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Jenni White for Oklahoma Republican chairman

Jenni White is a principled conservative, an excellent communicator, and someone with a record of getting things done. She has the intelligence, organizational skills, and powers of persuasion to be a successful Oklahoma Republican Party chairman, and I ask my friends at the convention to give her their support.

Posted by Michael Bates on April 9, 2021 8:30 PM

2019 OKGOP convention thoughts

UPDATE: Generally a good outcome. David McLain was elected chairman. Former State Rep. Mike Turner was elected vice chairman. All of the rule changes were thrown out because outgoing state chairman Pam Pollard failed to provide the proposals to delegates by the 10-day deadline. Platform was on the agenda and...

Posted by Michael Bates on April 5, 2019 11:39 PM

2017 Oklahoma Republican State Convention: Afternoon session

Continued from previous entry: After a delicious catered barbecue lunch, the convention was called back to order at about 1:15 pm. With officer elections out of the way, surely we could get through the remaining order of business -- seven proposed amendments to the state party rules, a resolution, and...

Posted by Michael Bates on May 11, 2017 10:48 PM

OKGOP Director of Communications quits over Trump remarks

Brett Farley resigned his post Saturday as Director of Communications for the Oklahoma Republican Party after the party chairman refused to issue a statement calling on Donald Trump to withdraw from the presidential race. Writing on his blog, Farley said that he sent a message Saturday morning urging OKGOP chairman...

Posted by Michael Bates on October 10, 2016 12:18 PM

2016 Oklahoma Republican State Convention

A subdued mood prevailed Saturday as 857 delegates convened at FirstMoore Baptist Church for the 2016 Oklahoma Republican Convention. (The 2012 convention drew approximately 1,400 delegates.) The state convention in a presidential year has a national focus, electing two members of the Republican National Committee, electing 25 at-large delegates and...

Posted by Michael Bates on May 16, 2016 10:59 PM

Randy Brogdon for Oklahoma Republican Chairman

UPDATE: Jamison Faught reports on Twitter that on the first ballot Brogdon finished first but short of a majority, and incumbent chairman Weston was eliminated -- Brogdon 47.45, Pollard 29.11, Weston 23.43. Brogdon won the second ballot over Pollard, 53.35% to 46.65%. Estela Hernandez was elected vice chairman with 58.12%...

Posted by Michael Bates on April 10, 2015 8:19 AM

Art Rubin, RIP

Arthur E. Rubin, grand old man of the Tulsa County GOP, died Sunday, February 2, 2014, at the age of 93. Visitation is tonight, Friday, February 7, 2014, from 5 - 7 p.m. at Moore Funeral Home Rosewood Chapel at 2570 S. Harvard. Funeral is Saturday, February 8, 2014, at...

Posted by Michael Bates on February 7, 2014 12:39 PM

Why is Dewey Bartlett Jr raising money in Oklahoma City?

And why is the Oklahoma Republican Party promoting the fundraiser of one of three Republican candidates in the Tulsa mayor's race? (UPDATE: See below.) Oklahoma City seems like a very odd place for the Mayor of Tulsa to have a fundraising event. Why not pay a Tulsa hotel and Tulsa...

Posted by Michael Bates on May 22, 2013 10:22 PM

Fred Barnes headlines Oklahoma GOP gala

Conservative political pundit Fred Barnes will be the keynote speaker at the Oklahoma Republican Party's pre-convention gala dinner, Friday, April 19, 2013. Gov. Mary Fallin and former Gov. Frank Keating will also speak, and Keating will serve as emcee. Tickets start at $50 per person, with proceeds going to support...

Posted by Michael Bates on April 5, 2013 1:11 AM

A report from the Oklahoma Republican Convention

How was my Saturday at the Oklahoma Republican State Convention, you ask? It was about like this: UPDATE: This was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek placeholder for my own detailed account of what happened, but I am still playing catch up with my offline responsibilities. Here are accounts by others...

Posted by Michael Bates on May 13, 2012 1:54 AM

Richard Engle's emails aren't just weird, they're creepy, in a privacy-invading way

There's something creepy going on with email in the race to be Oklahoma's next Republican National Committeeman. If you're a delegate to the 2012 Oklahoma Republican State Convention, you've been getting a barrage of emails from Richard Engle, candidate for Republican National Committeeman, announcing endorsements from a surprising mixture of...

Posted by Michael Bates on May 12, 2012 12:06 AM

Paulestinians sweep Oklahoma CD 5 convention

I received word from Chris Medlock that Ron Paul supporters won all three national delegate slots and all three alternate slots at the Saturday, March 31, 2012, Oklahoma 5th Congressional District Republican Convention. Medlock reports that turnout was light (only about 200 delegates), and that runoffs for each delegate slot...

Posted by Michael Bates on April 1, 2012 1:13 AM

Oklahoma Republican delegate allocation methodology

In the wake of the Michigan Republican presidential primary, in which Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney won an equal number of congressional districts, each worth two delegates, there was a dispute over whether the two at-large delegates should be divided between Romney and Santorum (since no candidate received a majority...

Posted by Michael Bates on March 4, 2012 9:16 PM

Santorum coming to Tulsa, OKC on Thursday

UPDATE: Because of expected crowds, the Tulsa event has been moved to the "Baby Mabee", the TV production studio just to the east of the Mabee Center on the ORU campus, and the Oklahoma City event has been moved to the Magnuson Hotel and Meridian Conference Center, just south of...

Posted by Michael Bates on February 7, 2012 12:16 AM

2011 Oklahoma Republican Convention tweets and retweets

Technical note: Copying and pasting tweets into this post was a very frustrating and time-consuming process. In the end, I had to paste the HTML into an Emacs buffer, use a series of regex replacements to clean the text up enough so everything would post without messing up everything else...

Posted by Michael Bates on May 16, 2011 5:39 PM

Who are these Tulsa County Republican "moderates"?

CORRECTION: I originally began this entry referring to a Steve Lackmeyer tweet about a Tulsa news story making his head hurt. Because the link he tweeted led to a "Latest News" page on the Tulsa Whirled's mobile website -- at least it did on the browser on my smart phone...

Posted by Michael Bates on March 27, 2011 3:48 AM

Matt Pinnell for Oklahoma Republican Party chairman

Last week, Oklahoma Republican state party chairman Gary Jones resigned his post last week to jump into the race for State Auditor and Inspector. Jones had run twice before, in 2002 and 2006, coming close each time to defeating Democrat Jeff McMahan. No viable Republican candidate emerged to challenge McMahan's...

Posted by Michael Bates on June 13, 2010 10:10 PM

Oklahoma GOP convention wrapup

When BC Lee (whom I met at the Oklahoma Republican State Convention on Saturday) said he looked forward my opining about the weekend, this is what I posted on Facebook in reply: My opining in a nutshell: Very happy about Gary Jones winning re-election, unhappy at the defeat of the...

Posted by Michael Bates on April 23, 2009 6:34 PM

Tweeting the Oklahoma GOP Convention

Tomorrow is the 2009 Oklahoma Republican Convention in Oklahoma City. It should be an exciting day. We'll be voting on whether to re-elect as chairman a proven servant-leader, Gary Jones, and we'll be hearing from some of the folks who want to carry the GOP banner for governor next year,...

Posted by Michael Bates on April 17, 2009 11:43 PM

Re-elect Oklahoma GOP chairman Gary Jones

Red Dirt Report has a story about the recent debate in Muskogee between Oklahoma Republican Party Chairman Gary Jones and Vice Chairman Cheryl Williams, who is running to unseat Jones. Muskogee Politico has the video of the debate. Gary Jones was first elected chairman in 2002, after Chad Alexander's resignation....

Posted by Michael Bates on March 31, 2009 12:41 PM