proud to help persuade him to run for office in the 1980s when I served as state chairman for the Oklahoma Republican Party. (…) Commissioner Anthony has discharged his duties ably and honorably for decades. His regular reelection is a testament to how highly he is regarded by the voters of Oklahoma. I thank Bob for his many years of service to our state and wish him and his wife, Nancy, all the best as he retires from public office.”
In 1994, Anthony became the first Republican incumbent in Oklahoma history to win statewide reelection to a state office.
Bob Anthony worked undercover with the FBI

While campaigning for his first term in office, Anthony said an attorney who practiced before the Oklahoma Corporation Commission greeted him with a handshake that featured an envelope containing $1,000.
“They used the term ‘walking-around money,’” Anthony said.
He said he contacted a high school chum, Bill Price, who then was the U.S. attorney in Oklahoma City. After some discussion, he agreed to participate and work with the FBI as a cooperative and covert witness.
Anthony announced in 1992 that he had been assisting the FBI with an investigation of potential corruption at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission since shortly before he took office in 1989. He later served as a witness in a case that led to the 1994 bribery conviction of former Corporation Commissioner Bob Hopkins and former Southwestern Bell attorney William L. Anderson, both of whom received federal prison terms.
In 1995, the FBI honored Anthony for his assistance with the investigation by presenting him with its highest award given to a citizen. Then-FBI Director Louis J. Freeh presented the Louis E. Peters Memorial Service Award to Anthony in San Francisco at the annual convention of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI.
“He knew at that time that his role would certainly be revealed at trial, and that the eventual proceedings in court might damage his ability not only to be a public servant, but to work in any public service career in the state of Oklahoma,” Freeh said in his remarks. “The investigation which he caused, supported and worked in lasted approximately six years. Evidence which he developed involved illegal payments of $10,000. He made over 150 tape recordings that helped broaden the scope of the case to include another fellow commissioner and a local telephone company.”
In addition to the corruption he helped uncover at the commission, Anthony said he also was taken aback by the agency’s lack of technology.
“When I first took office at the Corporation Commission in January 1989, there was not a single fax machine,” Anthony wrote in his filing. “People from the farthest corners of the state were having to drive to the State Capitol just to file paperwork, and applications and orders were still being hand-posted in red-leather-bound ledger books. Having just served as the CEO of the largest privately held company headquartered in Oklahoma — the C.R. Anthony Company, with more than 300 clothing stores in 28 western states — these antiquated systems and inefficiencies floored me. I was offered a budget to redecorate my new OCC office and asked for a ‘PC’ (personal computer) instead. This floored my fellow commissioners; they couldn’t imagine what I was going to do with it.”
Anthony said the OCC had many accomplishments during his tenure. Among them, he identified the OCC adopting new rules to introduce competition into Oklahoma’s intrastate trucking and natural gas gathering and transportation markets, “both of which went smoothly and lowered costs for most customers,” he wrote in his filing. In 2000, a form of alternative regulation that Southwestern Bell called “The Anthony Plan” brought customer choice to local phone service.
“Some of the biggest regulatory changes over the years involved the OCC’s regulation of Oklahoma’s oil and gas industry,” Anthony wrote. “When I first got to the agency, pollution caused by old, sometimes abandoned oil wells was a huge problem. We began charging current operators a fee and created a revolving fund the OCC could use to plug ‘orphan’ wells. Subsequently, the Legislature and industry leaders created the [Oklahoma Energy Resources Board], funded by an additional, voluntary fee, to clean up polluted oil field sites after OCC had plugged the old wells on a priority basis. Changes in OCC rules also enabled our oil and gas industry to utilize new or improved technologies like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to better develop existing resources. That said, additional rules also had to be created when a correlation between saltwater injection wells and ‘induced seismicity’ (i.e. earthquakes) in certain areas of the state became clear.”
Among his disappointments, Anthony noted his failure to get a second commissioner to agree with him to deregulate cotton gins, which are required by OCC to provide similar services to all cotton growers at approved prices. He tried since 1989 “but could never find a second vote,” he wrote. “Thirty-six years later, that government-granted monopoly still persists.”
Anthony said he is proud he was able to establish an ethics policy at the OCC. After taking office, he soon found out that influence peddling went beyond cash payments to commissioners, he said.
“One attorney who represented three of the five largest utility companies in the state, literally brought a truckload of hams and turkeys to pass out to commission employees in the parking lot during the holidays; at other times, he distributed OU football tickets, or paid travel expenses for employees and their spouses,” Anthony wrote in his filing. “Back then, not only was there no constitutional state Ethics Commission; the OCC didn’t even have an ethics policy. It took a few years to get it and get it right, but for a decade or more, I bragged that the OCC had the strongest ethics policy in state government. We prohibited the gifts, required disclosures of conflicts of interest, and slowed the revolution of the revolving door through which employees bounced back and forth between the OCC and the companies we regulate. It took years, but eventually the culture of tolerance for public corruption and regulatory capture changed.”
During his time as a corporation commissioner, Anthony twice pursued running for Congress. In 1992, he lost his bid to unseat incumbent U.S. Rep. Glenn English, a Democrat from Cordell, and he finished third in 2004 in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate to Tom Coburn, who went on to win the post.
Shapard served as Anthony’s campaign manager for the 2004 Senate race, recalling that Anthony told him he would not run against his friend, Coburn, who had served six years in Congress between 1995 and 2001. At first, Shapard said, Coburn was not interested in the Senate seat, but he eventually entered after Anthony’s campaign struggled. Shapard said he was surprised that Anthony, who had been reelected twice, did not poll well in his bid for the U.S. Senate.
“When we traveled the state and we talked to Oklahomans, they’d say, ‘Bob, I’d love to vote for you, but you’ve done such a great job as corporation commissioner, we need you there,’” Shapard said. “And they really couldn’t see anybody else that they thought would be at the Corporation Commission doing as good a job as Bob did.”