Floyd has valuable administrative experience inside and outside the tribe. He was director of the Veterans Administration Jack C. Montgomery Medical Center in Muskogee and the VA’s Ernest Childers Clinic in Tulsa before becoming the director of community services for the tribe in the early 1980s. He later returned to federal employment, working for the Indian Health Services and the VA in Oregon, Utah and Kansas City.

Medical services are a key part of tribal services, and knowledge of the inner workings of the federal bureaucracy will no doubt be of great value to Floyd in his new post.

His budgeting experience also will be important. The tribe is in the middle of a multimillion-dollar expansion of its casino and resort in south Tulsa, but in August the nation found it needed another $18.7 million to ensure services to tribal members.

Floyd ran a no-contributions-accepted campaign and has said he doesn’t anticipate a mass firing of tribal employees with the change of leadership. Both are refreshing concepts from anyone in the political world.