Oklahoma Election 2018: November 2018 Archives

Polls are open Tuesday, November 6, 2018, until 7 p.m. The Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter tool will let you know where to vote and will show you a sample of the ballot you'll see. Here is the complete list of offices and issues on Tuesday's ballot across Oklahoma.

Here are the candidates I'm recommending and (if in the district) voting for in the Oklahoma general election on November 6, 2018. Click the hyperlink on the office to see detailed information on that race and its candidates. (This entry will change as I decide to add more detail, link previous articles, or discuss additional races between now and election day. The entry is post-dated to keep it at the top.)

As I post this, there are other races I had planned to write about in detail, but time is short, people are voting, and many have asked for a summary of my recommendations. My most enthusiastic choices are in bold.

1st Congressional District: Kevin Hern. For all my misgivings about Hern and the depth of his conservative convictions, there's no doubt that he's more conservative than his Democrat opponent. I don't want Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker of the House, but that will happen if Republicans can't hang onto Oklahoma's 1st District.

Governor: Kevin Stitt. As a successful business owner, Stitt has had to make decisions, pick a course amidst uncertainty and commit to it. Drew Edmondson abused his power as Attorney General to persecute people who were working to defend the interests of Oklahoma taxpayers and property owners.

Attorney General: Mike Hunter. I'm aware of the concerns about Mike Hunter's performance as acting AG. But in a time when freedom of conscience is under attack, particularly with regard to sexual orientation and gender identity, we need an Attorney General who will stand up for our rights.

Auditor and Inspector: Cindy Byrd. Byrd is a solid professional auditor who has served under and been endorsed by Gary Jones, the most efficient and aggressive State Auditor Oklahoma has ever had.

Lt. Governor: Matt Pinnell
Superintendent of Public Instruction: John Cox
Labor Commissioner: No recommendation
Corporation Commissioner: Bob Anthony

District Attorney, District 14: Steve Kunzweiler

State House 8: Tom Gann
State House 41: Denise Crosswhite Hader
State House 71: Cheryl Baber
State House 79: Dan Hicks
State House 83: Jason Reese

You can read my Oklahoma State Question recommendations here.

Tulsa City Council District 3: Justin Rolph
Tulsa City Council District 7: Ken Reddick

Rolph and Reddick are both conservatives, and conservatism doesn't have a voice at City Hall right now, even though it's the majority political philosophy. Rolph is a journeyman electrician with a vision for seeing District 3's vast reaches of vacant land develop with manufacturing jobs. Reddick is a certified program manager and electrician concerned about inadequate streets in southeast Tulsa and neighborhood crime. Both would be advocates for the needs of their districts, not rubber-stamps for the mayor and the downtown crowd.

I'm not making endorsements in either of the other two Tulsa City Council races. More about the Tulsa City Council 2018 election here.

For District Judge in Judicial District 14 (Tulsa and Pawnee counties), I'm enthusiastically supporting Rick Westcott in the open seat for Office 12.

I reluctantly support Linda Morrissey for re-election to Office 9, despite supporting her replacement in previous elections, because her opponent, Chris Brecht (or Christopher Uric Brecht-Smith, as he calls himself on his Facebook profile), supports the use of government force to compel Christian adoption agencies to pretend that a "gay marriage" is equivalent in every respect to a natural marriage between a man and a woman. Brecht says that SB1140, which protects the rights of adoption agencies to make decisions in the best interests of the child and in accordance with their values, is "hateful, discriminatory and blatantly unconstitutional on its face." I think it's fair to assume that, as a judge, Mr. Brecht would be hateful and discriminatory to people who uphold natural understandings of marriage and sexuality, and that he would twist the federal and state constitutions and statutes to use government power to impose his twisted opinions on those issues on the people of Oklahoma.

When in doubt, I look at campaign contributions, which often tell a story about a candidate's ideological leanings or close ties with local power brokers. That has led me to support the least-funded candidates in two races, more by process of elimination than as a positive endorsement: Tom Sawyer for Office 1 and Brian Crain for Associate District Judge. I wasn't a fan of Crain's service as State Senator, but I know that he is pro-life, and I'm worried by some of the names I see on his opponent's donor list. Tom Sawyer says that he supports Crisis Pregnancy Outreach, which is a hopeful indication of his world view.

One of the judicial races is only on the ballot in part of the county. Incumbent Judge Sharon Holmes is being challenged by downtown resident Blake Shipley, who is running on a platform that seems more appropriate for a candidate for the legislature. Shipley, a young, Caucasian attorney who "spends much of his discretionary income on Lone Wolf sandwiches" would be an odd choice in this district that was drawn to be majority African-American in order to satisfy Federal law and court rulings.

On Supreme Court retention, I'm voting YES for Wyrick and NO on all the others. Here you can find out how each of the Oklahoma appeals court judges is registered to vote and which governor appointed each to office.

MORE INFORMATION:

Tulsa Bible Church pastor Phil Martin has put together a comprehensive collection of links to candidate websites.

OTHER CONSERVATIVE VOICES:

Here are some blogs, endorsement lists, candidate questionnaires, and sources of information for your consideration.

• 1170 KFAQ Pat Campbell candidate interviews
• Muskogee Politico news, questionnaires, and analysis
• Oklahomans for Life candidate surveys
• NRA-PVF endorsements

If you live in District 3 (northeast Tulsa) or District 7 (southeast Tulsa), you've got someone on the City Council ballot worth voting for. Otherwise....

Justin Rolph, running in District 3, and Ken Reddick, running in District 7, are both conservative Republicans, newcomers to politics, and they work for a living. They aren't plugged into the development industry, they don't have sinecures at a non-profit, they aren't getting thousand-dollar donations from Kathy Taylor or the Chamber of Commerce. In short, Justin Rolph and Ken Reddick aren't Yacht Guests.

As conservatives, Rolph and Reddick represent a perspective that has been absent from City Hall since 2011, despite the fact that that perspective is held by the majority of Tulsans.

Justin Rolph graduated from Edison High School in 2011 and is a journeyman electrician. His focus for the district is on cleaning up neglected properties and attracting more jobs to the northside.

Ken Reddick, 36, is a married father of two young children, a certified project manager and electrician at the University of Tulsa. His major concerns are roads in his underserved district and neighborhood crime. Click the link to hear Pat Campbell's interview with Ken Reddick.

While the District 3, 4, and 5 seats are general elections between the top two candidates, District 7 is a special election to replace Anna America, who resigned, after the filing period, to take a job at City Hall. Accordingly, the District 7 race is a first-past-the-post special election with seven candidates and no runoff. Someone could easily win the race with 20% of the vote. (One might almost suspect that that was the reason for the timing of America's resignation; her husband, Michael Patton, is running to replace her, but the partisan Democrat would be hard-pressed to win a one-on-one runoff in this Republican District.) If conservatives want to prevail, they need to coalesce around one candidate, and Reddick is the only conservative in the race who has raised enough money to need to file campaign contribution reports.

Campaign contribution reports can be revealing. TulsaBizPac, the political arm of the Tulsa Regional Chamber, has given $2,000 to Crista Patrick in District 3, $1,000 to Daniel Regan in District 4, $1,000 to Cass Fahler in District 5, and $1,000 to Michael Patton in District 7. The Chamber never met a tax it didn't like.

(Here's an article explaining in depth why conservatives should shun candidates endorsed by the Tulsa Regional Chamber.)

Regan also received $1,000 from former Mayor Kathy Taylor and $200 from the leader of a local organization that wants government to force the rest of us to adopt the leftist view of sexuality and marriage.

Before the primary, I submitted a questionnaire to District 4 candidates, but received only one reply, which you can see here. Despite Daniel Regan's courtesy in replying, I can't support him. His contributions from the likes of TulsaBizPac and leftist former mayor Kathy Taylor mark him as a minion of the city's ruling class, not the kind of independent voice we need on the council. His opponent, Kara Joy McKee, rallied support for higher state taxes, working for left-wing policy group that rallied support for higher taxes and that judges morality by how much money government takes from your paycheck.

In District 5, Cass Fahler appears to be the pick of the downtown establishment, another recipient of funds from the Tulsa Regional Chamber's TulsaBizPac. His opponent, Mykey Arthrell, is employed by a non-profit, and while there's very little on his Facebook page to indicate his leanings, news reports make it clear that he takes a left-wing view of government. (His father, Dan Arthrell, was the Democrat nominee for House District 71 in 2012.) Fahler is a Republican, Arthrell a Democrat.

A few notes on the other candidates:

In District 3, Crista Patrick is running to replace her late father, longtime city councilor David Patrick. We extend our condolences to Ms. Patrick, but District 3 would not be well served to have a councilor who follows her late father's approach to the job. Mr. Patrick consistently put the interests of the Chamber, the developers, the city establishment ahead of the interests of the neighborhoods in his district. We remember Kathy Taylor flying Patrick back on her private jet from his ranch in Colorado to vote for her ballpark scheme. And we remember Patrick keeping his constituents in the dark about plans to build a four-story facility for the homeless and chronically mentally ill in the district. This 2011 endorsement of Patrick's longtime District 3 rival, the late great Roscoe Turner, provides an extended discussion of why David Patrick's approach to the job was bad for his district and bad for Tulsa. In 2008, during the controversy over the homeless facility, Bill Kumpe offered this perspective on Patrick and his colleague at the time, District 4 Councilor Eric Gomez:

If you and your friends can't kick in ten or twenty grand each to hire a team of lawyers to take on city hall, you can pretty well forget about your rights in municipal government. And, if you can't afford a Lear Jet to host the meeting and an "expert" to put on the Lear Jet to state your case for you, you might as well forget about even hearing from your city councilor on key issues, much less influencing him.

Councilors Gomez and Patrick apparently don't have a hearing problem. They can meet with and even skillfully represent the interests of the people they are willing to listen to. The problem is, the people they are willing to listen to are not their constituents.

In District 7, I admire the fire in candidate Eric Turley's letter to the editor, critiquing the Tulsa Whirled's endorsement of Democrat Michael Patton and honorable mention for the other Democrat in the race, Lori Decter Wright. But because the top vote-getter will be elected regardless of the percentage, it's important not to split the conservative vote; based on campaign activity, Ken Reddick seems best positioned to win the seat.

Oklahoma has two separate appeals systems. Decisions of the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals can be appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, while the Court of Criminal Appeals is the apex of Oklahoma's criminal court system. All of the appeals judges are appointed by the governor; the public has the opportunity to oust them at retention elections. Below I list each judge on the ballot, their current party registration (as best as I can determine -- there are many Oklahoma voters named Robert Bell and David Lewis), and the governor who appointed them.

On the Supreme Court ballot, conservatives and pro-life activists support retaining Justice Wyrick, but oppose the other three on the ballot. Edmondson is the brother and former law partner of Drew Edmondson, Democrat nominee for governor. Kauger and Edmondson were also part of the unjust decision to invalidate the Taxpayer Bill of Rights initiative petition.

Oklahoma Supreme Court

I don't have any negative information about any of the appeals judges on the retention ballot. On the other hand, I don't have any positive information. Some voters will default to NO on all. Others may use the appointing governor as a guide to the judge's ideology.

There are only two appeals judges on the ballot who were appointees of a Democrat governor -- David B. Lewis on the Court of Criminal Appeals and Robert Bobby Bell on the Court of Civil Appeals, both appointed by Brad Henry. The rest were appointed either by Frank Keating or Mary Fallin. All of them, as far as I can determine, are currently registered to vote as Republicans. Judge Kuehn was previously an elected Associate District Judge for Tulsa County.

Court of Criminal Appeals

Court of Civil Appeals

Life hasn't left me with much time to write about politics this year, so I've focused on areas like the State Questions where there's a gap in coverage. Where others have already said what I'm thinking, I'll gladly point you to their words.

Jamison Faught, the Muskogee Politico, explains why it's urgent that Oklahomans elect a conservative governor and lieutenant governor, as the legislature has been roped in by the unions, with GOP legislative leaders targeting principled conservative colleagues for defeat.

As the Oklahoma economy rebounds, state government will be flush with cash. With the legislature lurching leftward, both through Democrat pickups and moderate Republicans purging conservatives from the GOP caucus during the primaries, the pressure to explode government growth and spending will be tremendous.

Faught thinks that Kevin Stitt, a political newcomer, and Matt Pinnell, a political insider, will complement each other quite well:

Kevin Stitt has made government efficiency and accountability a key part of his platform. He has singled-out some major areas of needed reform in the budgeting process and how agencies operate. Stitt can wield a Trumpian hammer to the status quo in Oklahoma City and bring long-needed changes to how our state is run.

Matt Pinnell makes a perfect fit with Kevin Stitt. Where Stitt has no previous political experience or relationships with elected officials, Pinnell helped get many of them elected in his former role as OKGOP chair. His built-in relationships with many of the players in the Capitol will go a long way toward helping craft and guide the Stitt agenda through the marble halls of the State Capitol.

There's another reason we need to have a conservative in the governor's mansion, particularly over the next four years: Redistricting after the 2020 census. I realize that the left-wing "mainstream" media doesn't think there was a problem with gerrymandering before Republicans took control of the process, but I was writing about blatant Democrat gerrymandering back in 1991. After the 1980 census, Democrats redrew the congressional map after the 1980 census to put Republican south Tulsa into the then-strongly Democrat 2nd District, in hopes of protecting 1st District Democrat Congressman Jim Jones. The post-1990 Democrat gerrymander, which effectively disenfranchised growing metro suburbs by slicing them up between rural Democrat districts, postponed the Republican takeover of the legislature by a decade.

MORE: AP Fact Check debunks Edmondson's claims about Stitt's mortgage business. And here's more fact-checking from the Stitt campaign about his comments regarding Mary Fallin and vaccinations.

In 2007, Attorney General Drew Edmondson made national headlines -- embarrassing headlines -- when he indicted three leaders of a petition effort to protect taxpayers and property owners against government-backed greed and then had them shackled and perp-walked out of the courtroom.

The spectacle caused publisher and erstwhile presidential candidate Steve Forbes to ask, "Has North Korea Annexed Oklahoma?"

Back in 2005, despite organized harassment from unions and other pro-government forces, Jacob and other activists--with the help of a professional petition-signing firm--managed to collect the required number of names to get the antispending item on the ballot. In a tantrum worthy of an Iranian ayatollah the pro-political class Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled the petitions invalid.

Why? Oklahoma has a statute that states petitions can be carried only by Oklahoma residents. What is a resident? According to precedent, residency is determined by an individual's intention to be a resident. When out-of-staters moved to the state to help local people get signatures for the antispending petitions, the State Supreme Court decided that precedent didn't matter and concocted a new interpretation: Petitioners had to make Oklahoma their "permanent home."

That was bad enough. But just to be sure no one ever again tries to restrict free-spending pols, the state's hoodlumesque attorney general, Drew Edmondson (Dem.), has decided to seek to imprison the petition leaders.

The Oklahoma case stands out as an extreme move to restrict the behavior of political activists. But unless this thuggish behavior is firmly punished, other states and municipalities will quickly follow suit. After all, many local pols and their developer friends have been making ample use of the Supreme Court's hideous decision two years ago that allows local authorities to seize private property to help politically connected private developers. Jacob has worked with Oklahomans pushing an initiative that would bar this type of eminent domain abuse, as well as a state term limits initiative. Now he is accused of committing a felony.

Edmondson charged Rick Carpenter, Paul Jacob, and Susan Johnson -- who became known as the Oklahoma Three -- for violating a never-before-enforced law against hiring out-of-state petition circulators. The two petitions they were pursuing were to enact the Taxpayer Bill of Rights and to protect property owners against the use of eminent domain for private benefit, plugging a loophole created by the U. S. Supreme Court's decision in the Kelo v. New London case.

Their approach to circulating petitions had been used by many other successful Oklahoma initiatives. The definition of eligibility was broad enough that it could include anyone residing in Oklahoma, even if only for the duration of the petition drive.

What was different in this case? It might be the list of wealthy and influential Oklahomans who were trying to block these petitions from the ballot:

...Keith Bailey, Clayton Bennett, G.T. Blankenship, John Brock, Bill W. Burgess, Lynne A. Bussell, Luke R. Corbett, Marlin Glass, Jr., Fred Hall, V. Burns Hargis, Kirk Humphreys, George B. Kaiser, Albert Kel Kelly, Jr., Tom Love, Stanley Lybarger, John Massey, Aubrey McClendon, Melvin Moran, J. Larry Nichols, Joseph L. Parker, Jr., Stuart Price, H.E. Rainbolt, Carl R. Renfro, Stacy S[c]husterman, Sabra Tucker, Steve Turnbo...

Evidently it didn't satisfy Ayatollah Edmondson that the voters would be denied the opportunity to approve these measures. Here's what happened next, as Paul Jacob told Reason:

I appeared in court and they unsealed the indictment and we heard the charges for the first time. We pled not guilty, then several policemen came up and handcuffed the three of us together and led us through a barrage of TV cameras and photographers and reporters....

Halfway through processing they had our legs shackled--my right leg shackled to Rick Carpenter's left leg in addition to being handcuffed, and both Susan Johnson's legs shackled together. We never were locked in a cell when going through processing, but it did take hours and we were handcuffed the whole time to a bar across our seat. It's a fairly dehumanizing process.

Jacob notes that, although Edmondson was going after them for hiring people who were illegally gathering signatures, he didn't pursue charges against any of the signature gatherers who were allegedly violating the law.

The charges against the Oklahoma Three were dropped after the law, which had never before been enforced, was nullified by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals as unconstitutional.

Before you go to the polls on Tuesday, take a few minutes to read Rick Carpenter's compelling account of the petition drive, the indictment, and the aftermath, and share it with your friends, so that they know about Drew Edmondson's contempt for democracy, and his willingness to pervert justice for the sake of his wealthy cronies.

Conservative political consultant Holly Gerard explains why she'll vote to retain State Supreme Court justice Patrick Wyrick:

Patrick Wyrick is my pick to retain - he has been flat-out fantastic. He argued successfully before the Supreme Court in support of the Repeal of Common Core when State School Board Members sued our state to force Common Core to stay in law after thousands of parents and teachers worked with the legislature and with huge bipartisan support in the legislature to repeal it with HB3399. Wyrick did a fantastic job and showed great knowledge in that - proud to vote to keep him on the Supreme Court. The Rest of the Supreme Court justices on the ballot all voted to remove the Ten Commandments from the Capitol grounds, not following other states precedent and now federal court precedent who are ruling that the Ten Commandments has significant historical bearing on our government's foundation and many areas (including our state) will be putting the Ten Commandments back on display - despite the efforts in the state Supreme Court to erase that part of our nation's foundational history.

Kenny Bob Tapp reminds us of the 9-0 decision (prior to Wyrick joining the court) to block an initiative petition to ban abortion. If the thinking of Justices Edmondson, Gurich, and Kauger is allowed to prevail, it would never be possible for Oklahoma to press a challenge to wrongly-decided U. S. Supreme Court decisions like Roe v. Wade. SCOTUS can't overturn a bad precedent unless a case reaches them, prompted by a law that contradicts that bad precedent.

I'm voting yes for Wyrick, no on the other three.