Oklahoma Election 2022 Category

In-person absentee voting will be available at in every county on Wednesday through Friday, November 2 - 4, 2022 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and on Saturday, November 5, 2022, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. In most counties, this will be at the County Election Board office or county courthouse; here is the full list of absentee-in-person voting sites. Seven counties have two absentee-in-person sites, including these four in the Tulsa metro area:

• Osage County: Fairgrounds Ag Building, Pawhuska; First Baptist Church, Skiatook (West Rogers Campus)
• Rogers County: Election Board; Central Baptist Church in Owasso
• Tulsa County: Election Board, 555 N. Denver; Hardesty Regional Library
• Wagoner County: First Baptist Church, Wagoner; NSU-BA, Broken Arrow

Polls will be open Tuesday, November 8, 2022, from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. In addition to the general election for federal, statewide, legislative, county, and judicial elections, runoffs for Tulsa City Council will be held in three seats. Unusually, there are no state questions on the ballot. Here is the complete list of ballot items, sorted by county.

NOTE: Precinct boundaries, voting locations, and district boundaries have changed, in some cases dramatically. Enter your name and date of birth on the Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter portal and you will see where to vote and your sample ballot.

In response to popular demand, I have assembled the guidance detailed below into a
downloadable, printable, single-page PDF.

Here are the candidates I'm recommending and (if in the district) voting for in the Oklahoma general election and City of Tulsa runoff election on November 8, 2022. (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, I'm still unsure about several races, and 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.

Tulsa City Council:

District 5: Grant Miller (L)
District 6: Christian Bengel (R)
District 7: Ken Reddick (R)

Council races are officially non-partisan, and marking a straight-party vote doesn't cover these races. We need east and southeast Tulsa voters to elect all three of these conservative challengers, to defeat the left-wing incumbents, in order to have even the beginnings of a conservative voice at City Hall.

Statewide:

Governor: Kevin Stitt (R)
Lt. Governor: Matt Pinnell (R)
Attorney General: Lynda Steele (L)
Treasurer: Todd Russ (R)
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Ryan Walters (R)
Commissioner of Labor: Will Daugherty (L)
Corporation Commissioner: Kim David (R)

Why not straight-ticket GOP? A phony conservative and Biden donor, Gentner Drummond, won the GOP nomination for Attorney General with the help of massive amounts of dark money. The incumbent Labor Commissioner, Leslie Osborn, has expressed her loathing for conservatives and their values, despite the R by her name; I wouldn't be surprised if she follows Hofmeister and switches parties to run for governor as a Democrat in 4 years. Libertarian candidates are running in both elections, available for a protest vote.

Federal:

Whatever our disappointments with some of the Republican candidates this year, winning control of Congress requires us to elect as many Republicans as possible. Better still, we have the opportunity to re-elect a solid conservative in Kevin Hern and to add Josh Brecheen, a conservative with a solid legislative record.

US Senate (unexpired term): Markwayne Mullin (R)
US Senate (full term): James Lankford (R)
1st Congressional District: Kevin Hern (R)
2nd Congressional District: Josh Brecheen (R)
3rd Congressional District: Frank Lucas (R)
4th Congressional District: Tom Cole (R)
5th Congressional District: Stephanie Bice (R)

District Court:

District 14 District Judge, Office 12: Kevin Gray (R)

State Legislature:

State Senate 34: Dana Prieto (R)

State House 9: Mark Lepak (R)
State House 41: Denise Crosswhite Hader (R)
State House 66: Clay Staires (R)
State House 70: Brad Banks (R)
State House 71: Mike Masters (R)
State House 79: Paul Hassink (R)

County:

Tulsa County Assessor: John Wright (R)
Osage County Commissioner District 1: Everett Piper (R)
District Attorney, District 7 (Oklahoma County): Kevin Calvey (R)

Supreme Court retention:

Dustin P. Rowe: YES
James R. Winchester: NO
Dana Kuehn: YES
Douglas L. Combs: NO

Court of Civil Appeals retention:

Stacie L. Hixon: YES
Gregory C. Blackwell: YES
John F. Fischer: NO
Barbara G. Swinton: NO
Thomas E. Prince: YES

MORE INFORMATION:

OTHER CONSERVATIVE VOICES:

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

• Muskogee Politico news, questionnaires, and analysis
• Muskogee Politico on the judicial retention ballot
• Steve Fair and Georgia Williams on the judicial retention ballot
• Oklahoma Conservative PAC meeting videos, including candidate speeches
• Oklahoma Constitution Index: Scores incumbent legislators on voting record
• iVoterGuide surveys of Oklahoma statewide, federal, and legislative candidates
• City Elders Tulsa speakers' videos, including candidate speeches
• Oklahomans for Life candidate surveys
• Oklahomans for the 2nd Amendment (OK2A) endorsements
• NRA-PVF endorsements
• Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights (OKHPR) general election voter guide

ANTI-CONSERVATIVE VOICES:

Here are some endorsement lists that are negative indicators:

• Oklahomans for Public Education: OPE advocates for higher taxes, opposes school choice, and opposes efforts to keep leftist advocacy out of the classroom. They work to defeat principled Republicans. A yellow warning mark from OPE is a badge of honor for a conservative candidate. Here is the OPE voter guide for 2022 (backup copy).
• Oklahoma Education Association, state affiliate of the leftist NEA teachers' union, has endorsed nine Republicans in contested primaries. The list was leaked to Corey DeAngelis.

If you appreciate the many hours of research that went into this guide and into the rest of my election coverage, and if you'd like to help keep this site online, you can contribute to BatesLine's upkeep via PayPal. In addition to keeping me caffeinated, donated funds pay for web hosting, subscriptions, and paid databases I use for research. Many thanks to those generous readers who have already contributed.

An election eve assortment of thoughts:

Last week, I attended and live-tweeted the Tuesday, November 1, 2022, Red Wave rally in Oklahoma City featuring Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Kevin Stitt, and State Superintendent nominee Ryan Walters; the Wednesday Tulsa rally with Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and a Wednesday lunch-time forum with Ryan Walters. In between the latter two events, I went for a walk in McClure Park.

On Saturday, I helped with a literature drop for Brad Banks, Republican nominee for the open House District 70 seat, going to almost every house. The area I covered was only 80 acres, an 1/8th of a square mile, but I walked 22,977 steps (10.8 miles), and it took me about 4 hours. It was a beautiful day for walking. I cheated a bit: We were supposed to hit every house, but I went home, downloaded the latest voter registration file, filtered down to the streets and blocks of the precinct section I volunteered to cover, did a unique sort on street and house number, put the list of house numbers in columns by street on a single workbook page, and used it to guide my walking. Making the list took me about 30 minutes. As it turned out, I probably didn't save much time, as this area had a registered voter at nearly every address. I didn't filter by frequency of past votes or party or change of address, which might have saved me a few steps.

More dark-money attacks in Monday's mail. One is from Imagine This Oklahoma (one of a raft of dark-money groups funded by Oklahoma Forward) targeting Stitt over inflation, complaining about the state's $3 billion rainy-day fund ("hoarding our tax dollars"), and subsidies that the legislature passed to try to attract Panasonic, Canoo, and Hollywood filmmakers. Of course, if Stitt had stopped any of these initiatives, they would have attacked him for killing job opportunities and smashing our state piggy bank.

The issues presented in the dark-money ads are never the real issues motivating the donors to attack their targets. If you knew who the donors were, you'd know their motivation, and you'd realize that the donors are seeking their own benefit at the expense of you, the taxpayer. So they stay hidden.

The City of Tulsa's odd and oft-changed election process comes to its 2022 conclusion Tuesday with runoffs in three of nine Tulsa City Council seats. Three incumbents, all registered to vote as Democrats, failed to reach the 50% threshold in the August general election and so face a runoff. The same three seats, Districts 5, 6, and 7, went to a runoff in the 2020 election as well.

Tulsa City Council races are on a separate printed ballot. Because they are nominally non-partisan (no party label appears on the city ballot), voting straight party on the main ballot for state, county, legislative, and judicial items will count for nothing on the city ballot.

In each of the three races, I urge you to vote for the conservative challenger. The Democrat incumbents are all embedded in the non-profit realm, with little or no exposure to the private sector where producing results for the customer determines your survival. The Council's unanimous allocation of $112,000 in federal COVID-19 relief funds to a sex survey targeting teens (with approval by Mayor GT Bynum IV) ought to be enough to convince you we need to throw all the bums out.

Currently there are no conservative leaders in Tulsa city government. Electing Grant Miller in District 5, Christian Bengel in District 6, and Ken Reddick in District 7 is an important first step toward ensuring that common-sense Tulsans have a voice at City Hall.

Thursday evening brought the news that AHHA, the Arts and Humanities Hardesty Arts Center in the "Tulsa Arts District," was closing its doors permanently on Friday.

At ahha, we've been dedicated to bringing arts to the Tulsa community since 1961. Over the years, we've expanded our partnerships to work collaboratively with at least eight area school districts, a local healthcare system, state and regional government agencies, and over 100 member arts and humanities organizations.

During the past few years, our community has seen some of the most challenging economic and social times in recent history. It is with great sadness that we announce the permanent closure of ahha Tulsa's Hardesty Center on Friday, November 4.

We will continue to pursue avenues to secure a long-term future for some of our programs and look to achieve that mission as quickly as possible.

We also learned this week that OKPOP is $30 million and a couple of years away from opening to the public; the first $30 million only paid for "skin and bones."

Two State Senate districts and six State House districts that overlap with Tulsa County have general elections on November 8, 2022. Neighboring counties add in four additional State House seats. Here's an overview with my recommendations in six of the races; details after the jump, and more to be added.

Senate 2: No recommendation
Senate 34: Dana Prieto (R)
House 9: Mark Lepak (R)
House 66: Clay Staires (R)
House 70: Brad Banks (R)
House 71: Mike Masters (R)
House 79: Paul Hassink (R)

Do Republican legislative leaders want so badly for Gov. Kevin Stitt to lose his bid for re-election that they're willing to accept half-measures on child mutilation in the name of "gender confirmation"? That's the question posed by a recent report by Harry Scherer in The American Conservative, "The Fight Over Child Mutilation in Oklahoma." Scherer asks why Oklahoma, with a Republican governor and Republican supermajorities in both houses of the legislature, has not seen a comprehensive law against gender reassignment surgeries on minors in Oklahoma.

Scherer notes that State Sen. Warren Hamilton (R-McCurtain) filed such a bill, HB 676, in early 2021, cosponsored by Senators Shane Jett (R-Shawnee) and David Bullard (R-Durant). The bill was assigned to the Health and Human Services and Appropriations committees, chaired by Paul Rosino (R-Oklahoma City) and Greg McCortney (R-Ada) respectively, never heard the bill.

The legislature did address the issue in a limited way during a recent special session to allocate federal funds:

On October 4, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed Senate Bill 3XX into law, which grants approximately $109 million to the state's University Hospital Authority. Some $39 million of those funds were appropriated for "behavioral health care for the children" of Oklahoma under the condition that the health system's facilities refuse to perform gender reassignment surgeries for minors.

Four conservative Republican State Senators voted no: Nathan Dahm, Hamilton, Jett, and Merrick.

Hamilton said he thinks Bill 3XX doesn't go far enough in some places and is wrong-headed in others. The law, which does nothing to regulate gender reassignment surgeries for minors at hospitals outside of the University Hospitals Authority and Trust, earmarks funds for the continuation of the health system's behavioral health care services and mental health counseling. These services are delivered through what Oklahoma Children's Hospital calls the Adolescent Medicine Roy G. Biv Program, which provides an "interdisciplinary team of highly trained specialists who serve the mental health, nutritional and medical needs of all LGBTQ youth." The program's "gender-affirming treatment & services" includes "discussing concerns or questions about gender" and "assisting with legal name or gender marker changes."

Oklahoma taxpayers shouldn't be funding any "gender-affirming" or "LGBTQ-affirming" care, which is grounded in unscientific and dangerous concepts of "sexual orientation" and "gender identity." We've elected Republican legislative supermajorities with the expectation that our tax dollars won't be paying for that garbage.

Dahm speculates on the reluctance of legislative leaders to take aggressive action:

"For them to promise that we'll do something next year when we've had the opportunity to do it for three years, and having served with them, with most promises that have never actually come to fruition, I don't put any credence behind their word that they'll get it done next year."

The senator was part of a failed effort to extend the special session of the legislature so that the more aggressive legislation could be taken up before this year's gubernatorial election. Dahm had a noteworthy theory for why his party's leadership has been kicking the can down the road: "I think that Senate leadership actually is trying not to give [Stitt] any more wins, because they'd rather have a Democrat that they can do veto overrides on so that they get the victory and they get the publicity, rather than having a strong governor lead the charge that steals their thunder and steals their potential media spotlight."

A spokesman for Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treat denied Dahm's theory.

If legislative leaders want Stitt to lose, my guess is that it has more to do with the forces that are spreading political money around Oklahoma, working against conservative values and undermining the Republican platform. Groups with plenty of money and well-known grievances against Gov. Stitt include the teachers' unions, Big Pot, and tribal governments, all of whom have governmental priorities at odds with conservatives.

The chamberpots and RINOs have had no problem backing Democrats against Republicans they fear may be too principled to be manipulated. For a couple of examples, see Melissa Provenzano vs. Dan Hicks in HD 79 in 2018; Jo Anna Dossett vs. Cheryl Baber in SD 35 in 2020. It happened in my own race for Tulsa City Council in 2002; RINOs were angry at the successful defeat of a city sales tax increase by a shoestring campaign that Jim Hewgley, Mike Slankard, and I led, and they raised money for my Democrat opponent.

It may be time for conservative voters to purify the caucus by dumping the most compromised Republican legislators. Eight years ago, I encouraged Republican voters not to give a supporter and enabler of National Popular Vote a seat at the table in the majority Republican caucus.

Of course, we don't want to give the legislature to Democratic control, but if a few of the worst Republicans lost because conservatives didn't vote for them, it might have a salutary effect on the rest of the caucus. Probably too late to have an effect in this election, but worth considering for the future. A comparison of the campaign contribution and expenditure filings of the Republican and the Democrat in your district would give you a pretty clear picture of whether your GOP nominee is likely to vote with the lobbyists and the RINOs. (Go to the Candidate Search page on the Oklahoma Ethics Committee Guardian website, then select Committee Status Active, 2022 Election, State Representative or State Senator, and then the district. You can also visit this page and search for expenditure information for specific PACs.)

Warning signs would include a low conservative rating by the Oklahoma Constitution newspaper, funding by tribal governments, funding by donors in George Kaiser's network, endorsement and funding by teachers' unions and their allies. I've been noticing contributions from PACs associated with pharmaceutical firms Johnson & Johnson and Merck, which could be an attempt to buy support for future vaccine mandates.

If the local GOP candidate has CAMP on his mailer's bulk mail permit or "CAMPAIGN ADVOCACY MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONALS, LLC" on his expenditures report, remember that CAMP's principal, Fount Holland, helped Joy Hofmeister convince Republican voters that she was a pro-life conservative instead of a teachers' union tool ("can [the OEA] be quiet and stomach our right wing rhetoric long enough to get what they really want"), which got her the 2014 GOP nomination as State Superintendent and ultimately the platform to run for governor this year as a pro-abortion Democrat.

With new polls from Emerson College and WPA Intelligence showing Stitt leading Hofmeister by 9 points and 15 points, some legislators may wish they had been more vocal and generous in support of the governor's re-election effort.

District 4 Tulsa City Councilor-elect Laura Bellis, speaking at a recent fundraiser for incumbent District 7 Councilor and Council Chairman Lori Decter Wright, called the three challengers in the November 8, 2022, runoff, "actual fascists," called Decter Wright's opponent a "Nazi," and said that she has reported him to the FBI multiple times. Decter Wright embraces Bellis's words, saying, "I thank Laura for saying all the things I can't say, as chairwoman of the Tulsa City Council -- at least not publicly!"

I first saw this video here, but it had already been in circulation. The fundraiser appears to have been recent. I don't recognize the venue.

The Tulsa Fraternal Order of Police- FOP Public Page posted the video, but edited down to key sections (omitting Bellis's fundraising pitch for Decter Wright) and with captions.

Here is my attempt at transcribing. Bellis's grating "uptalk" sometimes makes it hard to distinguish questions from statements.

...reliant on sales taxes to fund big services for people? So it's really scary to watch people who are complete actual fascists? Running for office. It's actually -- it's every runoff that is happening right now there's an incumbent city councilor? Who is like a common sense person? Who is up against what I would say is a literal fascist? And it's scary. And we've seen it in recent, in the past several months, what it looks like when one of Those People gets a seat on our school board. They vote no on things like, just approving the agenda. They actually sow chaos. And we can't have that.

So it's never been more critical to be engaged on the local level, which is why I'm so amazed that you all are here? It's so important to pay attention to these things, because again These People are trying to infiltrate -- They don't have an interest in policy work. They don't have a vision for what they hope to see in our community. They're not interested in making people's lives better. They're too busy, saying the word "woke" a lot and being scared about critical race theory. It's ridiculous. You know, that's not a conversation for the City Council? We can of course talk about inequities and so much more and dig into policy there, but that's not what they're doing.

And again, this person, I don't think should be legally be allowed to run, but here we are. I've reported him to the FBI several times, and nothing has -- I'm not kidding -- like, I have all this [inaudible] and I keep sending them the pectures [sic] of -- and -- if you don't donate now into Lori Decter Wright, I am going to be asking you all to help foot my therapy bill, 'cause I'm gonna have to work with him. Don't do that to me. [Inaudible] doesn't deserve that.

Anyway it's never been more critical to support at a local level. It's never been more critical, especially given what has happened to reproductive rights to have women at decision-making tables. Please, please, please, tell all of your friends they have to keep Lori Decter Wright on the Council. She's been a phenomenal leader, and again, we cannot have someone who's actively a Nazi on our City Council. Our city deserves better.

So please donate to Lori, not just because her opponent is a complete f[---]ing nightmare, but because she's an incredibly competent, compassionate, courageous person who [sic] I really wanna get to work with and our city really needs at this [inaudible]. So thank you all so much. Um, I think we just, like, we need to clap for Lori and all the work she accomplished.

In case you're got lost on your way in, the fundraising envelopes are over here. I'll just stand here, if you start walking by, [inaudible] just grab one to go with you. I'll know. Please, please, please, just donate.

Decter Wright then responded:

Thank you, thank you so much. I thank Laura for saying all the things I can't say as chairwoman of the Tulsa City Council -- at least not publicly!

Decter Wright thus approved Bellis calling an elected African-American female school board member, E'Lena Ashley, an "actual fascist," a label that was also applied to the three conservative challengers (Grant Miller, Christian Bengel, Ken Reddick) running for city council. Decter Wright cheered someone calling Reddick, her conservative Republican opponent, "actively a Nazi" and "a f---ing nightmare." Decter Wright put her stamp of approval on Bellis's opinion that disagreement and debate in public meetings is "sowing chaos" and to the idea that when people who are not approved by the city establishment run for public office, "they're trying to infiltrate." She made no objection to Bellis reporting Reddick to the FBI for daring to run against her.

Bellis, Decter Wright, and their ilk claim to be defenders of democracy, but the theme running through these remarks is that governing needs to be left to the "experts," and we should only elect people who will rubber-stamp everything that comes before them. When three school board members voted against the "consent agenda," they were saying that some of the items on that list, such as accepting Chinese Communist Party money for a program in our public schools, deserved further scrutiny and debate in front of the voting public. If you think full and open debate is "sowing chaos," you have the wrong idea about democracy.

Note how Bellis and Decter Wright narrow the scope of acceptable, legitimate debate. When conservatives and libertarians seek office to stop the government from imposing mask mandates, vaccine mandates, or business closures, "they don't have an interest in policy work," according to Leftist fascists like Bellis and Decter Wright. Apparently, it's only legitimate policy work in their minds if you're debating which businesses to force to shut down, but not legitimate to debate whether the shut down is any use at all. "Making people's lives better" to them always means government action, never government restraint.

Conservative and libertarian Tulsans have a chance on November 8 to elect three city councilors who will stand against the truly fascist attitudes of Laura Bellis, Lori Decter Wright, MyKey Arthrell-Knezek, and Connie Dodson.

Vote for Grant Miller in District 5, Christian Bengel in District 6, and Ken Reddick in District 7. That won't give common sense a majority on the Tulsa City Council, but it will once again have a foothold.

MORE: Don't forget: Lori Decter Wright was on the committee that allocated $112,784 in federal COVID-19 relief funds to a non-profit to conduct a sex survey targeting teenagers. All nine incumbent city councilors, including Decter Wright, Connie Dodson, and Mykey Arthrell-Knezek, approved it.

A few notes on the four Oklahoma Supreme Court justices and five Court of Civil Appeals judges on the retention ballot this year. None of the five members of the Court of Criminal Appeals are up for retention this year.

Judges in Oklahoma's appellate system are up for retention every six years. I am voting to retain Gov. Stitt's recent appointees on both courts, against retention not only of judges appointed by Democrats, but also of two Republican appointees who have shown questionable judgment, whether on the bench or in a public role away from the courtroom. As originalists now have a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court and are restoring state freedom to legislate on a number of issues, we can expect progressive judicial activists to move their focus to state courts as a means to overturn legislation grounded conservative public sentiment. Now more than ever, conservative voters need to ensure that our state courts are safely in the hands of impartial, originalist judges.

Two of the Supreme Court justices, Dana Kuehn and Dustin Rowe, are recent appointees by Gov. Stitt. Justice Rowe has written several careful dissents indicating a willingness to take a stand on principle and reason, even if it puts him in the minority. It makes sense to give both of Stitt's appointees the opportunity to continue.

Justice James R. Winchester was in the majority that unjustly tossed the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) initiative petition. Pro-life activists remember that Winchester, a Keating appointee, consistently voted to strike down pro-life laws and initiative petitions that might have been used to give the U. S. Supreme Court the opportunity to revisit and overturn Roe v. Wade; instead that honor fell to the State of Mississippi. This year, Winchester voted in favor of putting recreational marijuana on the ballot, despite the same issue of supremacy of federal law (in this case, an actual law banning marijuana, rather than a fatally flawed SCOTUS decision resting on emanations and penumbras).

I recommended against retaining Justices Winchester and Combs in 2016. They should both be retired by the voters, giving a re-elected Gov. Stitt the chance to add to his list of excellent court appointments.

For the Court of Civil Appeals, I'm voting to retain Stacie L. Hixon, Gregory C. Blackwell, and Thomas E. Prince, all recent appointments by Gov. Stitt. Judge Prince served for many years as a member of the Oklahoma State Election Board. I am voting NO on retaining John F. Fischer, appointed by Brad Henry, and Barbara G. Swinton, appointed by Mary Fallin.

Civil Appeals Court Judge Barbara Swinton was serving as a district judge in Oklahoma County when she was appointed to the Civil Appeals court in 2016 by Gov. Mary Fallin.

Swinton was a long-time board member of the Justice Alma Wilson Seeworth Academy, a school chartered by Oklahoma City Public Schools. Swinton served on the board from around 2002 until the school's closure in 2019, serving at various times as board president, vice president, and treasurer, according to Swinton's 2021 interview with Brenda Holt of the State Auditor's office. Seeworth closed its doors in May 2019 . Last month, the school's superintendent, Janice Grigg, was arrested and charged with embezzlement:

Annual school audits as early as 2009 warned the board of possible law violations and a troubling lack of internal controls meant to prevent fraud, state auditors said.

A 2012 lawsuit from a former Seeworth principal and auditors' letters in 2017 and 2019 communicated concerns over possible abuse of school funds. Finally in March 2019, a longtime Seeworth contractor sent a whistleblower letter to Swinton, the school board president at the time, alleging financial wrongdoing by Grigg, according to the state audit.

Auditors found an email in which Swinton appeared to dismiss the allegations.

"Thank you for your concerns about the financial health of Seeworth," she wrote to the whistleblower in a March 10, 2019, email. "These concerns were addressed by our board with our accountants and you should not have any concerns that the funds are being mishandled."

NonDoc's reporting from 2019 about the mistreatment of whistleblowers by the Seeworth board puts Judge Swinton in an especially bad light.

Oklahoma hasn't elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2006. Since 2004, every county in Oklahoma has given a plurality of its vote in every presidential election to the Republican nominee. Voter registration, a lagging indicator, continues to trend toward the GOP across the state, most strongly in southeastern Oklahoma, aka Little Dixie, which was Yellow Dog Democrat country for most of Oklahoma's first century. Republicans have super-majorities of 82-19 in the State House and 39-9 in the State Senate.

So it's astounding to see a poll a month before the election giving a Democrat the lead over an incumbent Republican governor. The latest Sooner Poll of 300 likely voters has Democrat Joy Hofmeister leading incumbent Republican Kevin Stitt by 46.8% to 43.0%. Crosstabs have not yet been published, but those polled would support Donald Trump over Joe Biden in a 2024 rematch by only 52.7% to 40.8%, which may indicate that the universe of those polled leans far more strongly to the left than the actual Oklahoma electorate. The actual vote in 2020 was Trump 65.4%, Biden 32.3%; Trump managed 55% of the vote or better in every county except Oklahoma County. It is hard to believe that Oklahoma voters have a more favorable opinion of Brain-Dead Biden after 20 disastrous months.

Dark money has funded dozens of mailers, TV ads, and social media posts misrepresenting the facts in order to hang the false label of "corrupt" around the governor's neck. Even if these ads fail to persuade Republicans to vote for the Democrat, it may succeed in discouraging GOP voters from filling the box next to Stitt's name.

In truth, Republican voters who want the party's platform enacted ought to be stampeding to the polls to give him another term in office, overflowing with gratitude for Stitt's record and filling their social media feeds with calls for his re-election.

Kevin Stitt promised to sign every pro-life bill that crossed his desk. Stitt kept that promise and earned the endorsement of the National Right to Life Committee. Because Kevin Stitt is in office instead of his Democrat opponent, Oklahoma has the strongest pro-life laws in the nation.

In February 2019, Kevin Stitt signed constitutional carry into law, one of the first bills approved during his term, affirming the right of Oklahomans to keep and bear arms without needing government pre-approval. This would not have happened had his Democrat opponent won the 2018 election. Stitt has been endorsed both by Oklahomans for the 2nd Amendment (OK2A) and the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund, which gave Gov. Stitt an A+. Hofmeister earned an F.

While many parts of our country were undercutting the efforts of their police forces to protect the law-abiding citizens against criminal predators, Kevin Stitt backed the blue and earned the endorsement of the Oklahoma Fraternal Order of Police. Gov. Stitt signed pay raises for law enforcement officers in the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, Oklahoma Department of Corrections, and other state public safety employees, funded three academies to train new OHP officers, and established a mental wellness program to support all Oklahoma public safety officers and their families.

Gov. Stitt has appointed three excellent jurists to the State Supreme Court: John Kane, Dustin Rowe, and Dana Kuehn. For the first time in history, a majority of the justices were appointed by Republican governors. Five of the nine justices are 70 or older, including one justice, Yvonne Kauger, who has been serving since her appointment in 1984 by Gov. George Nigh. Three justices were appointed by the previous Democrat governor, Brad Henry. There will be vacancies, and recent events in Kansas demonstrate the importance of installing strict constructionist justice in a post-Roe world. Activist justices in our neighbor to the north struck down pro-life legislation on specious constitutional grounds, and an attempt to fix the problem with a constitutional state question went down in flames with the help of a well-funded disinformation campaign. Now that SCOTUS will no longer interfere with state regulation or prohibition of abortion, leftists will use state judiciaries to thwart protections for the unborn. Stitt has shown good judgment in his judicial appointments, and we'd be wise to allow him to continue rather than allow Oklahoma's version of Kathy Hochul to appoint activist leftists.

Stitt has also appointed 4 of the 12 members of the Court of Civil Appeals, which has a majority of judges appointed by Republican governors in only two of the four divisions. One Democrat appointee, W. Keith Rapp, died in August at the age of 88; a Stitt appointment to fill that vacancy would mean one more division with a majority of Republican, strict-constructionist appointees.

Kevin Stitt streamlined state government, signing legislation to consolidate state agencies and making agency leadership accountable to the voters through their elected officials. He modernized the state civil service system, helping state agencies recruit, retain, and reward the most dedicated employees, and he gave public employee retirees, including teachers and firefighters, the first cost-of-living adjustment in more than a decade. Making state agencies a better place to work means better people working on behalf of the people of Oklahoma, and Stitt's efforts won him the endorsement of the Oklahoma Public Employees Association.

Kevin Stitt used the power of the purse -- allocation of new federal COVID relief funds -- to force the University of Oklahoma's Oklahoma Children's Hospital to cease performing surgical "gender confirmation" mutilations on children. The scope of the bill was limited by the stated call for this special session, but if re-elected, Gov. Stitt will sign broader legislation to ban the practice in Oklahoma. Earlier this year, Gov. Stitt signed legislation protecting girls' private spaces from men claiming to be women; SB 615 requires multiple-occupancy restrooms and changing rooms in our public schools to be reserved exclusively for one biological sex or the other.

Kevin Stitt signed HB 1775, which bans specific elements of "woke," racist indoctrination from Oklahoma's public schools and universities. The bill is succeeding in flushing out radical teachers and administrators who see public schools as a missionary endeavor to convert children to their anti-civilizational ideology.

Unlike his counterparts across the country, Gov. Kevin Stitt kept COVID-19 pandemic restrictions to a minimum, resisting calls for a statewide lockdown and mask mandate. Gov. Stitt was the third governor, after Doug Burgum in North Dakota and Mike Dunleavy in Alaska, to end the statewide COVID-19 state of emergency. (Emergency declarations in Wisconsin and Michigan were terminated earlier by court order, over the objections of Democrat governors.) Within a few months of that early reopening, Oklahoma's unemployment rate reached record lows, among the lowest in the nation.

Under Kevin Stitt's leadership, Oklahoma has improved election security, guaranteed patients the right to have a loved one with them in the hospital, protected schoolchildren from obscene materials, prohibited biologically impossible non-binary birth certificates, and reformed the state funding formula to ensure school funds follow students to their new school district. Kevin Stitt has enthusiastically supported school choice. Gov. Stitt has been endorsed for re-election by former President Donald Trump.

As state superintendent, Hofmeister supported ineffective mask mandates. Gov. Stitt moved to reopen Oklahoma as soon as it was safe to do so, while Hofmeister's plan for school closures would have kept Oklahoma's public schools shut for more than half of the time between September 2020 and March 2022.

Hofmeister said in announcing her candidacy that Stitt's pro-freedom approach to the pandemic is why she switched parties to run against him. Hofmeister wanted to subject Oklahoma to the same sort of never-ending restrictions that Michigan Gov. Christine Whitmer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and NY Governors Andrew Cuomo and Cathy Hochul imposed on their states.

If Hofmeister becomes governor, all of the progress we've made under Stitt and his Republican predecessors will come to a screeching halt. Hofmeister opposes parental choice in education. Hofmeister opposes legal protections for the unborn. Hofmeister, indebted to the Democrats who elected her, will veto conservative reforms of state government and will fill her staff, cabinet, state courts, and state boards with her leftist allies.

Jamison Faught at Muskogee Politico has documented Joy Hofmeister's "long con." Hofmeister claims that her values have not changed since her first campaign for office as a Republican, but she has taken positions this year that would have killed her 2014 Republican primary campaign against incumbent State Superintendent Janet Barresi.

Just days after announcing her newfound party, Hofmeister attacked Governor Kevin Stitt over transgender birth certificates. Gov. Stitt recognizes the scientific fact of male and female, while the 'Newly-Improved-and-Woke' Joy Hofmeister apparently feels like pandering to flaming leftists. By the way, she accuses Gov. Stitt of pandering to extremism, which is highly ironic given her apparent disregard for science.

In a recent article from TheFrontier, Hofmeister criticized Gov. Stitt for signing pro-life bills, giving the lame excuse that "[abortion] is a decision that is personal and one between a woman, her doctor and her faith." Right. Do you think she would have said this during her campaigns as a Republican? I think not.

Joy Hofmeister was indicted and arrested (that's her mugshot above) for campaign ethics violations, colluding illegally with the dark-money campaign attacking her opponent. Despite overwhelming evidence clearly documenting violations of the law, Oklahoma County Democrat DA David Prater dropped charges shortly before her 2018 re-election. You can read the indictment of Joy Hofmeister and the documentation on which it was based at this link.

Earlier in this article I mentioned the dark-money attacks labeling Stitt "corrupt." They rest on a handful of "scandals" that aren't scandalous at all.

The so-called Swadley's "scandal" was driven by Gov. Stitt's desire to make our state parks a top-10 experience by offering high-quality regional cuisine from an Oklahoma based restaurant chain. The usual government contract process results in boring bistros run by multinational institutional food service conglomerates who fill their menus with the bland and barely edible. Swadley's had built a popular chain of barbecues with 8 locations, starting from their hometown of El Reno. I've eaten at a Swadley's Barbecue a few times and always enjoyed it, and I was looking forward to visiting a state park and eating at a Swadley's Foggy Bottom Cafe. Stitt didn't profit, nor did any of his friends or business associates. At worst, Swadley's put more money into the renovation of these restaurants than was strictly necessary to build a more enjoyable dining experience. But political opportunists labeled this, without justification, as corruption and got it shutdown. One of the negative consequences of this destructive political maneuver by Hofmeister's supporters was the Western Swing Music Society of the Southwest's cancellation of the annual Western Swing Weekend at the Lodge at Sequoyah State Park (formerly known as Western Hills) because the Lodge had no food service available after Swadley's was evicted.

When school doors were shut because of the pandemic, parents who had been reliant on public schools suddenly had to find ways to continue their children's education. The switch to online instruction meant that many low-income families urgently needed to upgrade electronics and internet access and purchase software and books. Federal aid was made available to meet that need, and Gov. Stitt and Secretary of Education Ryan Walters made it their aim to get the money into the hands of Oklahoma families as quickly as possible with as little red tape as possible. Rather than incur the delay involved in competitive bidding, Oklahoma's Chief Information Officer hired ClassWallet, a national company with experience handling educational grants, to manage the funds.

Eligible families had access to a digital wallet that could be used with 36 approved vendors, most of them specializing in classroom materials and supplies, but also including Office Depot and Staples, sources for general office supplies and computing equipment, and Tracfone, a source for high-speed internet hotspots for families without their own high-speed internet access. The digital wallet system meant that families could simply purchase items from the approved vendors, without the red tape of submitting a purchase request and waiting for approval or submitting an expense report and waiting for reimbursement.

As our students face disruptions from COVID-19 and schools turn to distance learning, we must ensure all Oklahoma students have the supplies and materials necessary to meet their individual education needs. By giving families these funds, we are empowering them to choose what materials are most necessary to make their children successful academically.

Some parents took unfair advantage of the streamlined system to buy non-educational equipment for their own enjoyment. They figured out that they could buy anything that Office Depot or Staples had available for sale online, and that includes many items without educational value that are offered online only, never in stores, like Christmas trees and grills. One estimate, compiled by a partisan news outlet, puts the total wasted on such items at about $650,000 out of the program's $18,000,000 total. Their analysis has large amounts in broad categories that are likely to include legitimate educational purchases, but even accepting their numbers, the amount wasted is less than 4%. Any waste is regrettable, but the cost of pre-screening every purchase would have been to delay the 96% of legitimate purchases made by honest parents.

The latest attack involves a privately-funded proposal to build a new governor's mansion at the State Capitol complex. The proposal pre-dates Gov. Stitt's time in office, and the project could not possibly be completed before the end of his second turn. Stitt's family did not move to Oklahoma City until the end of the school year during which his inauguration occurred. A $2 million renovation of the mansion's electrical, plumbing, and HVAC systems was already underway, and when the family moved from Oklahoma City, they moved to the Centennial House at 6500 N. Kelley Ave., owned by the Oklahoma National Guard. The Stitt family was able to move in to the governor's mansion in the spring of 2021, but in an October 2021 interview about the renovations, First Lady Sarah Stitt said, "We have lived here for a while, but we do want to protect our family life, so we are looking for a house probably just for our family." The Stitt family, using their own funds, acquired a home in Edmond about a year ago. None of this has been done in secret, but irresponsible news media outlets have created a false impression of the sequence of events designed to tar the reputation of Gov. Stitt and his family for the sake of helping a leftist Democrat win the governor's office in America's most Republican state.

Hidden special interests, some of them led by nominal Republicans, have spent millions to get rid of Gov. Kevin Stitt. Although much of the dark money is untraceable, Stitt has faced hostility from tribal governments, from the marijuana industry, and from leftist teachers' unions. Leftists in mainstream media have helped to amplify and distort the dark-money accusations.

Kevin Stitt defends the interests of all Oklahomans, which offends tribal officials who want to accumulate power and wealth at the expense of the well-being of their own citizens as well as the non-citizens who live on so-called "sovereign land" -- the former territories that were allotted and sold over a century ago under tribal agreements with the US government. These tribal officials supported a child molester's court appeal in the pursuit of their own power. Stitt understands that lightly-regulated, highly-potent marijuana will produce a generation of schizophrenics, dangerous to themselves and others, and stands in the way of the cannabis industry that wants to warp Oklahomans minds to fill their own pockets. Stitt believes that Oklahoma children should not be stuck in underperforming schools that inflict woke dogma and trans madness in place of true education, frustrating the leftists who see public schools as their publicly funded cathedrals for converting the children of conservative Oklahomans.

Gov. Kevin Stitt is defending Oklahomans, particularly Oklahoma families and children, against the special interests who want their power and money no matter how many Oklahomans it hurts. Oklahomans should enthusiastically re-elect Kevin Stitt as governor.

MORE:

Jamison Faught, the Muskogee Politico, writes that Oklahoma Republicans must not fall asleep on the governor's race, reminding us, "Liberals win when conservatives take things for granted. Brad Henry was governor of Oklahoma for eight years, vetoing important legislation and styming conservative policies - because conservatives took things for granted in 2002."

OK2A's Don Spencer explains why it's crucial for 2nd Amendment rights supporters to turn out to re-elect Kevin Stitt.

On Tuesday, August 23, 2022, Oklahoma Republicans and Democrats have a partisan primary runoff election in a number of statewide, federal, legislative, and county races, and the City of Tulsa will conduct a non-partisan citywide general election, including races in all nine council districts as well as three charter-change propositions. There are a smattering of other school, municipal, and county propositions across Oklahoma. Here is the Oklahoma State Election Board's list of all races and propositions on the August 23, 2022, ballot.

In-person absentee voting will be available on Thursday, August 18, 2022, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., on Friday, August 19, 2022, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and (because there are federal races on the ballot) on Saturday, August 20, 2022, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. For most counties, in-person absentee voting takes place at the county election board, but there are a few exceptions; click here for the full list of early-voting locations. Osage County will have an extra early voting location at First Baptist Church of Skiatook, W. Rogers campus, and Wagoner County will have an extra location at NSU-BA. Polls will be open Tuesday, August 23, 2022, from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.

NOTE: Precinct boundaries, voting locations, and district boundaries were changed, in some cases dramatically, earlier this year. Enter your name and date of birth on the Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter portal and you will see where to vote and your sample ballot.

In response to popular demand, I have assembled the guidance detailed below into a downloadable, printable, single-page PDF.

Here are the candidates I'm recommending and (if in the district) voting for in the Oklahoma Republican runoff election and City of Tulsa general election on August 23, 2022. (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, I'm still unsure about several races, and 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; in other races, there may be one or two other candidates that would be acceptable, or I simply don't know the endorsed candidate as well as I would like. There are certain incumbents that I'd like to see defeated, but I don't feel comfortable endorsing an opponent at this point. I'll try to fill in TBDs and NOTs before the start of early voting.

US Senate (unexpired term): TW Shannon
2nd Congressional District: Josh Brecheen

Treasurer: Todd Russ
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Ryan Walters
Labor Commissioner: Sean Roberts
Corporation Commissioner: Todd Thomsen

State Senate 2: Jarrin Jackson
State Senate 26: Brady Butler

State House 66: Clay Staires

For City of Tulsa races, if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, there will be a runoff coincident with the state/federal general election in November.

Tulsa City Council District 1: Francetta Mays
Tulsa City Council District 2: Aaron Bisogno
Tulsa City Council District 3: Daniel Grove
Tulsa City Council District 4: Michael Birkes
Tulsa City Council District 5: Ty Walker
Tulsa City Council District 6: Christian Bengel
Tulsa City Council District 7: Ken Reddick
Tulsa City Council District 8: Scott Houston
Tulsa City Council District 9: TBD

Tulsa Proposition 1: YES
Tulsa Proposition 2: NO
Tulsa Proposition 3: NO

Tulsa County Commissioner District 3: Bob Jack

Osage County Commissioner District 1: Everett Piper

District Attorney, District 7 (Oklahoma County): Kevin Calvey

MORE INFORMATION:

OTHER CONSERVATIVE VOICES:

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

• Muskogee Politico news, questionnaires, and analysis
• Muskogee Politico runoff picks
• Muskogee Politico legislator tax votes, 2016-2018
• Oklahoma Conservative PAC meeting videos, including candidate speeches
• OCPAC 2022 Runoff Voter Guide
• Oklahoma Constitution Index: Scores incumbent legislators on voting record
• iVoterGuide surveys of Oklahoma statewide, federal, and legislative candidates
• City Elders Tulsa speakers' videos, including candidate speeches
• Oklahomans for Life candidate surveys
• Oklahomans for the 2nd Amendment (OK2A) endorsements
• NRA-PVF endorsements
• Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights (OKHPR) endorsements
• Endorsements from David Van Risseghem at Sooner Politics

ANTI-CONSERVATIVE VOICES:

Here are some endorsement lists that are negative indicators:

• Oklahoma Public Employees Association: State government employees union can be counted on to support bigger, less-efficient government and higher taxes
• Oklahomans for Public Education: OPE advocates for higher taxes, opposes school choice, and opposes efforts to keep leftist advocacy out of the classroom. They work to defeat principled Republicans. A yellow warning mark from OPE is a badge of honor for a conservative candidate. Here is the OPE voter guide for 2022.
• Oklahoma Education Association, state affiliate of the leftist NEA teachers' union, has endorsed nine Republicans in contested primaries. The list was leaked to Corey DeAngelis.
• TulsaBizPac is the political arm of the Tulsa Regional Chamber, a contractor to the City of Tulsa. They have not issued a list of endorsements, but David Harris in District 1, Michael Feamster in District 4, and Jayme Fowler in District 9 have all proudly announced their endorsement, when they really ought to be embarassed. Please read my 2016 article "Chambers of Horrors" to understand why social and fiscal conservatives, opponents of cronyism, and supporters of historic preservation should use TulsaBizPac endorsements as an indication to look for someone else to support.

If you appreciate the many hours of research that went into this guide and into the rest of my election coverage, and if you'd like to help keep this site online, you can contribute to BatesLine's upkeep via PayPal. In addition to keeping me caffeinated, donated funds pay for web hosting, subscriptions, and paid databases I use for research. Many thanks to those generous readers who have already contributed.

There are six candidates on the ballot for Tulsa City Council District 4, an open seat. As was the case two years ago, I'm not enthusiastic about any of them. This is my district, so I've had to make a choice.

A sex survey targeting teenagers was funded by the City of Tulsa using federal COVID relief funding. The survey was one of 70 non-profit projects selected for funding by a working group of four city councilors who are on next Tuesday's ballot -- Phil Lakin (District 8), Jeannie Cue (2), Lori Decter Wright (7), and Vanessa Hall-Harper (1) -- and approved by the full Council and Mayor GT Bynum IV. The survey, which remains online as of August 16, 2022, asks detailed questions of minors and concludes with links promoting websites for "tweens" and teens containing explicit sex ed materials.

Tulsa city officials routed $112,784 in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to Amplify Youth Health Collective, a group that "coordinate[s] collective efforts within our community to expand access to sex education, promote healthy relationships, and engage the public in this conversation."

Two Oklahoma State University departments cooperated with the survey: The OSU Diversity and Rural Advocacy Group, and the OSU Center for Family Resilience of the OSU College of Education and Human Sciences.

The survey on "teen sexual health & well-being" targets children ages 15-17. A separate survey is aimed at adults, and versions of both teen and adult surveys exist in Spanish. A caption on online posters advertising the survey notes the city's support as a conduit of federal funds: "This project is supported, in whole or in part, by federal award number SLT-1498 awarded to the City of Tulsa by the U. S. Department of the Treasury."

The survey asks teenagers for their sexual orientation, "sex assigned when you were born," and gender identity (with "agender," "non-binary," and "gender fluid" as options), and to rate their current sexual health as outstanding, good, neutral, poor, or terrible, and defined "sexual health" as:

...a state of physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being related to sexuality; it is not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction, or infirmity. Sexual health requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination, and violence. For sexual health to be attained and maintained, the sexual rights of all persons must be respected, protected, and fulfilled. (World Health Organization, 2002)

The survey later asks these minor children "questions about sexual health access," "about your own access to sexual health care [and] what you think and believe about access to sexual health care for other people," with "sexual health access" defined as:

The ability to get all of the resources you need to stay sexually healthy such as: (a) condoms (b) contraceptives (c) sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing & STI treatment (d) medically-accurate sexual health education (e) identity affirming communities/resources and (f) trusted adults.

A few questions near the end of the survey ask about COVID-19 impact on romantic relationships and access to sexual health services, presumably to justify the use of COVID-19 relief funds. The final page of the survey links to explicit websites with age-inappropriate discussions of sexual matters for pre-pubescent children and teens.

Here is a PDF of screenshots of the Amplify Tulsa / City of Tulsa-funded teen sex survey, including screenshots of the Tulsa Parks and Amplify Tulsa Facebook posts and the home pages of the sex ed websites linked at the end of the survey. These screenshots show the course of the survey after the respondent identifies his/her age as 15.

On Monday, July 18, 2022, the survey was promoted briefly on the Tulsa Parks Facebook page. An update was posted at 12:39PM CDT to the official Facebook account for the City of Tulsa Parks Department urging children as young as 15 years old to fill out an online survey about "teen sexual health & well-being." The post (at this link until sometime the morning of the 20th, when it appears to have been deleted) read as follows:

Attention, Tulsa! Our partners over at Amplify Tulsa need you to help them help Tulsa!

They are conducting a community needs assessment this summer to help identify how Tulsa can better support teen sexual health & well-being, as well as what parents, schools, healthcare providers, youth-serving organizations, & other community members need to support the young people in their lives.

There are two different surveys, one for teens 15-17 (to complete with permission from their parents) & one for adults. And, both are translated into Spanish. So, we hope you'll consider filling out this completely anonymous survey and/or sharing it with your community before August 15. Please & TY!

Here is a direct link to the surveys: https://okstateches.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e2QBApTNODkN1Cm

#tulsaparks #amplifytulsa #communityhealthneeds #surveys

Yesterday, August 15, 2022, at 5 p.m., was the deadline for campaign contribution and expenditure reports for candidates in any August 23 election. This includes the City of Tulsa general election as well as runoff elections for statewide office, county office, and the legislature.

The legislature has created a mess of disparate filing offices and methods. Rather than making it convenient for candidates to file and citizens to search from a single ethics database for every election in the state, county candidates file paperwork at the county election board (at a time when election boards are scrambling to prepare for early voting and election day itself), school board candidates file with the school district clerk (who is hired by the incumbents and might have an incentive to make it very inconvenient for challengers to find out where the incumbents are getting their funds), and municipal candidates file with the city or town clerk. The legislature has just made things worse this session, opening the door to suppression of information and biased enforcement by larger cities.

Meanwhile, legislative, statewide, and judicial candidates file electronically with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission. For a few brief shining years, candidates for large municipalities and counties were also filing electronically through the same system, but apparently some public information can be too public for the comfort of some local officials, and their friends in the legislature reversed course.

The Tulsa County Election Board is always very prompt in responding to email requests for filings, sending scans in reply. The Tulsa Public Schools clerk demands an Open Records request, which she may or may not get around to processing before the election.

Of all the local-government ethics filing repositories I've dealt with, the City of Tulsa clerk's office is the best at making information promptly available to everyone. Here is the City of Tulsa campaign contribution report home page. When a filing comes in, it is physically time-stamped, scanned, and immediately posted to the website, with filings sorted to different webpages by office, and then within each page by candidate. Filings from previous elections are retained at the bottom of the page in an archive section. I appreciate this. There are some improvements that could be made: A standard naming template for PDFs and links, a way to download the entire collection of files, original electronic files (more searchable than scanned and OCRed paper reports).

If you are a candidate on the ballot, and your campaign committee has raised OR spent more than $1,000, you're required to file a Statement of Organization within 10 days and then you're required to file a Contributions and Expenditures report between 14 and 8 days before the election, covering all of your contributions and expenditures through the 15th day before the election. There are also quarterly filing requirements for the rest of the year. PACs who give to municipal campaigns are also required to file quarterly reports.

Based on the scans available on the City Clerk's website, here are the City of Tulsa candidates on the August 23 ballot who have filed timely reports:

• District 1: NONE
• District 2: NONE
• District 3: NONE
• District 4: Laura Bellis, Michael Birkes, Michael Feamster, Matthew Fransein
• District 5: Ty Walker
• District 6: Christian Bengel, Connie Dodson
• District 7: Lori Decter Wright
• District 8: Phil Lakin
• District 9: Lee Ann Crosby*, Chad Hotvedt

Some other candidates kinda-sorta made a half-hearted attempt at complying:

• District 1: Only David Harris has filed a Statement of Organization for the 2022 election cycle, but no candidate has filed any Campaign and Expenditures report for this cycle.
• District 2: Incumbent Jeannie Cue filed a 2022 Statement of Organization and quarterly reports up to and including the period ending June 30, but no candidate has filed the required pre-election report.
• District 3: Crista Patrick filed a 2022 Statement of Organization and filed a supplemental report for the $1,000 she received from the Home Builders Association, but no candidate has filed the required pre-election report.
• District 4: Bobby Dean Orcutt filed a 2022 Statement of Organization and a report for the period ending June 30, but has not filed the required pre-election report. Kathryn Lyons, a 2020 candidate who considered a 2022 race, and incumbent Kara Joy McKee, who made a late decision not to run for re-election, both filed reports earlier in the cycle.
• District 5: Incumbent Mykey Arthrell-Knezek did not file a Statement of Organization for the 2020 cycle, filed a contributions and expenditures report for the period ending June 30, but has not filed the required pre-election report. Adam "Grant" Miller filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report.
• District 6: Lewana Harris filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report.
• District 7: Jerry Griffin filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report. Ken Reddick filed a 2022 Statement of Organization but has not filed any contributions and expenditures reports.
• District 8: Scott Houston filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report.
• District 9: Incumbent Jayme Fowler filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report. Lee Ann Crosby filed a Statement of Organization, a June 30 report, and a "continuing report of contributions" including late July contributions, which suggests a confused but good-faith effort to comply.

In addition to candidates, two political action committees filed reports with the City Clerk.

Greater Tulsa PAC (GTPAC) had $14,346.35 in the bank as of June 30, but had not spent any money other than for administrative and fundraising costs. The PAC's chairman is Jacob Heisten, treasurer is Toni Garrison of Kellyville. This is presumably the PAC established to help Mayor GT Bynum IV re-elect rubber-stamp councilors.

Tulsa Biz Political Action Committee (TulsaBizPAC), an arm of the Tulsa Regional Chamber, filed a 2022 Statement of Organization, but has not filed the required quarterly report since 2018. TulsaBizPAC helps to ensure the election of councilors who will keep shoveling city tax dollars to the Tulsa Regional Chamber. Three candidates (David Harris in District 1, Michael Feamster in District 4, and Jayme Fowler in District 9) have announced their endorsement by TulsaBizPAC.

Voters in the City of Tulsa will be issued a separate ballot at the Tuesday, August 23, 2022, general election, which is also the runoff election for partisan races for federal and state office. The ballot will include the city council election for that district, plus propositions for three amendments to the Tulsa City Charter. Here is the sample ballot for Tulsa District 4, including the three citywide propositions.

My recommendations in summary:

• Proposition 1 (mayoral salary process clarified): YES
• Proposition 2 (one-year residence requirement for city office): NO
• Proposition 3 (increase auditor's term from 2 to 4 years): NO

Kudos to the council for including the actual language to be inserted in the charter as part of the ballot title, rather than just a summary that may or may not be accurate. That said, it doesn't show you exactly what's changing, so I will do that below, with strikethrough to show you what's being deleted and underscore to show what would be added if the proposition passes.

Proposition No. 1 would change Article III, Section 1.2:

During the first term of office under this amended Charter, tThe Mayor shall receive a salary of seventy thousand dollars ($70,000.00) per year payable as employees of the city are paid. Thereafter, tThe annual salary to be received by the Mayor may be changed shall be as provided by ordinance adopted by a majority vote of the entire membership of the Council; provided, no change in salary shall become effective prior to the commencement of the term of office next succeeding the term in which the change is made and then only in the event such change was approved prior to the general election for the next succeeding term.

It's healthy to be skeptical when something is called a "housekeeping amendment" as substantive changes are often smuggled in under that description, but this seems to be exactly that. It is useful to clarify that the vote to modify the salary involves the passage of an ordinance, as opposed to a Council resolution or some other sort of vote. As an ordinance, it would require not only passage by a majority of the full membership (five affirmative votes, even if some councilors are absent or abstaining) but also the mayor's signature. I will vote YES on Proposition 1. I hate to see the historical information deleted, because it's useful for comparing mayoral compensation to the cost of living increase since the charter came into effect in 1990. The amendment would be even better if it required approval of a salary increase at least 30 days prior to the general election -- enough time for the electorate to hear and consider before casting a ballot.

Proposition No. 2 would affect the residency requirements for city officers in Article VI, Section 7. As this is a wholesale replacement of text, it's going to be clearer to show old and new language side by side, rather than show insertions and deletions. Here's the current language, which includes some transitional language relating to an amendment to Article IV, setting the qualifications for City Auditor.

No person shall be eligible to hold the office of Mayor or City Auditor unless such person shall be a qualified elector and resident of the city at the time of filing for the office. In addition, no person shall be eligible to hold the office of City Auditor unless such person is a Certified Public Accountant or Certified Internal Auditor and maintains such certification during their term of office. The person elected City Auditor in the election held November 10, 2009, shall be eligible to hold that office and perform his or her duties, even if that person does not have the required certification, during the term of office beginning the first Monday in December of 2009. Thereafter, or in the event that person elected in November 2009 does not serve a full term, the person holding the office of City Auditor shall be required to comply with the certification requirements set forth herein. No person shall be eligible to hold the office of Councilor for an election district unless such person shall have been a qualified elector and resident of the election district for more than ninety (90) days at the time of filing for the office of Councilor for that election district. The requirement that a person shall have been a qualified elector of an election district for more than ninety (90) days at the time of filing for the office of Councilor for that election district shall not apply to the election district held immediately following the adoption of an Election District Plan; provided, persons desiring to become a candidate for the office of Councilor for an election district shall be qualified electors of the election district at the time of filing for the office of Councilor for that district.

Here is the proposed new language:

A candidate for Mayor or City Auditor must have been a qualified elector and resident of the City for at least three hundred sixty-five (365) days at the time of filing. A candidate for City Councilor must have been a qualified elector and resident of that election district for at least three hundred sixty-five (365) days at the time of filing. This requirement shall not apply to an adjusted election district which changed a candidate's residency to a different election district; provided, a candidate must have been a qualified elector and resident within their preexisting election district for at least three hundred sixty-five (365) days at the time of filing.

The significant changes here are changing the residency requirement to file for city office from 90 days to a full year -- no parachuting into the district at the last minute to run for office. The term "qualified elector" is defined in Article III, Section 1, of the Oklahoma Constitution:

Subject to such exceptions as the Legislature may prescribe, all citizens of the United States, over the age of eighteen (18) years, who are bona fide residents of this state, are qualified electors of this state.

The only exceptions I can find are in 26 O.S. 4-101, which excludes felons who have not completed their sentence and the incapacitated from registering to vote.

The language dealing with adjustments to election district boundaries could be clearer. "Preexisting" is an odd word to use; "previous" would make more sense. Does "adjustment" apply to decennial redistricting, or does it only apply to the minor adjustments the Council is authorized to make to account for changes in precinct boundaries? I would drop the third sentence entirely and change the second sentence: "A candidate for City Councilor must have been a qualified elector and resident within the boundaries of the election district as defined at the time of filing for at least three hundred sixty-five (365) days at the time of filing." Alternatively, you could make a person in such a situation eligible to run either in his old district or his new district, which would work against a spiteful Mayor or City Council "adjusting" boundaries to forestall a challenge to one of their council buddies. In 2011, for example, such a provision would have allowed John Eagleton to run for re-election to his District 7 seat, even after Dewey Bartlett Jr's allies on the Election District Commission gerrymandered him into District 9.

While I like the longer residency requirement in principle, I'm inclined to vote NO on Proposition 2 and ask the council to try again with more precise language dealing with changes caused by moving district boundaries.

By the way, despite the deletion of City Auditor qualifications in this section, passage would not eliminate those qualifications, as they are also present in Article IV, Section 1.

Proposition 3 changes the term of office for City Auditor in Article VI, Section 1.2.B:

City Auditor. The terms of office of and the City Auditor elected in the year 2009 shall commence on the first Monday in December in the year 2009, and shall expire on the first Monday in December in the year 2011; thereafter, tThe City Auditor shall serve for a term of two (2) years, with the following exception: the term of office of the City Auditor elected in the year 2013 shall commence on the first Monday in December in the year 2013 and shall expire on the first Monday in December in the year 2014. The City Auditor shall serve a term of two (2) years until the election year 2026. Thereafter Commencing with the election year 2026 and ever after, the City Auditor shall serve for a term of two (2) years four (4) years, beginning on the first Monday in December, in the year 2026.

Here's the proposed new text on its own:

City Auditor. The City Auditor shall serve a term of two (2) years until the election year 2026. Commencing with the election year 2026 and ever after, the City Auditor shall serve for a term of four (4) years, beginning on the first Monday in December, in the year 2026.

In a nutshell, the City Auditor's term will double from 2 to 4 years. The current auditor, Cathy Champion Carter, who was just re-elected because no one filed against her, will be up for re-election in 2024. One final two-year term will commence in 2024 and end in 2026, and then every term thereafter will be four years in length, elected in the cycle opposite the mayor. While we have yet to have a City Auditor play the adversarial role expected by the framers of the 1989 charter, and auditors have routinely won re-election with minimal or no opposition, citizens should not relinquish the ability to get rid of a bad city official promptly without having to go through a recall process. I will vote NO on Proposition 3.

Tulsa County Commission District 3 candidate Kelly Dunkerley has been falsely claiming an endorsement from a former Trump campaign official in mailings to voters. Stuart Jolly, who was national field director for the 2016 Trump campaign, denies ever having met Dunkerley and denies endorsing him.

Three mail pieces, sent before the June 28, 2022, primary, falsely tout an endorsement from Jolly. One mailer shows a photo of Jolly and the words "Endorsed by Lt. Col. Stuart Jolly, President Trump's National Field Director, Trump for President 2016 Campaign." Another contains a fabricated quote accompanied by a photo and what purports to be a signature: "Dear Tulsa, Please vote this Tuesday, June 28 for Conservative Businessman Kelly Dunkerley for Tulsa County Commissioner. Like President Trump, Kelly is the real deal!" A fake newspaper called "The Tulsa Times" featured an article that stated, "Jolly, who has endorsed Dunkerley in the GOP primary race for Tulsa County Commissioner is no stranger to political dynamics."

In response to a query from BatesLine, Stuart Jolly stated: "It's unfortunate that Tomahawk Strategies didn't ask or consult with me first. I don't know and have never met Kelly. He may be a great guy, but I never gave my permission to endorse him over Bob Jack. Someone there jumped the gun." Tomahawk Strategies is a paid consultant for Dunkerley's campaign.

Dunkerley (listed in voter rolls as John Kelly Dunkerley) is a graduate of David H. Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri, and the University of Missouri. He is a former City of Jenks elected official, worked for State Farm in public affairs and government relations, and is currently an agent for Tedford Insurance. The Tulsa County check register shows Tedford Insurance as the only vendor appearing in the register for the Property Insurance account since FY2012, with the county spending $854,479.52 with Tedford in FY2022.

In the August 23, 2022, runoff, Dunkerley faces Bob Jack (in the voter rolls as Robert Ernest Jack), a retired construction executive with Manhattan Construction who has served in volunteer positions in the Tulsa County Republican Party and John 3:16 Mission. Bob Jack has been a Tulsa County resident for 44 years.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Jolly retired as a Lieutenant Colonel after more than two decades in the U. S. Army. He then served as executive state director for Oklahoma of Americans for Prosperity from 2006 to 2012, as executive director of Education Freedom Alliance, national field director for Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., and national political director of Great America PAC (a supporting PAC for the 2016 campaign). Jolly is now based in the Nashville area and is managing director of Cool Springs Financial.

Polls will be open Tuesday, June 28, 2022, from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.

NOTE: Precinct boundaries, voting locations, and district boundaries have changed, in some cases dramatically. Enter your name and date of birth on the Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter portal and you will see where to vote and your sample ballot.

In response to popular demand, I have assembled the guidance detailed below into a downloadable, printable, single-page PDF.

Here are the candidates I'm recommending and (if in the district) voting for in the Oklahoma Republican primary elections on June 28, 2022. (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, I'm still unsure about several races, and 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; in other races, there may be one or two other candidates that would be acceptable, or I simply don't know the endorsed candidate as well as I would like. There are certain incumbents that I'd like to see defeated, but I don't feel comfortable endorsing an opponent at this point. I'll try to fill in TBDs and NOTs before the start of early voting.

US Senate (unexpired term): Nathan Dahm
US Senate (full term): Joan Farr
1st Congressional District: Kevin Hern renominated without opposition
2nd Congressional District: Josh Brecheen
3rd Congressional District: Wade Burleson
4th Congressional District: James Taylor
5th Congressional District: Subrina Banks

Governor: Kevin Stitt
Lt. Governor: Matt Pinnell renominated without opposition
Auditor and Inspector: Cindy Byrd
Attorney General: John O'Connor
Treasurer: Todd Russ
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Ryan Walters
Labor Commissioner: Sean Roberts
Insurance Commissioner: Glen Mulready re-elected without opposition
Corporation Commissioner: Todd Thomsen

District Attorney, District 14: Steve Kunzweiler was re-elected without opposition

District 14 District Judge, Office 12: Kevin Gray

State Senate 2: Jarrin Jackson
State Senate 10: Emily DeLozier
State Senate 12: Rob Ford
State Senate 22: Jake Merrick
State Senate 26: Brady Butler
State Senate 34: Dana Prieto
State Senate 36: David Dambroso

State House 5: Tamara Bryan
State House 11: Wendi Stearman
State House 13: Brian Jackson
State House 24: Chris Banning
State House 66: Wayne Hill
State House 76: Timothy Brooks
State House 79: Paul Hassink

Tulsa County Assessor: John Wright
Tulsa County Treasurer: John Fothergill re-elected without opposition
Tulsa County Commissioner District 1: Stan Sallee renominated without opposition
Tulsa County Commissioner District 3: Bob Jack

Osage County Commissioner District 1: Everett Piper

District Attorney, District 7 (Oklahoma County): Kevin Calvey

MORE INFORMATION:

POLLING:

Amber Integrated surveyed all of the statewide races June 6-9.
KOTV/KWTV/Sooner Poll survey of the race to replace Inhofe, June 13-21

OTHER CONSERVATIVE VOICES:

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

• Muskogee Politico news, questionnaires, and analysis
• Muskogee Politico primary picks
• Muskogee Politico legislator tax votes, 2016-2018
• Oklahoma Conservative PAC meeting videos, including candidate speeches
• OCPAC 2022 Primary Voter Guide
• Oklahoma Constitution Index: Scores incumbent legislators on voting record
• iVoterGuide surveys of Oklahoma statewide, federal, and legislative candidates
• City Elders Tulsa speakers' videos, including candidate speeches
• Oklahomans for Life candidate surveys
• Oklahomans for the 2nd Amendment (OK2A) endorsements
• NRA-PVF endorsements
• Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights (OKHPR) endorsements
• Endorsements from David Van Risseghem at Sooner Politics

ANTI-CONSERVATIVE VOICES:

Here are some endorsement lists that are negative indicators:

• Oklahoma Public Employees Association: State government employees union can be counted on to support bigger, less-efficient government and higher taxes
• Oklahomans for Public Education: OPE advocates for higher taxes, opposes school choice, and opposes efforts to keep leftist advocacy out of the classroom. They work to defeat principled Republicans. A yellow warning mark from OPE is a badge of honor for a conservative candidate. Here is the OPE voter guide for 2022.
• Oklahoma Education Association, state affiliate of the leftist NEA teachers' union, has endorsed nine Republicans in contested primaries. The list was leaked to Corey DeAngelis.

If you appreciate the many hours of research that went into this guide and into the rest of my election coverage, and if you'd like to help keep this site online, you can contribute to BatesLine's upkeep via PayPal. In addition to keeping me caffeinated, donated funds pay for web hosting, subscriptions, and paid databases I use for research. Many thanks to those generous readers who have already contributed.

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.

More short takes on races for county offices, Tulsa area legislative seats, and judicial races.

There isn't a primary in two of the Tulsa County races up this year: County Treasurer John Fothergill did not draw an opponent at all, and District 1 County Commissoner Stan Sallee is unopposed for the Republican nomination, but will face Democrat Sean Johnson in the general election. (County Clerk, Court Clerk, Sheriff, and Commissioner District 2 are up in presidential election years.)

Tulsa County Assessor: John Wright. In 2018, John Wright succeeded his boss, Ken Yazel, and has continued to work to improve the office's professionalism and public access. A new assessor's office website is due to come online next week.

Tulsa County Commission District 3: Bob Jack. When he ran for State Senate 6 years ago, I was skeptical of Jack's conservative bona fides because of his past involvement with the Chamber, but I have had occasion over the intervening years to watch his service as a volunteer and elected official in the Tulsa County Republican Party. I have observed Bob Jack's solid commitment and willingness to advocate clearly for conservative principles, even in the face of public flack, as well as his increased wariness of forces that work under the GOP label but against the GOP platform. As a long-time but now retired leader in the construction industry, he is well equipped to scrutinize public works expenditures for waste.

Judicial District 14, Office 12: Kevin Gray. Gray, registered to vote as a Republican, has served as a prosecutor under District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler. Gray led the prosecution of the criminal who shot two Tulsa police officers, killing one. Incumbent Judge Martha Rupp Carter, first elected in 2018, did not seek re-election. The other candidates in the race are Tanya N. Wilson, a Democrat, and Todd Tucker, a Republican. Wilson has the financial backing of Kaiser System lawyer Frederic Dorwart and several other attorneys from his firm. Regardless of the winning percentage, the top two vote-getters in the Tulsa County-only primary will advance to the November general election for voters in both Tulsa and Pawnee Counties.

Only one other judgeship in District 14 was contested this year. There will be a November election for Office 13 between R. Kyle Alderson and David A. Guten. Both candidates are registered Republicans. The office was held by Judge William Musseman, Jr., who has been appointed by Gov. Stitt to the Court of Criminal Appeals.

Legislative seats:

We've seen that we can generally count on Oklahoma Republicans to advance the pro-life cause and laws that carry out the Second Amendment, among other culturally sensitive issues. Where many Republicans have tended to fail those who elected them is in letting themselves be lead around by special-interest lobbyists either directly, or via legislative leadership. Republican legislators who demonstrate independence of mind and determination to eliminate waste and protect taxpayers are routinely targeted for defeat in the primaries by their Republican colleagues. There are too many legislative races to evaluate in detail as I would like to do if I had time, but you can go to the Ethics Commission website to see who gave the candidates money, you can see how incumbents did in the Oklahoma Constitution index, and you can see who is endorsed or condemned by anti-taxpayer groups like OPEA, OPE, and the State Chamber PAC. Notes on a few races that touch Tulsa and surrounding counties:

State Senate 2: Jarrin Jackson was an infantry officer in Afghanistan and Bronze Star recipient. Jackson received Tom Coburn's endorsement when challenging incumbent congressman Markwayne Mullin in 2016 for the seat Coburn once held. Jackson was a frequent guest on KFAQ's Pat Campbell Show, which gave a wide audience opportunity to observe his intelligent analysis and commitment to America's founding principles. Ally Seifried has some endorsements from conservative organizations, but her donors (including the State Chamber PAC and Democrat donor Burt Holmes) and consultants point to her being the last candidate conservatives should want in office.

State Senate 10: Emily DeLozier. Her opponent, incumbent Bill Coleman, has been endorsed by the leftist Oklahoma Education Association and by OPE.

State Senate 12: Rob Ford has served as a town official in Mounds and for many years as a leader in the Creek County Republican Party, which is how I got to know him. Both candidates in the race got an A rating from OKHPR. Anti-taxpayer organization OPE gave a poisoned apple to Ford's opponent.

State Senate 34: Dana Prieto has been endorsed by OKHPR and OCPAC. Prieto is a long-time small business owner who was endorsed by Tom Coburn in his previous run for State Senate. Peixotto also got an A rating on his OKHPR survey. Either Republican would be preferable to incumbent Democrat J. J. Dossett, but from campaign filings Prieto seems to have a better organized campaign.

State Senate 36: David Dambroso is endorsed by OK2A, OKHPR, and OCPAC. Incumbent John Haste got a C from OKHPR for his voting record on matters of health and parental rights, and he has been endorsed by the leftists at OPE and OPEA.

House District 24: Chris Banning, an Air Force veteran who founded Banning Investment Group and Banning Contracting Services, two service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses that provide services to the U. S. Department of Defense and Department of Veteran Affairs. According to his LinkedIn profile, Banning also serves as a director of the Oklahoma Defense Industry Association. Banning has been endorsed by OKHPR, OK2A, and OCPAC. Incumbent Logan Phillips has been endorsed by leftists at OEA, OPE, and OPEA, and his voting record earned a D from OKHPR.

House District 29: No recommendation. Kyle Hilbert, the incumbent, has been endorsed by OCPAC and OK2A, has a B (but not an endorsement) from OKHPR for his voting record, but is also endorsed by OPE and OPEA. Hlibert's rating from the Oklahoma Constitution newspaper is a mere 58 over his career, although he managed an 80 in the 2021 session. His opponent, Rick Parris, ran for the seat as a Democrat in 2016.

House District 66: Wayne Hill, Osage County GOP chairman, OK2A chapter director, and board member of Mend Pregnancy Resource Center, has been endorsed by OK2A, OKHPR, and OCPAC. Gabe Renfrow has the support of OPE and OPEA, plus lots of money from PACs. Clay Staires, brother-in-law of State Insurance Commissioner Glen Mulready and son of the founders of Shepherd's Fold Ranch near Avant, and Sand Springs city councilor Mike Burdge are also running. Incumbent Jadine Nollan is term limited.

House District 76: Timothy Brooks is an agency partner with Flippo Insurance and volunteers as a Trail Life leader. Brooks was endorsed by OCPAC. Incumbent Ross Ford has been endorsed by OKHPR and OK2A, but also endorsed by leftists at OEA, OPE, and OPEA. Brooks's website has a long list of examples by date and bill number of Ross Ford's liberal voting record.

House District 79: Paul Hassink is an electrical engineer with degrees from Georgia Tech and Purdue and has special concern for the security and resilience of Oklahoma's power grid. Hassink was the consensus choice of the Tulsa 9/12 project, Tulsa Area Republican Assembly, and Tulsa County Republican Men's Club. Other Republican candidates are former Tulsa City Councilor Karen Gilbert and former Washington County Treasurer Stan Stevens, who left office in 2008, after pleading guilty to drug felonies involving charges of possession of opioids with intent to distribute. Gilbert is backed by the State Chamber PAC and numerous establishment types, including Democrat donor and Council-suer Burt Holmes. The incumbent is Democrat Melissa Provenzano.

Beyond Tulsa County boundaries:

Nationally renowned conservative commentator Everett Piper is running for the 1st District seat on the Osage County Commission. Piper, who served as president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, wrote the book Not a Day Care, decrying the trend toward safe spaces and trigger warnings on American college campuses.

Kevin Calvey had a sterling conservative record as state representative. He is running for District Attorney in Oklahoma County and would be excellent in that role.

I was pleased to see that my friend Jason Carini was re-elected Rogers County Treasurer without opposition.

State Sen. Nathan Dahm is within striking distance of making it into the runoff for U. S. Senator Jim Inhofe's unexpired term, according to a new Sooner Poll of the Oklahoma Republican primary. Oklahoma conservatives are beginning to coalesce behind the Broken Arrow legislator.

The poll shows U. S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin with 38.7%, Chickasaw Nation bank CEO T. W. Shannon with 13%, Nathan Dahm with 8.1%, Inhofe chief of staff Luke Holland at 5%, Scott Pruitt at 2.4, Alex Gray at 1.8%, and Dr. Randy Grellner at 1%.

Mullin has protected his lead with the Joe Biden strategy of hiding and avoiding questions. He has skipped two televised debates, claiming congressional business and refusing even to participate remotely from Washington.

Dahm, Pruitt, and Gray have all expressed support for a clear and effective remedy for the legal chaos created by the U. S. Supreme Court's McGirt decision, namely disestablishment of the "reservations" that Justice Neil Gorsuch claims were never abolished. Gray has suspended his campaign, and Pruitt came into the race at the last minute and has struggled to build a following or campaign funds. If supporters of Pruitt, Gray, and Grellner were to back Dahm instead, a supporter of disestablishment would make the runoff. Mullin and Shannon are both publicly committed to endless legal ambiguity to the detriment of ordinary Oklahomans (both tribal members and not) and to the benefit of casino-fueled petty fiefdoms.

(Under disestablishment, tribal governments would return to their role prior to McGirt -- managing revenue generated by casinos and other businesses for the benefit of tribal citizens and overseeing land held in trust. Disestablishment would eliminate the ambiguous sovereignty status created by McGirt, in which the territorial sovereign of a place depends on the ancestry of the people present and the activities in which they are engaged.)

More short takes, this time on the races for Federal office on the June 28, 2022, Oklahoma Republican primary ballot: Both Senate seats, an open race in the 2nd Congressional District, and challenges to incumbents in Districts 3, 4, and 5. If you're on the home page, click the "Continue Reading" link to... continue reading and see the whole post.

U. S. Senate, unexpired term: Nathan Dahm. Dahm is by far the most capable legislator on the ballot. As a state senator, Dahm has been effective in writing and passing legislation that advance conservative priorities. My only reservation has been concern about dividing the conservative vote and winding up with two candidates in the runoff (Mullin and Shannon) who are willing tools of gambling-fueled petty fiefdoms and hostile to the interests of ordinary Oklahomans. While Scott Pruitt, like Dahm, is a supporter of disestablishing the purported reservations created by the McGirt ruling, and while Pruitt has previously won a statewide election, Pruitt's self-destruction as EPA administrator, the result of his arrogant indifference to boundaries and appearances, makes me doubt his ability to prevail in a runoff with Mullin or Shannon. Fundraising and social media impact indicate that Dahm has a larger and more committed following than Pruitt. In the Amber Integrated poll, Dahm and Pruitt were neck and neck, but well behind Mullin and Shannon. If the large proportion of undecided voters are conservatives put off by the front runners, but waiting to see who has a shot at the runoff, Dahm could pass Shannon.

(UPDATE: The latest Sooner Poll shows conservative support beginning to consolidate around Dahm, putting him within reach of passing Shannon for the second slot in the runoff.)

The 2022 Republican primary for Oklahoma Attorney General pits appointed conservative incumbent John O'Connor against 2018 loser Gentner Drummond. The nominee will face a Libertarian in November.

I endorse John O'Connor for Attorney General, a conservative Oklahomans can trust to defend our laws and our rights.

John O'Connor was appointed to the position by Gov. Stitt in early 2021 and is running for a full term. O'Connor has been vigorous in defending Oklahoma citizens and their laws against federal encroachment and assertive in advancing Oklahoma's position as we clean up the mess created by the erroneous McGirt decision. O'Connor has been endorsed by Oklahomans for Health and Parental Responsibility, National Right to Life, Oklahomans for the Second Amendment (OK2A), National Rifle Association PVF, Susan B. Anthony Fund, Oklahoma Farm Bureau, Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association, Parent Voice Tulsa, Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee, among other conservative groups.

His opponent, Gentner Drummond, ran and lost in the 2018 Republican primary. As noted at the time, Drummond has been a major donor to Democrat campaigns, such as Brad Carson's run for Senate in 2004 and Dan Boren's campaigns for the U. S. House, at a time when Republican control of both bodies was on the line. In 2018, Drummond was an enthusiastic supporter of and donor to district judge candidate Christopher Uric Brecht-Smith, a homosexual leftist who expressed support for using the law to force adoption agencies to pretend "gay marriage" was no different than genuine marriage. More recently, Drummond donated $1,000 on August 31, 2020, to elect braindead Joe Biden president.

A large number of Drummond's donors are also donors to Democrat Joy Hofmeister's campaign for governor and many are connected to leftist billionaire George Kaiser's network including BOK Financial PAC, Frederic Dorwart and other attorneys from his law firm, Ruth Kaiser Nelson (George's sister, and long-time Planned Parenthood board member), Janet Levit (former TU provost and wife of GKFF executive director Ken Levit), Joey Wignarajah (Kaiser's Argonaut Private Equity).

Drummond has also taken money from tribal government officials. In a recent debate, Drummond echoed tribal bank executive T. W. Shannon's highly dubious and likely disingenuous claim that the McGirt ruling will have no precedential impact beyond criminal prosecution. Drummond also stated that he opposes congressional disestablishment of the purported reservations. Clearly, Oklahomans cannot rely on Drummond to work proactively to protect our rights against encroachment in the name of "tribal sovereignty."

In that same debate, John O'Connor showed clarity about the crisis facing Oklahomans:

"It's not just me who supports that," O'Connor said. "For 113 years, the federal government and the state of Oklahoma all treated this as there were no reservations. In 2016, one of our tribal leaders testified to the Congress that there were no reservations in the state of Oklahoma."

O'Connor said statehood effectively ended reservations in Oklahoma before pivoting to the rights of home owners.

"The promise we need to look at is the promise to eastern Oklahomans who bought their homes who have paid 20 years on a 30-year mortgage," he said. "The promise to them is that they can own their land and their homes under the circumstances that they understood when they bought their homes, and that is that the state of Oklahoma is their sovereign."

Somewhat short takes on the races for Oklahoma statewide office on the June 28, 2022, Republican primary ballot. Lt. Governor Matt Pinnell did not draw a primary opponent, and Insurance Commissioner Glen Mulready has been re-elected without opposition. I've endorsed John O'Connor for Attorney General in a separate entry.

During the recent U. S. Senate debate on KOTV/KWTV, there wasn't much distance between the four participating candidates on economic matters and social issues. There were a few differences on how the U. S. should respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the wisdom of unrestricted aid to the Ukrainian government. Conservatives would find any of the candidates would be preferable to unopposed Democrat nominee Kendra Horn and losing the chance to regain Republican control of the Senate.

There were major differences on what is the most consequential issue for Oklahomans in this election: The response to the U. S. Supreme Court's decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma, the Court's 5-4 declaration, contrary to over a century of settled law, that the Creek "Reservation" was never disestablished and still exists for the purposes of the Federal Major Crimes Act, and therefore a child molester's conviction in state court was invalid. Whether it would serve as a precedent affecting land title, regulation, oil and gas exploration, and taxation is a matter that Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, chose to leave unresolved for future litigation.

The implications of a ruling in favor of tribal government territorial sovereignty were serious enough to prompt amicus briefs supporting the State of Oklahoma from the City of Tulsa, the Federal Government, the National Sheriff Association, and several states.

The situation directly created by Gorsuch's McGirt opinion is bad enough: Eastern Oklahoma crime victims who are tribal citizens and non-tribal citizens who are victimized by tribal-citizen criminals must look to a Biden-appointed U. S. Attorney and overcrowded federal courts (and Clinton/Obama/Biden federal judges) for justice, rather than the district attorneys and district judges that are directly accountable to Oklahoma voters.

Candidate Alex Gray, National Security Council chief of staff in the Trump administration, was not invited to the debate, but he has been prominent in calling for the most straightforward solution: Congress must act formally to disestablish the reservations that no one believed or claimed existed until a few years ago. This will not happen, however, unless Oklahoma senators and congressmen lead the way. It is therefore crucial for Oklahoma voters to choose candidates at every level who will actively work for disestablishment of reservations.

Nathan Dahm and Scott Pruitt spoke strongly in favor of disestablishment in the debate. Pruitt called the McGirt decision "an existential threat to the sovereignty of the state of Oklahoma," and said, "Congress has every right and every authority to disestablish reservations in the State of Oklahoma and restore the sovereign boundaries of Oklahoma." Dahm noted the verbal sleight of hand used by Gorsuch to "create" a reservation that Gorsuch admitted was never formally established. Dahm committed to introducing legislation to disestablish reservations in Oklahoma.

(The question was discussed in the KOTV/KWTV debate beginning at about 25:30.)

Luke Holland, Jim Inhofe's former chief of staff, wants to let all those pending cases based on the McGirt precedent work their way through the Federal courts and after that have the state and the Federal government and the tribal governments negotiate a crazy quilt of compacts and agreements to deal with the problems that the court rulings create.

T. W. Shannon, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and CEO of the bank owned by the Chickasaw Nation government, tried to minimize the impact of the McGirt ruling, as if the court's manufacture of a reservation would have no impact on other cases. He spoke against any federal action on the matter, attempting to frighten voters that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer would be in control of Oklahoma's destiny. That's strange thing to say, considering that he's running for Senate in hopes of being part of an expected Republican majority in both houses of Congress with Republican leaders replacing Pelosi as Speaker of the House and Schumer as Senate Majority Leader.

Later in the debate (about 37 minutes in), Shannon was asked about the amicus curiae brief he signed in support of child molester McGirt. In reply, Shannon claimed that McGirt "is now doing more time and serving a longer sentence" after being convicted in Federal court. Shannon's answer is misleading: McGirt's sentence in state court was 500 years; now he's serving life without parole. Either way, McGirt would have spent the remainder of his life in prison, but Shannon's way was to require McGirt's victim, now an adult, to relive the abuse she suffered at Jimcy McGirt's hands so that he could be convicted a second time.

Congressman Markwayne Mullin, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, skipped the debate, but a statement Mullin made jointly with four tribal governments when the ruling was announced makes clear where he stands, with the "sovereign nations" and against Oklahoma citizens who need legal clarity and stability.

Indeed, any candidate that talks about the importance of respecting the "sovereign nations" (which went out of the sovereignty business after negotiating the sale of their territory in the run-up to statehood) has already demonstrated that he or she isn't going to be working assertively to protect the rights of ordinary Oklahomans.

The quarrel here is not with the hundreds of thousands of Oklahomans who also have citizenship in a tribe and enjoy the benefits that citizenship confers. The argument is with the tribal government leaders who have suddenly become much more important despite the tiny numbers of voters involved in electing them. In a recent column, OCPA President Jonathan Small wrote:

David Hill was elected Muscogee principal chief with 3,399 votes. Kevin Stitt was elected Oklahoma governor with 644,579 votes....

Few Cherokees are directly involved in tribal government. The tribe reports over 400,000 individuals are Cherokee citizens, but less than 14,000 voted in the last election for tribal chief. (Similar trends are also notable for the Muscogee Nation, which claims 86,100 citizens.)

Tribal governments, despite the low level of voter accountability, were already gaining influence and power thanks to tribal gambling revenues and special carveouts for tribally owned businesses. Now that court rulings may give them control over land use regulation and oil and gas exploration in half of the state, expect tribal governments to become favor factories, as businesses go through tribal officials to get the favors they want if the decisions of city or state authorities don't go their way.

Pro-abortion forces are already discussing ways to subvert the expected ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, such as a Biden executive order to make military bases sanctuaries for legal abortion, regardless of the laws of the state where a base is located. It's not a stretch to imagine a tribal government being financially induced by Planned Parenthood and abortionists to allow killing centers to open under tribal protection, even if it ran counter to the moral convictions of their tribal citizens.

In that same column, Jonathan Small commented on Cherokee Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr's executive order to ban the Oklahoma flag from flying over Cherokee property. The chief quickly reversed course when a majority of the response from Cherokee citizens opposed the band.

If reservations remain established in SCOTUS's view and courts build on the McGirt precedent, these officials will have substantial and growing control over the everyday lives of Oklahomans, but only a small percentage of Oklahomans will have any say in their election. People can come to Oklahoma from Burma and Cuba and Ghana and Iraq and, in due time, follow the process to become citizens of Oklahoma and the U. S. A. with full rights. But even though my children were born here in Tulsa and have lived here their whole lives, because they don't have the right ancestry, they can never, ever be accepted as citizens of the Muscogee Nation. When South Africa allowed only a small minority ethnic group to participate in the democratic process, there was a global outcry and decades of pressure to overthrow that apartheid regime. We recognize the injustice of the situation in wealthy oil sheikdoms where the vast majority of residents are guest workers with no rights and no say in who rules them and how. Why would we want to replicate those injustices here?

The historical record makes it clear that Congress was intent on fully integrating Indian Territory and its residents into the United States of America as full citizens of a state like all the others. Tribal citizens in Indian Territory were granted U. S. citizenship in 1901. The U. S. reached negotiated settlements with each of the tribes to allot communal lands to individual Indians and to distribute the proceeds of the sale of any surplus lands for the benefit of tribal members. As of 1907, tribal governments no longer had any territory to govern.

The uncertainty and lack of accountability generated by the McGirt ruling is a problem for all Oklahomans, tribal citizens or not. At the 2022 primary, Oklahomans need to reject candidates who want to play footsie with tribal governments and elect candidates who will restore Oklahoma's sovereignty and protect the rights of all Oklahomans, not just the minority with special ancestry.

The three-day filing period for the 2022 City of Tulsa election for City Council and City Auditor has concluded. All nine council seats are contested, but City Auditor Cathy Champion Carter has been reelected without opposition.

Here is the complete list of candidates who filed. Names, ages, and addresses are from the official county election board filing list, which has not yet been posted to the website. I've added party registration, incumbent status, other affiliations, and the candidate's name in the voter rolls in parentheses where it differs from the name that will be on the ballot. (UPDATE: Here is the official list of City of Tulsa 2022 election filings.)

The 31 candidates by party registration: 17 Democrats, 10 Republicans, 2 Libertarians, 2 independents.

Councilmember - Council District 1

• Vanessa Hall-Harper (Vanessa Dee Hall-Harper), incumbent Dem, 50, 2020 W. Newton St., Tulsa, OK 74127


• David Harris (David Jeremy Harris), Dem, 48, 1780 E 51st St N, Tulsa, OK 74130


• Francetta L. Mays (Francetta Lajuana Mays), Dem, 58, 1740 W. Haskell Pl., Tulsa, OK 74127

Councilmember - Council District 2

• Aaron L Bisogno (Aaron Louis Bisogno), Rep, 35, 7722 South Saint Louis Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74136


• Jeannie Cue, incumbent Rep, 68, 5313 S 32 Pl W, Tulsa, OK 74107

Councilmember - Council District 3

• Daniel Joseph Grove, Lib, 22, 1407 N. Evanston Ave., Tulsa, OK 74110


• Crista Patrick (Crista Caye Patrick), incumbent Dem, 48, 1918 N. Joplin Ave., Tulsa, OK 74115

Councilmember - Council District 4

• Laura Bellis (Laura Simon Bellis), Dem, 33, 224 N. Rosedale Ave., Tulsa, OK 74127


• Michael Birkes (Michael Bruce Birkes), Ind, 72, 1021 E 7th St., Tulsa, OK 74120 (registration address is 702 S Owasso Ave)


• Scott Carter (Martin Scott Carter), Dem, 56, 208 East 19th St, Tulsa, OK 74119 WITHDRAWN


• Michael Feamster (Michael James Feamster), Bynum-Chamber-Rep, 39, 2259 South Rockford Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74114


• Weydan Flax (Weydan Shawn Flax), Dem, 60, 1234 S Birmingham Ave, Tulsa, OK 74104


• Matthew Fransein (Matthew James Fransein), Dem, 34, 727 S. Louisville Ave, Tulsa, OK 74112


• Bobby Dean Orcutt (Robert Dean Orcutt), Dem, 39, 1630 S. St Louis Ave, Tulsa, OK 74120

Councilmember - Council District 5

• Mykey Arthrell (Michael William Arthrell-Knezek), incumbent Dem, 37, 1747 S Erie Pl, Tulsa, OK 74112


• Latasha Jim (Latasha Earlene Jim), Ind, 29, 11035 E 16th St, Tulsa, OK 74128


• Adil Khan (Adil Khalid Khan), Dem, 38, 9815 E. 21st Pl Apt C, Tulsa, OK 74129


• Grant Miller (Adam Grant Miller), Lib, 35, 1139 S. Canton Ave., Tulsa, OK 74112


• Ty Walker (Tyron Vincent Walker), Rep, 56, 8538 E. 24th St., Tulsa, OK 74129

Councilmember - Council District 6

• Christian Bengel (Christian D. Bengel), Rep, 54, 13173 E 29th St., Tulsa, OK 74134


• Connie Dodson (Connie L Dodson), Dem, 55, 13302 E. 28th St., Tulsa, OK 74134


• Lewana Harris (Lewana Michelle Harris), Dem, 45, 1505 S. 117th E. Ave, Tulsa, OK 74128

Councilmember - Council District 7

• Jerry Griffin (Gerald Ray Griffin), Rep, 78, 6552 E. 60th, Tulsa, OK 74145


• Ken Reddick (Kenneth Andrew Reddick), Rep, 39, 5008 S 85th East Ave, Tulsa, OK 74133


• Lori Decter Wright (Lori Marie Decter-Wright), Dem, 47, 8706 East 86th Street, Tulsa, OK 74133

Councilmember - Council District 8

• Scott Houston (Jon Scott Houston), Rep, 66, 8534 S. 70th E Ave, Tulsa, OK 74133


• Phil Lakin (Phillip Lawrence Lakin, Jr.), incumbent GKFF-Rep, 54, 9808 S. Knoxville Ave, Tulsa, OK 74137

Councilmember - Council District 9

• Lee Ann Crosby (Bobbie Leeann Crosby), Dem, 38, 3845 South Madison Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105


• Jayme Fowler (Jayme Don Fowler), incumbent Rep, 63, 5601 S. Gary Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105


• Chad Hotvedt (Chad Edward Hotvedt), Dem, 38, 1515 E 60th St, Tulsa, OK 74105

City Auditor

• Cathy Champion Carter, Dem, 67, 4120 E 22nd Pl, Tulsa, OK 74114

CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this entry, I had erroneously transcribed Ken Reddick's date of birth and the address on his declaration, and I incorrectly identified the full registration name for Christian Bengel in District 6 as Riley Christian Bengel (his son).

UPDATE 2022/06/17: Scott Carter withdrew his candidacy for District 4 by the Friday deadline.

At the end of the second day (June 14, 2022) of the three-day filing period for the 2022 City of Tulsa election for City Council and City Auditor, only two incumbents remain unopposed: District 3 Councilor Crista Patrick (D) and City Auditor Cathy Champion Carter (D).

All nine City Council seats and the City Auditor position will be on the ballot. The filing period continues through 5 p.m. Wednesday. The City of Tulsa filing packet is here. A candidate must turn in a notarized declaration of candidacy to the Tulsa County Election Board at 555 N. Denver, along with a $50 cashier's check as a deposit or a nominating petition signed by at least 300 registered voters in the district in lieu of a deposit.

In Tuesday's filings, incumbent District 8/GKFF Councilor Phil Lakin now has a challenger in Republican Scott Houston, an insurance company VP who is also an author and motivational speaker. On his campaign website, Houston emphasizes conservative values, limiting government overreach (specifically mentioning mask mandates and business shutdowns), and roads and infrastructure. Houston's filing means there are now conservatives running in four of the nine council races.

Incumbents Vanessa Hall-Harper (D, District 1) and Mykey Arthrell (D, District 5) filed for re-election, along with two more candidates in District 5, Latasha Jim (I) and Grant Miller (D). Lee Ann Crosby (D) filed in District 9; incumbent Jayme Fowler has yet to file for re-election.

The race for the open seat in District 4 added two candidates, Scott Carter (D) and Bobby Dean Orcutt (D). Carter is registered to vote as Martin Scott Carter; the publications list on the webpage of Scott Carter, Professor of Economics at the University of Tulsa, has Martin Carter listed as author for most of the articles listed.

Bobby Dean Orcutt is owner of the Mercury Lounge. He was planning a run for District 4, held off with the intention of backing Emeka Nnaka, but now that the district boundary modification in April has moved Nnaka into District 1, Orcutt has evidently decided to jump back in.

Party registration of the 24 candidates who have filed thus far: 14 Democrats, 8 Republicans, 1 Libertarians, and 1 independent.

Here is the complete list of candidates who filed as of Tuesday evening Names, ages, and addresses are from the official county election board filing list. I've added party registration, incumbent status, other affiliations, and the candidate's name in the voter rolls in parentheses where it differs from the name that will be on the ballot.

Today (June 13, 2022) was the first day of the three-day filing period for the 2022 City of Tulsa election for City Council and City Auditor. All nine City Council races will be on the ballot. The filing period continues through 5 p.m. Wednesday. The City of Tulsa filing packet is here. A candidate must turn in a notarized declaration of candidacy to the Tulsa County Election Board at 555 N. Denver, along with a $50 cashier's check as a deposit or a nominating petition signed by at least 300 registered voters in the district in lieu of a deposit.

This will be the first election using the Tulsa city council district lines drawn after the 2020 census. Precinct boundaries and numbers have changed as well. On April 6, 2022, the council adopted significant changes to the final redistricting plan produced by the Election District Commission in December 2021. The map below (click to see the full size version) shows the originally adopted 2021 plan in blue-and-white lines and the current districts as colored areas. A consequence of that change is that Emeka Nnaka, who came to the election board today to file for the open District 4 seat, learned that his Kendall-Whittier home was now in District 1. He left without filing.

As of the end of the first day, incumbents have filed for re-election in the auditor's race and five of the nine council districts. District 4 Councilor Kara Joy McKee announced earlier this year that she would not seek re-election. All other incumbent councilors are reported to be running for re-election, but incumbents in Districts 1, 5, and 9 have yet to file.

So far incumbents Crista Patrick and Phil Lakin (District 8) are unchallenged. Patrick is the latest member of the family dynasty to sit in the District 3 seat. Lakin is chairman of the George Kaiser Family Foundation and CEO of the Tulsa Community Foundation, and as such represents the stranglehold that billionaire George Kaiser has on Tulsa city government and the non-profit sector, pushing the city leftward. Challenging and defeating Lakin would be a good start on making Tulsa where community organizations once again represent the city's diversity.

Conservatives have filed for only three of the seats. Ty Walker, a restaurateur who ran for Mayor in 2020, has filed in District 5, a seat he sought in 2018 when no incumbent was running. In District 7, Tulsa school board member Jerry Griffin has filed to challenge incumbent Democrat Lori Decter Wright. In District 6, Christian Bengel is seeking a rematch with incumbent Democrat Connie Dodson -- two years ago, he advanced to a runoff but lost in November.

The open seat in District 4 has so far drawn only two candidates. Michael Feamster, an executive at Nabholz Construction Corporation, and Laura Bellis, a Planned Parenthood Great Plains advisory board member. Bellis has pronouns in her LinkedIn bio. In April 2020, Bellis made news for urging Gov. Stitt to lock down Oklahoma. Feamster's LinkedIn feed is full of cheerleading for the Chamber and G. T. Bynum, and raised over $28,000 as of March 31, from many of the usual establishment funders, including $5,000 from QuikTrip PAC and a maximum $2,900 donation from the Osage Nation. Michael Junk, Bynum's former deputy mayor and campaign manager, hosted a fundraiser for Feamster last fall, prompting questions about Bynum's support for Feamster's candidacy. Clearly, conservative voters and supporters of midtown neighborhood preservation don't yet have a candidate to vote for in the District 4 race; hopefully one will emerge by Wednesday.

While city elections have been officially non-partisan since 2016, all of the 16 candidates who have filed thus far are registered to vote with a political party: 9 Democrats and 7 Republicans. Republicans are a plurality of registered voters in Tulsa, at 86,796, compared to 84,320 registered Democrats, 43,460 independent voters, and 2,063 registered Libertarians. While party registration doesn't say everything that needs to be said about a candidate's views, particularly on city issues, and while RINOs abound, it is one more piece of information that a voter may find useful.

Here is the complete list of candidates who filed on Monday. Names, ages, and addresses are from the official county election board filing list. I've added party registration, incumbent status, other affiliations, and the candidate's name in the voter rolls in parentheses where it differs from the name that will be on the ballot.

U. S. Senator Jim Inhofe is retiring after a long political career that includes service in the Oklahoma State Senate, 6 years as Mayor of Tulsa, 8 years in the U. S. House, and 28 years in the Senate. 13 Republican candidates have filed for the seat.

This article is an overview of the field, with links to candidate websites, social media profiles, and campaign finance information. The candidate's name will be hyperlinked to his or her campaign website, if it exists. The Wagoner County Republican Party asked each of the candidates to complete a lengthy questionnaire, but only four candidates responded. These are linked in the list below as WCRP.

The winner of the primary (after a likely August runoff) will face former Democrat congresswoman Kendra Horn, Libertarian perennial candidate Robert Murphy, and 86-year-old independent candidate Ray Woods on the general election ballot.

Only five candidates reported receiving campaign contributions to the Federal Election Commission as of March 31, 2022. Former Attorney General and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt entered the race during the filing period and has presumably raised money. The next FEC filing deadline is June 16, which will cover pre-primary contributions through June 8. Additionally, the final filer in the race, Dr. Randy Grellner, has announced an expenditure of $786,000 to produce and run a TV commercial, so I've included him in the tier of candidates making a serious run.

Because only two candidates can advance to the August runoff, conservative voters will need to consolidate around a single champion in the primary to have any hope of having someone worth voting for in the runoff. Polling and spending will be important factors for casting a strategic vote in June. I've been encouraging absentee voters to hold off voting until we have a clearer picture of the battlefield. The pre-election FEC reports will be telling. Sooner Poll polled this race and other statewide and congressional races, but they only managed a sample of 306 voters over a 17-day period, and 31.4% of voters were undecided.

Nathan Dahm, Broken Arrow, 39, State Senator, District 33. FEC, campaign FB page, personal FB profile, @NathanDahm on Twitter.

Alex Gray, Nichols Hills, 32, former National Security Council Chief of Staff in the Trump administration: FEC, campaign FB page, @AlexGrayForOK on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube channel.

Randy J. Grellner, Cushing, 56, family practice physician: FEC, campaign FB page, medical practice website.

Luke Holland, Tulsa, 35, former chief of staff to Sen. Jim Inhofe: FEC, personal FB profile, @LukeHollandOK on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube channel.

Markwayne Mullin, Westville, 44, U. S. Representative, 2nd District: FEC, @MarkwayneMullin on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube channel.

Scott Pruitt, Tulsa, 54, former Oklahoma Attorney General, former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator: FEC, campaign FB page, @ScottPruitt_OK on Twitter, YouTube channel, WCRP.

T.W. Shannon, Oklahoma City, 44, CEO of Chickasaw Community Bank, former Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives: FEC, campaign FB page, @TWShannon on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube channel.

There are six more candidates who filed for the unexpired four-year Senate term:

Michael Coibion, Bartlesville, 67: personal FB profile, WCRP.

Jessica Jean Garrison, Owasso, 47: FEC, personal FB page, campaign FB page, WCRP.

Adam Holley, Bixby, 41: FEC, personal FB page, @adamforoklahoma on Twitter, YouTube channel, WCRP.

Laura Moreno, Edmond, 37, nurse practitioner: personal FB profile, medical practice website.

Paul Royse, Tulsa, 52, : campaign FB page, personal FB profile.

John F. Tompkins, Oklahoma City, 65, orthopedic surgeon: FEC, personal FB profile, book page.

UNOFFICIAL RESULTS UPDATE, with all precincts counted: The conservative, pro-parent school board candidates have either won outright (Debbie Taylor in Broken Arrow) or made it into a runoff (conservative Tim Harris against Susan Lamkin, who had the endorsement of the GKFF-connected incumbent and the support of the TPS establishment; conservative Shelley Gwartney against Union incumbent Chris McNeil). The top two candidates in both races were just a tiny margin apart -- 62 votes in Tulsa and 12 votes in Union. So the pro-parent candidates and supporters will have a busy eight weeks between now and the April 5, 2022, runoff. In addition to trying to help Tim Harris in Tulsa district 7 and Shelley Gwartney in Union district 2, there will also be a race in Tulsa district 4 (East Central area) between pro-parent candidate E'Lena Ashley and the Democrat incumbent, as well as two-candidate races for Jenks, Skiatook (2 seats), Owasso, and Sand Springs school boards, and Tulsa Tech Center board seat 3.

Smallest election in the state: 21 voters turned out in the Town of Tushka (just south of Atoka) and all of them voted for renewing their franchise with PSO. The Town of East Duke (in Jackson County near Altus) had 36 unanimous voters on their PSO franchise vote. East Duke appears on maps as just plain Duke, another situation, like New Cordell and Pryor Creek, where there's a mismatch between corporate and common name. In Tulsa, 11,314 turned out to vote for the PSO franchise, which passed by a 76-24 split, but I suspect that number was boosted a bit by the school board and bond issue elections happening in some areas.

Polls will be open today, Tuesday from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. The Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter tool will let you know where to vote (and if you have a reason to go to the polls) and will show you a sample of the ballot you'll see. Here's the complete list of elections today across Oklahoma.

Below are my thoughts on some of the races in the Oklahoma school board and municipal primary election on February 8, 2022.

This is last-minute and thrown-together, I am sorry to say. Someone decided to foment a crisis, which landed atop an intense work load, plus the final push of a busy MIT admissions interview season, which ended yesterday.

Serious challengers to the status quo have emerged in several school board races in the Tulsa metro area. These candidates are committed to serving the best interests of students and their parents, rather than the agendas of administrators or unions or overly-influential, control-freakish "philanthropic" organizations. Parent Voice of Tulsa has identified the strongest pro-parent and pro-student candidates in each race, listed below.

Tulsa School Board, Office No. 7: Tim Harris. The retired district attorney, a conservative Republican, is running for an open seat. He has been endorsed by Parent Voice of Tulsa, the Republican Party of Tulsa County, former Congressman Jim Bridenstine, Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell, retired college president Everett Piper, and many other conservative voices.

His principal competitor is a registered Democrat who has no history of voting in school board elections and has the backing for prominent left-wing institutions and donors, including the outgoing GKFF-connected board member, along with a number of other GKFF-affiliated donors, former Democrat Mayor Kathy Taylor, and the Tulsa County Democratic Party. Voting for her would be to vote for keeping failed Superintendent Deborah Gist, for accepting more strings-attached "grants" from foundations, for keeping kids in masks or out of the classroom, failing to learn via Zoom.

Union School Board Office No. 2: Shelley Gwartney. Gwartney has four children in Union schools and has been very involved as a volunteer in the district and the community. Her website goes into detail on the issues that matter to conservative parents and taxpayers. Gwartney has also been endorsed by the Republican Party of Tulsa County and Parent Voice of Tulsa.

Broken Arrow School Board Office No. 2: Debbie Taylor. Taylor is mother to four BA graduates and grandmother to 9 current students in the Broken Arrow Public Schools. Taylor is also supported by Parent Voice and the Republican Party of Tulsa County in her race for the open seat.

City of Tulsa franchise election for PSO: NO. While most Tulsa voters will not have the opportunity to vote for school board, there is a citywide election. Voters will decide whether to continue to grant PSO a franchise to use its right-of-way -- including the right-of-way along your back fence -- for the next 15 years. Here is the description on the ballot:

Do you approve the City of Tulsa's Ordinance No. 24695, granting an electric franchise to Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO), so that PSO may use and occupy the streets, public ways and public places of the City for installing, operating and maintaining poles, wires and other equipment, for the purpose of furnishing electricity to the public? PSO will charge its consumers a reasonable, regulated fee for the electricity furnished. PSO must abide by the terms and conditions set forth in the Franchise Ordinance. PSO will pay fees to the City of Tulsa for the use of the public ways, as calculated in the Ordinance. This franchise will last for fifteen (15) years.

You will not find any reference to this election on the CityOfTulsa.org homepage, but Ordinance No. 24695 can be found on Municode, which hosts the city charter and ordinances. Here is a copy of the proposed City of Tulsa PSO franchise, which was approved by the City Council on November 17, 2021, and signed by Mayor G. T. Bynum IV the following day. Included in that PDF is a "redline" version showing how the new franchise differs from the one that has been in force since 1997, a quarter-century ago. The new franchise has a shorter term, only 15 years; it raises the franchise fee from 2% to 3% of gross receipts, a cost that will undoubtedly be passed on to Tulsa residents and businesses; it does not provide a way to revisit the franchise fee during the 15-year term; and it has a provision that would allow the City to order burying lines below ground, but the City (read: Tulsa taxpayers) would have to cover the extra cost.

As a rule, I think that voters ought to punish attempts by public officials to sneak something past them by putting it on a special ballot, and at the same time incurring the cost of of a special election and the burden on the election board and its volunteers. Whatever the positive or negative aspects, it ought to be on the same general election ballot we use to elect city councilors and the mayor. So I recommend a NO vote on the PSO franchise.

Catoosa Public Schools bond issue: NO. The bond issue would replace the current Cherokee Elementary School building (on the west side of Cherokee Street, built circa 1960 and formerly served as the junior high, middle school, and upper elementary) with a new building, which would also eliminate the district's use of the Helen Paul Learning Center, which was built by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s and is just about the only historic building left in all of Catoosa. The administration is silent on what will happen to the Helen Paul building. I confess a personal interest: All but one of my classrooms from kindergarten to 8th grade have been demolished. The only one left is the classroom on the southeast corner of the intersection of the main corridor and the original entrance, where I was in Mrs. Helen Paul's 2nd grade class. This is also the only one of my mother's kindergarten classrooms remaining in Oklahoma. New facilities may be nice, but some of us recall the sparkling new J. W. Sam Elementary building from about 25 years ago, which was closed because of shoddy construction. I would vote no and demand some answers about historic preservation and construction quality. There is also an open school board seat on the ballot.

Also on today's ballot across the Tulsa metro area:

• Sand Springs: Two City Council races
• Bixby: $43 million bond issue for a performing arts center
• Coweta: A revote, due to failure to comply with public notice requirements, of last September's one-cent sales tax election
• Sapulpa: Vote to make the "temporary" 2% sales tax permanent
• Bixby Public Schools: Two bond issues, Prop No. 1 for $110 million to include a new high school building; Prop No. 2 for $4.5 million for student transportation
• Jenks Public Schools: Two bond issues totalling $14,025,000.

Remember that voting "no" on a bond issue is a way to send a vote of no confidence in your school's board and administration, even if you don't have the opportunity to vote directly for a board member.

Down the turnpike, Oklahoma City at-large city councilor David Holt (he has the ceremonial title of "mayor"), who has made his living as a professional schmoozer and never had a real job (as far as I can tell), is running for re-election. He is opposed by Carol Hefner, who is running as a conservative, pro-free-market, pro-public-safety candidate; Frank Urbanic, a lawyer who successfully challenged Holt's attempts to shut down city businesses during the pandemic; and Jimmy Lawson, an activist pushing for criminal justice "reform" and "equity." Carol Hefner has the endorsement of the Oklahoma County Republican Party, the Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee (OCPAC) and Oklahoma Second Amendment Association (OK2A). If no one gets 50% of the vote, there will be a runoff in April.

Holt refused to debate his challengers.

Unless conservative voters in Oklahoma's cities eject progressive mayors and councilors from office, these progressive mayors will continue to prioritize policies aimed at turning these cities "blue," moving Oklahoma toward a future where, like Michigan, Illinois, Georgia, and many other states, corrupt "progressive" urban centers will control elections for the whole state. We need mayors and councilors in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Norman (we already have them in Broken Arrow!) who will make their cities attractive to conservatives who are refugees from other states.