Considered something of a long shot to win his first political campaign, Tulsa mayoral candidate Casey Bradford says that campaign has accomplished many of its goals, including registering thousands of voters.

And while he hopes to have changed some minds and brought new ideas to the table, he admits he’s changed his own mind on some issues after talking with thousands of voters.

[Hear the KRMG In Depth report on Casey Bradford’s mayoral campaign]

“A lot of perspective gets brought in,” Bradford told KRMG Wednesday. “I mean, I’m not going to lie to you - there are things, policies that I had going in, ideas that I had that I’ve since changed after listening to thousands of people say things. Things that I had this preconceived notion that I could just roll in and fix, you know, I’ve now had the opportunity to go talk to people that have been doing this 16, 20, 24 years and they give me the time of the day because I’m a viable candidate. And they we have these conversations, and they’re like ‘oh, we tried that eight years ago, we tried that ten years ago, nobody’s was just paying attention to it. So if you try it again you’re just going to waste time, money, energy and resources.”

One topic he says has come up in the majority of his conversations with voters is Oklahoma’s dismal track record on voter turnout.

“You know, a lot Tulsans, they’re tired,” he told KRMG. “A lot of the people that I’ve talked with have just basically completely abandoned the system, they don’t even vote any more. That’s something we’ve seen I’d say about 60 percent of the time is they’re like ‘my vote doesn’t count,’ you know, ‘it doesn’t matter what I do the system’s going to continue to operate the way it does, and I can call my councilman or my mayor or whoever, and nothing’s going to get accomplished - so why are we even doing this?’”

Bradford says he would sit with them, especially younger Tulsans, for as long as possible to explain why they need to get involved.

“The reason the system is the way that it is because we don’t have that voter participation, especially when it comes to the youth,” Bradford said. “Trying to entice them to vote has been quite a struggle.”

So when asked for his final thoughts near the end of the interview, he returned to that theme.

“There are 292,000 of us in Tulsa that can vote,” Bradford said, “and I hope that we have 292,000 votes cast. I don’t care who you’re voting for right now, the most important thing is to get to that poll. You know we have the lowest voter turnout rates in the entire country in the state of Oklahoma here, and in order to start setting these standards, start making these changes, it starts with each and every one of us. And that means for that one day, for that 20 minutes, we have to show up to that poll, put our name on a piece of paper, and say ‘hey this is what we’re going to do.’”

Early voting begins Thursday, and polls open Tuesday at 7 a.m.