Oklahoma Primary 2022: Federal races

Among the other candidates, Cushing physician Randy Grellner has made a late move with a pile of money and a Mike Flynn endorsement, but he made that move far too late to make any debates or to build a core of supporters. Alex Gray, who deserves credit for advocating for reservation disestablishment, has endorsed his fellow DC resident, former Inhofe Chief of Staff Luke Holland.

U. S. Senate, full term: Joan Farr Jackson Lahmeyer.

UPDATE 2022/06/27: After Lahmeyer's campaign made dishonest use of Lankford's testimony in a 2010 deposition, I can't encourage people to vote for him, and I regret that I cast an early vote for Lahmeyer. It's important to send some sort of wake-up call to Lankford without rewarding Lahmeyer's dishonesty. A vote for Joan Farr seems like the best way to communicate that message.

James Lankford has always seemed squishy to me (his flip-flop and cringe-inducing apology for supporting an election commission is a prominent example), but there's something about Jackson Lahmeyer that bugs me. For Lahmeyer's early focus on out-of-state endorsements with Trump connections (Mike Flynn, Roger Stone), it's notable that Lahmeyer has been unable to garner Trump's blessing; Lahmeyer's website has a petition page where supporters can ask the former president to back him.

The deciding factor for me: Lahmeyer has called for legislative "repeal" of the McGirt decision, which shows the right instinct if a lack of understanding of the legal issues. Lankford has proposed a procedural change that would allow the State of Oklahoma to prosecute Indian crimes that the feds choose not to pursue but has not been willing to push for disestablishment.

A vote for Lahmeyer might be a wake-up call to Lankford; at worst there would be a runoff between Lankford and Lahmeyer. It seems likely, based on polling, that Lankford will be renominated without a runoff. The third candidate in the primary, Joan Farr, is also on the ballot for U. S. Senate in Kansas.

1st Congressional District: Kevin Hern is unopposed for the Republican nomination.

2nd Congressional District: Josh Brecheen. Josh Brecheen served two terms as a State Senator from the Coalgate area and kept his term limit promise, returning to the private sector and founding a heavy equipment and hauling company called Rawhide Dirtworks. He was a staffer for the late Sen. Tom Coburn and has been endorsed by Coburn's widow Carolyn as well as former 1st District Congressman and NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. The essay on his homepage is an eloquent diagnosis of the process that grooms newcomers into swamp creatures.

Only two of the 14 candidates in this primary are committed to congressional legislation to fix the damage created by McGirt: John Bennett and Josh Brecheen. In April, Bennett told the Washington Examiner:

Congress needs to go back, and they need to de-establish the Muscogee (Creek) Nation reservation. I say once they do that, then they can carry on as they have, you know, all of these years. So when I get to Congress, this will be one of my priorities, because it hurts everyone in my district, tribal and nontribal. And this is something that Congress should fix.

Brecheen sent the following statement to Muskogee Politico, posted here with Jamison Faught's permission:

Congress absolutely needs to correct the problems caused by the Supreme Court's McGirt ruling affecting Oklahomans. Both tribal and non-tribal Oklahomans are negatively affected by this ruling.

We must enforce the law fairly, regardless of tribal or non-tribal status. For example, today, when someone driving in Atoka County is pulled over by a state law enforcement officer and convicted of driving 11-15 mph over the legal speed limit, the ticket cost is different depending on whether the driver is an tribal member or not. For a tribal member, the ticket cost is $95, but if the driver is non-tribal, the ticket cost is $264.

For all Oklahomans, the scales of justice must be blind, not weighted in one direction or the other based on ethnicity. As a Congressional candidate and as a State Senator, who self-term limited in 2018, I have not and will not take money from the tribes, even though I am Choctaw. I have held this position to send the clear message that I can't be bought, as too many elected officials are suspected of being owned. Addressing the McGirt issue will take doing the right thing for the right reason, not doing something based on political contributions that helped you get elected. I owe it to the people of Oklahoma to be above reproach.

Between Bennett and Brecheen, Brecheen would be a stronger candidate in November and has the personal skills to be a more effective congressman. Gov. Stitt is an example of a tribal member who has not allowed that affiliation to undermine his commitment to defending the rights and interests of all Oklahomans, and it appears that Brecheen is making that same commitment.

Brecheen had a strongly conservative voting record in the legislature. He was even more consistent than Nathan Dahm, as well as John Bennett, in voting against tax increases that were pushed incessantly by the RINO leadership at the State Capitol during the budget crises of 2016-2018. One of the few marks against him was his 2014 vote for SB 906, the National Popular Vote compact, for which he quickly repented and apologized. The bill subsequently died waiting for a House committee hearing and has never gone beyond filing, but Brecheen's foolish vote is used as the basis for a dark-money ad attacking him.

Jamison Faught, the Muskogee Politico, is your best source for information about the 2nd Congressional District race. Today, he has published a scathing but methodical article setting out State Rep. Avery Frix's record of support for $2.8 billion in tax increases and another roughly $4 billion in fiscally irresponsible measures.

Six of 14 candidates responded to the Wagoner County GOP's questionnaire: Barker, Bennett, Brecheen, Derby, Johnson, and Wyatt.

3rd Congressional District: Wade Burleson. Wade Burleson recently retired as lead pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid for 30 years and now is a writer and speaker under the banner of Istoria Ministries. Before that, he was pastor of Sheridan Hills Baptist Church in Tulsa. He has served as president of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and a board member of the Southern Baptist Convention's International Missions Board. Burleson is a long-time blogger, writing about theological and historical matters. Burleson has been endorsed by OCPAC, OK2A, OKHPR, and Dinesh D'Souza, who spoke about his faith at Emmanuel Enid the Sunday after the 2020 election. Burleson has been outspoken in opposition to mask and vaccine mandates. Burleson has been endorsed by OCPAC, OKHPR, and OK2A.

When he was first elected to Congress in the 1993 special election following the retirement of Democrat Glenn English, Frank Lucas was a harbinger of the 1994 Republican Revolution that put both houses of Congress back in GOP hands for the first time in 40 years. But today Lucas gets near-failing marks in every conservative ranking, which makes Trump's endorsement of him puzzling, but Trump's endorsements sometimes seem more about personal affinity or likelihood of success than policy -- note his silence on the race for Inhofe's Senate seat and the 2nd CD primary, where his endorsement could have an impact.

4th Congressional District: James Taylor. James Taylor is a pastor and, until last fall, was a public school teacher in the Oklahoma City district. Taylor was one of five tenured teachers who refused to comply with the district's mask mandate, a mandate that violated state law. Taylor has been endorsed by OKHPR, OK2A, and OCPAC.

Taylor is once again challenging Tom Cole, a RINO's RINO. Cole has the lowest American Conservative Union rating of any member of the Oklahoma delegation, frequently supporting wasteful increases in Federal spending, such as:

The Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2021, sponsored by Rep. Ann Kuster (D-NH, ACUF Lifetime 5%), serves as a slippery slope to a creeping Federal Vaccine Database. The bill authorizes $400 million to fund a "confidential, population-based, computerized database that records immunization doses administered by any health care provider to persons within the geographic area covered by that database." ACU supports strong privacy rights, opposes the surveillance state and government tracking of vaccination status which may be used to infringe individual liberties and opposed this bill. The House passed the bill on November 30, 2021 by a vote of 294-130. (The bill failed to advance in the Senate.)

Frank Lucas also voted for this bill; Hern, Mullin, and Bice voted against.

Cole was the lone Oklahoma vote for the "LGBTQ Business Equal Credit Enforcement and Investment Act" which "forces financial institutions to collect and report application data regarding LGBTQ owned businesses under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's fair lending laws."

The plot showing Cole's rating over time indicates a strongly conservative record for the first 8 years of his 20 years in Congress, but a precipitous drop after 2010. Conservatives have a far better option in the 4th District than Tom Cole.

5th Congressional District: Subrina Banks. Subrina Banks hosts a podcast called Me, Myself, and Liberty and is a real estate agent in Edmond. Banks has been endorsed by OCPAC, OK2A, and OKHPR.

Banks is challenging first-term incumbent Stephanie Bice. Bice had a mediocre voting record in the Oklahoma State Senate and has produced a mediocre federal voting record thus far. The usual trajectory (see Cole and Lucas above) is to move further left and waste more money as the years go by. She was one of 35 Republicans overall, the only Oklahoman, to vote to establish Nancy Pelosi's January 6 Kangaroo Court.

Since redistricting, CD 5 is more solidly Republican than it was when Democrat Kendra Horn's shocking win over Steve Russell in 2018, and Republican voters will be strongly motivated to turn out in November. Oklahomans should send solid, effective conservatives to Washington, rather than settling for spineless conservatives and RINOs just because they have seniority.