2026 Tulsa County Judicial primary

Only one of the 14 elective District Judge seats in Judicial District 14 (Tulsa and Pawnee Counties) is on the June 16, 2026, primary ballot. Judge Daman Cantrell is not running for re-election. Three candidates, Phillip Peak, Dustin Allen, and Loretta Radford, are seeking to replace him. The election will take place only within Tulsa County Judicial Election District No. 4, which can be roughly described as north Tulsa County and east City of Tulsa.

The Tulsa County Bar Association hosted a forum with the candidates and posted the video (most of it anyway; the beginning seems to be missing).

Loretta Radford has been a Tulsa County special judge since 2022. Special judges are appointed and serve at the pleasure of the elected District Judges. She retired from the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Oklahoma in 2019 after 26 years of service. This speaker's bio from 2021 has more about her time in Federal service and her prior job as an Assistant Public Defender in Tulsa County.

Before being hired as a special judge, Loretta Radford was Legal Director for the Oklahoma City University School of Law Center for Criminal Justice. In 2021, while in that role, Radford wrote that diversifying the bench was the "single most important goal" for the law profession in Oklahoma, and she called for "implicit bias" testing and training, imposing this DEI notion upon anyone who seeks to be a lawyer or a judge in Oklahoma (emphasis added):

The single most important goal for the future of the practice of law in the State of Oklahoma is to diversify the bench, the legal clerical support, the district court benches and the appellate courts of this state with people of color. Law Schools need to stress this fact in their recruitment efforts; lawyers need to stress this fact in the courtrooms when they are picking juries and arguing cases, and in carrying out their pro bono or public service duties; Bar Associations need to recognize the historical disadvantage that people of color experience in just trying to compete with the majority; and current judges need to support the addition of people of color to the bench. To have true diversity we must change the culture. The majority has to quit the mindset that they are somehow diminished professionally by giving a taller foot stool to a person of color in order to give that person of color just a minimal opportunity to compete at the same vantage point. When we realize that true diversity and inclusion is a not a handout but a hand up, we can change the culture and improve the efficiency of the legal system for all of the citizens of the State of Oklahoma.

I recommend that lawyers, law students, and law school Bar Associations learn to identify the areas of implicit bias that stifle their thoughts and ultimately their work in the legal profession. The Harvard Implicit Bias test is designed to measure the attitudes and implicit biases people may be unwilling or unable to report. Lawyers, students, judges and Directors of Bar Associations should include this test in their training and curriculums. Then, training should be implemented to teach individuals how to combat the bias. It can be instituted for lawyers as a part of the curriculum requirements for admission to the bar; administered to students in first year law school in much the same way that legal research and writing is required; provided in the success training templates as a part of the professional conduct guidelines for every Bar Association; and administered to judges both at the district court level and the appellate level as a part of their oath of office. When all aspects of the legal profession become serious about diversity, we will lose the fear of discussing race and the implicit bias that affects our professional lives. We will lose the unconscious bias that continues to influence the actions and decisions of those we hire, those we promote, who we appoint as judges, how we interact with people of a certain group, and even how we evaluate the work performance of employees. Diversity training, beginning with identifying implicit bias, is the single most effective way to encourage young people to get involved in diversity issues. They will do what they see us do.

In 2022, Radford was very pleased by the confirmation of Ketanji Brown-Jackson to the US Supreme Court:

"She has shown all of America the leadership qualities that she has. And she's given hope, quite frankly, to other people of color, to other people."...

"The revelation by today's confirmation is that America's ready for the highest court in the nation to reflect the population and the citizenry of the United States," Radford added.

Here's Radford in 2019, at a forum on "criminal justice reform":

Radford said the lives of countless Oklahomans have been derailed even as necessities for reform have been obvious. According to census counts, 1,047 people are incarcerated for every 100,000 Oklahoma residents. About 10% of children in Oklahoma have had a parent incarcerated at one time or another, and those children become six to seven times more likely than other children to end up in prison themselves.

Radford said goals at OCU's Center for Criminal Justice include gathering and studying data to reveal strategies for reducing disparities in the system that affect especially minorities and people in poverty. Worthy of special attention, she said, would be the state's cash bail system. Many people charged with crimes who lack resources end up being jailed for lengthy periods without being convicted of anything. She said there should be more focus, too, on helping people who have made mistakes, like Strahorne-White when she was in her 20s, to avoid incarceration.

In October 2022, just before taking up her appointment as a special judge, Loretta Radford moderated a panel discussion for the "2023 Policy Reveal" for Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform (OCJR). That's where Colleen McCarty worked as Policy Counsel and Deputy Director, advocating against sentence enhancements for repeat offenders and arguing that multiple misdemeanor thefts in a six-month period should not add up to a felony. It's a progressive non-profit that puts the interests of the criminal first, and Radford seems delighted to be helping them.

Then there's this story of a case in Judge Radford's courtroom involving the Oklahoma enforcement of a California child support order. I can't vouch for the website, and it's only one side of the story, but there are a lot of links and details provided.

Radford has been endorsed by Judge Cantrell and a number of other retired judges. According to voter and land records, Radford has had a home in Owasso since 2004.

Dustin Allen is private practice attorney. Allen has been endorsed by Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado and a long list of area FOP chapters. His LinkedIn profile has his pronouns (He/Him) and says that Allen worked as an ADA in Tulsa County for 9 months, as a Tulsa County Assistant Public Defender for 3 years and 1 month, and as an ADA in Wagoner County for 6 months, covering the period from June 2011 to July 2015, when he began private practice. According to voter and land records, Allen lived near 91st and Memorial before purchasing a home in Owasso, in Election District 4, in 2025. Allen's less-than-a-year stints at two different DA offices make me wonder.

Phillip Peak has served for the last three years as an Associate District Attorney in Rogers County. According to Peak's LinkedIn profile (which does not have pronouns listed), he worked as an ADA in Tulsa County right out of law school for 4 years, 7 months, then worked for a couple of years at law firms before operating his own private practice for 7 years, 5 months. His website states that he has tried over 40 jury trials to verdict. (That's 40 more than a certain candidate for District Attorney.) Peak is a native of Collinsville and has lived his entire time in Judicial Election District 4, except for his undergraduate degree and one year during law school.

Looking back a few years, in June 2022 Radford was a Democrat registered to vote in Owasso, Allen was a Republican registered to vote in south Tulsa, and Peak was a Democrat registered to vote in Collinsville. The same was true in November 2018.

The consensus from friends who have worked with these three candidates is NOT Radford. Temperament and organization have been mentioned as areas of concern, along with the progressive ideological alignment that was on display during her time at OCU, when she was free to be a policy advocate for DEI in the legal profession.

I have heard positive things about both Peak and Allen. Peak gets compliments for his work ethic and character.

For this campaign, Allen got out of the blocks early and has far outraised his opponents, and because of this, it's been suggested that Allen would be better positioned to defeat Radford in a November runoff.

As long as you don't vote for Radford, we're likely to end up with a reasonable outcome: Either Peak or Allen win outright on June 16, or they meet each other in a November runoff, or one or the other faces Radford in November with a strong likelihood of winning in a strongly conservative section of Tulsa County.