Mary Fallin (; née Copeland; born December 9, 1954) is an American politician who served as the 27th governor of Oklahoma from 2011 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, she was elected in 2010 and reelected in 2014. She is the first and so far only woman to be elected governor of Oklahoma. She was the first woman to represent Oklahoma in Congress since Alice Mary Robertson in 1923.
Beginning a career in politics, Fallin was elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 1990. She served two terms in the Oklahoma House, representing a district in Oklahoma City, from 1990 to 1995. In 1994, Fallin was elected to serve as the 14th lieutenant governor of Oklahoma; being elected to a total of three terms, she served under two different governors from 1995 to 2007. After seven-term Republican incumbent Ernest Istook announced that he would retire from his seat to run for governor, Fallin declared her candidacy for Oklahoma's 5th congressional district, where she was elected to two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving from 2007 to 2011. Fallin became the first woman elected to Congress from Oklahoma since Alice Mary Robertson in 1920, when Alice Mary Robertson became Oklahoma's first (and the nation's second) woman to be elected to Congress.
Fallin ran for Governor of Oklahoma in 2010. She defeated three other opponents with 54% of the vote in the Republican primary, and defeated the Democratic nominee, Lieutenant Governor Jari Askins, with 60% of the vote in the general election. She won reelection in 2014, defeating Oklahoma state representative Joe Dorman. Term limits barred Fallin from seeking a third term to the governorship in 2018; fellow Republican Kevin Stitt was elected to succeed her.
Early life, education, and early career
Fallin was born Mary Copeland in Warrensburg, Missouri, the daughter of Mary Jo (née Duggan) and Joseph Newton Copeland. Her mother and father each served terms as mayor of Tecumseh, Oklahoma, where she was raised. They were both members of the Oklahoma Democratic Party. She was a Democrat until she was 21. That year she switched to the Republican Party of Oklahoma and became active with the Young Republicans. She graduated from Tecumseh High School and attended Oklahoma Baptist University, in Shawnee. Fallin holds a bachelor of science degree in human and environmental sciences, and family relations and child development from Oklahoma State University (1977). At Oklahoma State she joined the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.
Government and Private Sector Employment
After college, Fallin worked for the Oklahoma Department of Tourism and Recreation, Oklahoma Employment Security Commission, and the Oklahoma Office of Personnel Management. In 1983, she went to the private sector as a hotel manager for Lexington Hotel and Suites, located at Richmond Square near Blackwelder and Northwest Expressway which was later demolished to make way for OnCue. She has also worked as marketing director for a Ski Lodge in Utah, and in Oklahoma was a commercial real estate broker.
Oklahoma House of Representatives
Elections
Fallin ran for the 85th district of the Oklahoma House of Representatives after incumbent Mike Hunter announced his retirement in December 1989. She won the Republican primary in August and the general election in November. In 1992, she won re-election to a second term unopposed.
Tenure
She represented Oklahoma City in the House, and authored 16 bills that became law. In 1992, Oklahoma became one of the first five states in the nation to enact anti-stalking legislation when Fallin authored and introduced HB 2291, which made it illegal to stalk or harass people. Fallin was active with the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and was recognized by ALEC as Legislator of the Year in 1993. Also that year she was named Guardian of Small Business by the National Federation of Independent Business. According to The Almanac of American Politics, she "championed victims' rights and health care reform."
Lieutenant Governor (1995–2007)