April 2025 Archives

Posted on March 27, 2025 and postdated to remain at the top of the blog through election day.

Tuesday, April 1, 2025, is the annual school general election for Oklahoma school districts and technology center districts, plus city elections in statutory charter cities, and a number of special county, municipal, and school elections. Polls will be open on election day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Visit okvoterportal.okelections.gov to find your polling place and view your sample ballot.

Tulsa County has two State House special primaries to fill vacancies in House District 71 (midtown Tulsa) and House District 74 (Owasso area). I wrote about the very different political leanings of Districts 71 and 74 during the filing period. Democrats and Republicans both have primaries in District 71. In District 74, the Republican primary winner will face the sole Democrat candidate.

South of Tulsa there's a Republican runoff in Senate District 8, which covers Okmulgee, Okfuskee, and McIntosh Counties and parts of Creek and Muskogee Counties. Winner will face a Democrat and an Independent in a general election next month.

There is a runoff for Tulsa Public Schools Office No. 3, the seat being vacated by Dr. Jennettie Marshall. In District 2, Calvin Moniz, who won a special election last year to fill an unexpired term, had a challenger for re-election but won a full four-year term when his opponent withdrew last month. Tulsa Technology Center Office 2 pits an incumbent vs. a challenger. None of the other Tulsa County school district seats drew any opposition.

There are City Council elections in Glenpool, Jenks, and Skiatook (two seats).

• Senate 8 Republican runoff: Bryan Logan (R). Logan is a pastor, rancher, and owns a small construction and carpentry business. He is the grassroots favorite in this race.
• House 71 Republican primary: Heidemarie Fuentes (R). More on this race below. This is a change in recommendation.
• House 74 Republican primary: Maggie Stearman (R). Stearman is a wife and mother of two small children. She has served as a teacher at Owasso Preparatory Academy and as a field organizer for the Republican Party of Pennsylvania during the 2022 election cycle. Stearman has pledged not to take money from lobbyists. One of the other candidates in the race is the wife of the representative who resigned shortly after his re-election.
• Tulsa Public Schools Office 3: Dorie Simmons (D). Simmons is a real estate agent and a mom of TPS students. The other candidate, Kyra Carby, was a TPS teacher and a community engagement manager for the Gathering Place and Guthrie Green and is now "Community Genealogy Grant Coordinator for the City of Tulsa." According to departing incumbent Dr. Jennettie Marshall, both candidates in this runoff were recommended by rubber-stamp members of the school board: Simmons by John Croisant, Carby by Stacy Woolley. Carby's connection to the Kaiser System, along with her driving record, tips the balance in Simmons's favor. Carby is currently seeking expungement of a 2017 DUI, 2011 driving under suspension, obstructing an officer, and speeding, and 2008 driving under suspension and speeding.
• Tulsa Technology Center Office 2: Todd Blackburn (R). Blackburn is CEO of Techsico and serves on the TTC Foundation. His opponent is a 14-year incumbent and retired school superintendent.
• Glenpool City Council, Ward 2: Kim Hanson-Mercier (R)
• Jenks City Council, Ward 6: Catherine Lenhart (R): Lenhart seems very informed about city government and is rightly concerned about preserving Jenks's character as it grows wisely.
• Skiatook City Council, Ward 1: Matthew Bragg (R)
• Skiatook City Council, Ward 2: Patrick Young (R)

More on House 71 Republican primary:

I had initially recommended Beverly Atteberry (R), an attorney who currently handles wills and probate and was previously a public defender. She has run twice before for this seat and, unlike her opponents, has deep roots in Tulsa and Oklahoma. I endorsed her in the 2020 primary, when she had an AQ rating from NRA-PVF, best possible for a candidate. Atteberry, however, has not raised or spent enough funds to have to file ethics reports, which is not the sign of a serious campaign this time around.

Heidemarie Fuentes has only lived in Oklahoma for three years, moving here from California, but she has been endorsed by Oklahomans for Health & Parental Rights, and she was the only candidate in the race to return a survey to OK2A and to sign the US Term Limits pledge. She quickly got involved in conservative political circles in Oklahoma. Fuentes's website and social media feed are very vocally conservative. Her driving theme is wanting to ensure that Oklahoma does not follow in California's disastrous footsteps, but she sees worrying indications that they could be happening. While she was progressive as a young woman in the late 1970s, before motherhood, Fuentes headed up a pro-abortion group in southern Arizona, she describes herself as pro-life. She writes "I know what a woman is and don't want biological men in any women's spaces. There are only two sexes, and I don't support gender-affirming care." She opposes DEI, ESG, geoengineering, illegal immigration, and wasting tax dollars on Green New Deal efforts.

The third candidate, Tania Garza, changed registration from Democrat to Republican in August 2021, works for the George Kaiser Family Foundation's Tulsa Remote program. Her campaign reached out to me for a phone interview; I found her to be very vague about her political philosophy and policy preferences, and she refused to answer a simple question about her family situation -- whether or not she was married or had children.

Historical results in recent election cycles and an informal survey of yard signs suggest this is likely to be a Democrat win no matter which Republican wins the primary. There will likely be a runoff for both parties. As I noted during the filing period, Democrats finished first in House 71 in every race in 2022, and Kamala Harris won 56% of the election-day vote in the district in 2024.