After serving as State Representative for Tulsa’s House District 72 for eight years, Monroe Nichols says he’s ready to move on to new challenges as mayor of the City of Tulsa.

He became the first candidate to officially announce a campaign in July of last year, and says he remains the only candidate who’s clearly spelled out measurable goals for himself and the city, and detailed how he plans to achieve them.

[Hear the KRMG In Depth Report on Tulsa mayoral candidate Monroe Nichols]

“Look at what we have proposed, look at the vision that we’ve thrown out there,” Nichols said Tuesday. “I’m the only campaign that’s actually done either one of those things - propose things, have a clear plan for it - and that’s because I put Tulsans at the center of this campaign from the first day that I announced, and I will do that every day as mayor.”

Moreover, he believes some of his opponents have baggage that will limit their appeal to some voters.

“I have one of my opponents that’s a named defendant in a federal lawsuit where thirty kids were abused at the Family Center for Juvenile Justice, and you know, maintains that it wasn’t anybody’s responsibility to do anything about it,” Nichols told KRMG. “I have another candidate who thinks there needs to be a religious litmus test to people running for office. Now, look - I’m not here to trash either one of those people, but I’m saying in this campaign, I have been focused on one thing and one thing only - how do we move Tulsa forward and win the next decade.”

He says a focus on youth, including providing them a quality education but also paying attention to what they want and need the city to be moving forward, is a key component of his campaign.

“We’re going to redefine the mayor’s role in education, create the Office of Children Youth and Families, and take a more direct, uh, a more direct involvement in what are we doing every day to support young people in this community, because ultimately people who are going to decide to move to, or from, Tulsa are going to do it based on the strength of our schools and how we treat young people,” Nichols said.

Nichols also believes he has a plan that can solve homelessness in the city by 2030, so says he’d like to serve at least two terms to see that goal accomplished, along with others.

But he’s mostly focused on quality of performance, rather than longevity.

“In every thing I talk about, frankly, about how I want to deliver - and all things that can be measured, by the way, I want people to measure me based on ‘did he get the outcomes he said he was going to get?’ For me to be fully transparent, I’m big on accountability - but honestly, I would rather be an A-plus one-term mayor, than a C-minus, you know, four-term mayor.”

Nichols doesn’t know if he can win outright, especially with so many people in the race, but he feels confident that he can at least make it to a November 5th run-off, which would require him to be one of the top two vote-getters in the August 27th elections.