The sprint for the 1st District

I saw most of the also-rans at the 1st Congressional District Republican Party candidate forum at NSU-BA last month. (My thread of live tweets starts here.) Kelly Walsh is a Ron Paul, anti-war, anti-Trump Libertarian who wants the US to stop fighting Iran. Nancy Dyson is retired after a career working in prisons. Todd Woods looks and sounds like a good ol' country boy with a lot of opinions; he wants congressmen caught insider trading to be hanged publicly.

Courtney Gill is a Minnesotan who married an Oklahoman and moved here after acquiring an MBA at Oxford; she seems like an intelligent and pleasant nerd, committed to social and economic conservatism, and gave thoughtful answers instead of uttering the prescribed buzzwords, but she doesn't seem very canny about electoral politics.

Corporation Commissioner Kim David said all the right things at the forum, but I couldn't forget that she voted for $2.5 billion in tax increases as a state senator and also backed a bill that would have made it easier to lower the threshold to raise taxes without a vote of the people. In her 2022 race for Corporation Commission, she attracted plenty of cash from lobbyists and donors connected with regulated industries, and she had the poisoned "apple" endorsement from the left-wing Oklahomans for Public Education.

I know I'm supposed to be analytical and not intuitive, but I have to say: Jackson Lahmeyer creeps me out. Always has. He looks like he came from the Uncanny Valley. When he smiles, I half-expect the rest of him to vanish, like the Cheshire Cat.

I have more substantive concerns about Lahmeyer. In 2022, when he challenged US Sen. James Lankford's bid for a full term, Lahmeyer bore false witness in ads attacking Lankford, claiming, "Senator Lankford said under oath in a deposition that a 13 year old is old enough to consent for sex." I had planned to vote for Lahmeyer as a protest against Lankford's wobbles on immigration, but after that false attack I couldn't reward Lahmeyer.

Lahmeyer has hosted Trump's sons, Don Jr. and Eric, and close associates like Gen. Mike Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, and Roger Stone. I have no problem with pastors applying Biblical principles to politics or even running for office, but to me, it's always looked like Lahmeyer was chasing celebrity, engaged in sycophantic social climbing and networking rather than the ministry of the Gospel and its application in the public sphere. His campaign to be noticed by Donald Trump paid off with an endorsement.

The candidate forum happened shortly after Trump's endorsement. When asked if he would align himself with Josh Brecheen and the Freedom Caucus (pro-liberty, small government, socially conservative) or Stephanie Bice and the Main Street Caucus (pro-corporate-welfare, big government), Lahmeyer said it was premature to commit to a caucus, and he mentioned calls with US House Speaker Mike Johnson's team and Majority Leader Steve Scalise who "walked [him] through all this." It suggested to me he intended to do whatever was necessary to climb the House's social ladder, too, rather than being a Tom Coburn-style maverick.

Finally -- and this is intuition again, not analysis -- Lahmeyer has a very mannered style of speech that sounds like he's trying to imitate a 1950s radio preacher. It adds to the feeling of inauthenticity, the feeling that he's playing a role, not pursuing a calling.

I have lots of friends who like and support Lahmeyer. Others back him because of the Trump connection. I understand, but I disagree. Another friend thinks that Lahmeyer as the Republican nominee puts the 1st District in play for the Democrats by alienating independents. Philip Jackson, a pastor at Evergreen Baptist Church, whom I know from his days as a political consultant and a congressional staffer, has spelled out his concerns about Lahmeyer in a Facebook reel.

Three of the major candidates were not at the forum.

Nathan Butterfield doesn't even live in the 1st Congressional District. He lives in the 2nd District, where Josh Brecheen is running for re-election. Butterfield had been running for the open seat in House District 9, had loaned his campaign $100,000, and was using CAMP for campaign consulting, but then decided to switch to run for Congress. Pass.

Jed Cochran is a lobbyist who spent 4 years as Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum's Chief of Intergovernmental Affairs and then joined Stuart McCalman at the firm Bynum co-founded, Capitol Ventures Government Relations. Pass.

Mark Tedford has served two terms in the Oklahoma House without ever having to run for office. He was elected to an open seat without opposition, and then re-elected without opposition. His legislative ratings from conservative groups are pretty underwhelming, with high scores on Jason Murphey's Capitol Conformity Index and D- scores on the Oklahoma Constitution's Conservative Index. On the other hand, he's got an A rating from the NRA and OK2A, a lifetime 87 from OCPA, with scores improving year by year, and he was one of only two candidates to complete the thorough iVoterGuide questionnaire. (Woods was the other.) You can read his Oklahoma Republican platform questionnaire here.

Tedford has a master's degree in Christian apologetics from Biola University. When he spoke to the Patriot Pastors group at Heartland Church, Tedford took the opportunity to talk about the doctrine of Christian vocation. I was there -- I decided last minute to attend -- and I was impressed at the depth and thoughtfulness of his words. Friends who have known Mark for decades in a church context tell me he's the real deal.

I'm persuaded that Mark Tedford is the best choice on the Republican primary ballot for the 1st District, and I'll be voting for him next Tuesday.

MORE: I received an email challenging my choice of Tedford rather than, say, Courtney Gill. The writer noted Tedford's underwhelming legislative ratings.

Had this not been a three-month campaign, a legislator with an unquestioned conservative record like Nathan Dahm might have gathered resources to run, and I would have been happy to support him. I believe a lot of potential candidates looked at the timeline and the amount of money that would have been needed and concluded it would be a wasted effort.

As in the governor's race, a congressional district race requires reaching a large universe of voters, most of whom are outside the activist/online bubble and are not actively seeking information. That means TV ads and mailers. There are only six candidates that have gathered anywhere close to the money needed to begin to reach enough voters to make the runoff. Arguably, there are only two -- Tedford and Butterfield, with Lahmeyer in the next tier but helped by the Trump endorsement, and David, Cochran, and Woods down in the sub-$200K range. I strongly prefer Tedford to Butterfield.

Courtney Gill is not anywhere near that level. She will not make the runoff. While I wish a BatesLine endorsement had the influence to act as a counterweight to hundreds of thousands in ad buys, I don't have that many readers. Maybe in a year-long campaign, someone like me could create buzz to help a grassroots candidate attract volunteers and early donors, but not in three short months in a congressional race.

Of the six who are in that league, we have three with no track record at all -- Butterfield, Cochran, Woods -- a former legislator and current elected official and a current legislator, neither with stellar conservative numbers, and Lahmeyer. I say Cochran has no record because his entire career working in politics as an aide and as a lobbyist has been spent advancing his employers' interests, not speaking for himself.

Also as in the governor's race, I want to make sure the best possible option of those candidates makes the runoff with Lahmeyer. Notwithstanding the late-breaking scandals, his supporters seem to be rallying behind him, and I expect his Trump endorsement will get him there.

My correspondent called attention to Tedford's poor Oklahoma Grassroots rating. I encouraged him to look at the fine print. For example, in the 2025 scorecard, they include a bill, HB 1486, designating memorial names for certain state highways and bridges. Many of these names are of service members who died in battle or law-enforcement officers who died in the line of duty. Oklahoma Grassroots rated that as a vote AGAINST the platform, basing that on the broad platform statement, "We support reducing the size of state government to allow citizens to do those things that people can do best for themselves." I don't see anything in that bill that grows government or that does anything citizens can do for themselves, and I'd argue that honoring those who gave their lives in the service of their country and community is also an important conservative principle.

Taking a few other bills at random, there seems to be a lot of this, where a vote has been categorized as a violation of the platform not because it goes against a specific policy position in the platform, but on the grounds of a broad principle, where the application of that principle is highly debatable, where there may be multiple principles that have to be balanced, and prudence and tradeoffs are involved.

In my church, we have detailed doctrinal standards, consisting of a confession, two catechisms, and a directory of worship, and our church officers are required to teach and govern in accordance with them. But most of the decisions they make are not dictated by our doctrinal standards but are matters of prudence that are debatable. There's plenty of room within the doctrinal standards to disagree about the interpretation of specific verses or how doctrine is to be applied in a specific case without breaking fellowship over those disagreements. We agree about the weightier matters like the Deity of Christ and justification by faith alone, while debating about whether or not to carpet the sanctuary. I think of the GOP platform is something like a set of doctrinal standards. The premise of the Grassroots scorecard is that every vote is dictated one way or the other by the platform, and I don't think that's true. Two legislators can disagree on many of these votes and both still be good Republicans.

I have many teachers in my extended family, and they talk of the challenge of writing a good test. If the questions are too obscure, you might have a bunch of students clustered around 60% and maybe one prodigy who breaks 90. If the questions are too easy, everyone will get an A, even if they haven't mastered the material. The goal is to measure what really matters and to distinguish between excellent, satisfactory, and unsatisfactory performance.

Scorecards are a bit like tests. You could pick votes that will make almost everyone flunk or votes that will make almost everyone pass with flying colors. I appreciate OCPA's scorecard because they use more votes than Oklahoma Constitution, they rate certain procedural votes, which often are where the real divisions appear, they announce a bill watch list early in the session, and they typically announce votes that they are going to rate, so legislators are on notice. They publish the 10 principles that guide their selection of votes. Mark Tedford had a 91 this year, and his scores have increased every year. Kim David had two years in the 70s and one 100% year, but most of her career predated the OCPA scorecard.

The most important vote can't be scored: The caucus vote to nominate House Speaker or Senate President Pro Tem, which in turn determines who will control the flow of legislation and who will run key committees.

As for the Freedom Index, produced by the John Birch Society, they only rate 6 votes, which are idiosyncratically selected. JBS disapproves of the Convention of States and recall elections, but I don't think these votes deserve to be one of only 6 that are rated. Democrats get credit for voting against budget and tax bills, even though they vote no out of obstructionism, not principle.