Oklahoma Primary 2022: Final thoughts

It's now 7 hours until polls open, but there are a couple of things that came up in the last couple of days worth noting:

In the full-term Senate race, I changed my pick from Jackson Lahmeyer to Joan Farr. My vote for Lahmeyer was a protest against incumbent James Lankford's squishiness and opposition to fixing McGirt, but now I feel we need to protest against Lahmeyer's creepy and misleading ads. The most recent example is Lahmeyer's use of an Associated Press story about a deposition Lankford gave in a 2010 lawsuit in which the family of a 13-year-old girl sued the family of a 15-year-old boy who had had sex with her, presumably at Falls Creek Baptist Assembly, of which Lankford was director prior to winning the 5th Congressional District seat.

The specific question by the attorney is not provided as a direct quote in the story, nor is the case number provided, which would allow independent analysis, but there seems to be a gap between the question the lawyer is asking -- Can a 13-year-old legally consent to sex? -- and the question Lankford appears to be answering -- Is it possible that a 13-year-old would willingly agree to participate in sex? The answer to the latter question is sadly, yes, a 13-year-old could be groomed by an older child or adult or warped by online filth. This is why we have age of consent laws. From the story:

Under additional questioning about whether he would allow his two daughters to consent to sex at the age of 13, Lankford gave a more expansive answer.

"No, I would not encourage that at all," he said. "Could she make that choice? I hope she would not, but I would not encourage that in any way with my own daughter."

Lahmeyer has turned Lankford's answer into a scandal: "Senator Lankford said under oath in a deposition that a 13 year old is old enough to consent for sex." But that isn't what Lankford said, and Lahmeyer is intelligent enough to know it. Lankford was quite clear that he doesn't approve of teenagers engaging in sexual activity; I suspect he would disapprove of anyone having sex before or outside of marriage. I've never heard anything to the contrary.

So how to teach Lankford a lesson without rewarding Lahmayer's mendacity? A vote for Joan Farr. Farr has managed to put herself on the ballot simultaneously in Oklahoma and Kansas for U. S. Senate seats in both states. She has no chance of prevailing in either state. But a vote for her is one more non-Lankford vote, and if there are more votes for other candidates than for Lankford, there would be a runoff. My hope is that winding up in a runoff as an incumbent would be a wake-up call for Lankford and an occasion for repentance and reform. If forcing Lankford into a runoff happens largely because of Farr, this ought to be a humbling outcome for Lahmeyer.

In the other Senate election, the race for Jim Inhofe's unexpired term, allies of Cushing physician Randy Grellner are claiming that it's Grellner that has a shot at the runoff. One of his followers recently called me a liar for pointing out that the most recent public poll of the race has Grellner at 1% but Nathan Dahm at 8%, within 5 points of passing T. W. Shannon and making a runoff with Mullin if conservatives close ranks behind Dahm. The Amber Integrated survey, also from the month of June, also put Grellner at 1%.

This follower claimed that Grellner got 15% in a recent poll. When I asked for proof, I was sent a screenshot of a push-poll question:

With a field of 13 candidates running for U. S. Senate, the race will go to a runoff. As of today, the frontrunner is Markwayne Mullin, but in a close second are several candidates with a variety of backgrounds. They are: Dr. Randy Grellner, a Republican Businessman who started from humble beginnings working on a ranch; Former Speaker of the House and CEO of Chickasaw Bank TW Shannon; and former EPA Administrator under President Trump, Scott Pruitt. if the election for those three were held today, who would you vote for?

The screenshot did not include results, but it's apparent that this was a push poll ("started from humble beginnings") designed to frame Grellner as the conservative outsider alternative, not a scientific poll, and it does not provide useful information to a conservative voter wanting to vote strategically for the like-minded candidate with the best shot of reaching a runoff. If you can only manage 15% of the vote in a poll that excludes the front runner (Mullin) and two well-funded conservative alternatives (Dahm and Holland), that is not at all impressive. I am suspicious that, because the number of respondents was small, this survey was designed to generate a number that Grellner could report favorably. It was certainly not designed to produce an honest result, and it will mislead Grellner's supporters to a disappointing outcome, one in which their votes could have, but didn't, help boost a conservative into the runoff.