Bill LaFortune

Bill LaFortune
34th Mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma
In office
1 April 2002  10 April 2006

William "Bill" LaFortune (born August 23, 1957) is a district judge in Tulsa County.[1][2] He served as the 34th mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma from 2002 to 2006.

LaFortune's grandfather, Joseph LaFortune, was an oil executive and a noted philanthropist in Tulsa. His uncle, Robert J. LaFortune, was mayor of Tulsa from 1970 to 1978.[3][4] He attended Cascia Hall Preparatory School, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Tulsa College of Law.[4]

LaFortune served as district attorney of Tulsa County, as a special judge for Tulsa County, and as Assistant Attorney General for the state of Oklahoma. Running as a Republican, he was elected mayor in 2002, but he was unsuccessful in his bid for re-election on April 5, 2006 when he lost to his Democratic opponent, former Oklahoma Secretary of Commerce and Tourism Kathy Taylor.[5]

LaFortune's nephew, G. T. Bynum, ran for mayor of Tulsa in 2016[6] and was elected to begin the role that December.[7]

In May 2016, the district attorney’s office asked the Judge LaFortune to hold Vernon Majors without bond or set bond to $300,000 for charges of assault and battery with a deadly weapon case in which Majors is accused of running over Haifa Jabara, an Arab-American Christian, with a car in September 2015. Judge Lafortune set bond at only $60,000, after which Majors was released on May 25, 2016. Vernon Majors was arrested on Friday August 16, 2016, accused of shooting and killing Haifa Jabara's son, Khalid Jabara.[8]

See also

List of mayors of Tulsa, Oklahoma

References

Preceded by
Susan Savage
37th Mayor of Tulsa
April 1, 2002 April 10, 2006
Succeeded by
Kathy Taylor


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