Primary 2026: Final thoughts

This past Saturday, June 11, 2026, former City Councilor Chris Medlock and I appeared on KCFO's Tulsa Beacon Weekend with Jeff Brucculeri to try to cover as many of the primary races as possible. We recorded 9 days earlier, and there've been a lot of developments since then. Shortly after we wrapped, we all realized we'd forgotten to remind the listeners to vote NO on SQ 832.

I pointed out to my friend that I've never seen so few yard signs in yards. There are plenty on rights-of-way and on certain street-facing privacy fences (many of which I suspect belong to a landlord who leases the space to campaigns), but very few in owner-occupied yards. My guess is voter fatigue -- so many candidates, so little time to get to know about them all, and no one has strong enough feelings about any of them to want a yard sign.

The House District 98 race is a rematch between first-term incumbent Gabe Woolley and previous incumbent Dean Davis. Davis was censured by the State House after a 2023 drunk driving arrest. Now Davis is sending out text messages that create the false impression that he's the incumbent in the race. Woolley has been a stalwart of the House Freedom Caucus. Davis's ethics disclosure claims he has raised no money and is only spending carryover funds from the 2024 campaign.

I went to a candidate forum for Senate 34 in a tiny, packed, poorly ventilated room in the Owasso Community Center. Three candidates showed up, including incumbent Dana Prieto, a member of the Freedom Caucus. Even though there was an incumbent and two challengers, it felt like a forum for an open seat. The challengers, Brent Driskill and Kent Taylor, did not attack Prieto, but talked about their own backgrounds and positions on the issues. Each challenger told me separately that he was only running because it was the right time in his life to take such a step, not explicitly running against the incumbent. There wasn't much obvious disagreement. Kayla Blount, Oklahoma County GOP chairman, asked great, policy-focused questions. All three seemed thoughtful and intelligent, but only Prieto could talk about the nuts and bolts of turning ideas into legislation. Although I'd be inclined to vote for Kent Taylor for an open seat, Dana Prieto's experience was a deciding factor, along with my inclination, particularly after Majority Whip Bill Coleman's rant, to make sure every Freedom Caucus member made it back into the Legislature.

Both of Colleen McCarty's social-justice non-profits received money from The Just Trust for Education, a criminal justice reform group created and funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the non-profit empire of Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe is a member of the board:

In August 2022, The Just Trust announced the first grantees for its State-by-State Campaign focused on state-level criminal justice reform initially in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. Grantees included ACLU chapters in all four states, as well as the Alabama Justice Initiative, the Pelican Institute, the Louisiana chapter of the Vera Institute for Justice, the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, the Oklahoma Policy Institute, and Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform....

The Just Trust listed the following "2021 Field Advisors": Forward Justice, Dream Corps, JustLeadership USA, the Anti Recidivism Coalition, Reform Alliance, the American Conservative Union Foundation, and Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform.

Just Trust gave McCarty's Oklahoma Appleseed Project $125,000 in 2024 and $90,000 in 2023.

Here's an interesting article from March about Ron Durbin of Guerrilla Publishing: Ronald Edward Durbin II: Oklahoma Attorney Disbarred After 115 Rule Violations, First Amendment Auditing, and a Disciplinary Case the Supreme Court Called Almost in a Class by Itself.

One of the claims against Steve Kunzweiler is he obstructed justice by warning people against signing a grand jury petition. As with all of the attacks on the Tulsa County DA, there's a slight connection to reality but mostly a failure by angry and irrational people to understand the law. 21 O. S. 1593 says, "Every person who, by any false representation, artifice or deceit, procures from another his signature to any instrument, the false making of which would be forgery, and which the party signing would not have executed had he known the facts and effect of the instrument, is guilty of forgery in the second degree, a Class D1 felony offense." So if you're asking people to sign a standalone paper that will be attached and presented as signatures in support of a grand jury petition, but the signers don't have the entire petition to read before they sign, you may be in violation of this law and committing a felony.

Jason Murphey writes that the next Lieutenant Governor should make serving actively as President of the Senate, the only constitutional duty of the office, his first priority:

If I were one of the announced candidates for that position, my first order of business would be to make something clear: once elected, the politicians who have proven unfit for leadership in the Senate--the ones who block grassroots legislation sought by thousands of Oklahomans, while advancing giveaway sought not by the people but by monied special interests, and who, as we saw on the next-to-last day of this year's session, engage in skullduggery and shameful conduct unworthy of the people of Oklahoma--their days are numbered....

And when a conservative senator seeks recognition of the chair to move his legislation off general order--despite the obstinance of a co-opted committee chairman who refuses to hear it--I would recognize him for that motion. That means an open vote, putting every senator on record. No more hiding behind procedure. No more smoke-and-mirrors games that let senators dodge responsibility for a bad vote. Their names--and their votes--would be plain for every Oklahoman to see.

Church friends asked me about the Creek County races, which I hadn't yet looked at. Creek County Assessor Haley Anderson has been challenged by Carl Prescott and District 3 County Commissioner Jarrod Whitehouse has been challenged by Danny Gann. Interestingly, the Assessor's First Deputy is Robin Whitehouse, who is Jarrod Whitehouse's mother. I've been hearing about these kinds of interlocking relationships in county governments, where elected officials will hire each other's relatives so as not to fall afoul of anti-nepotism laws. Don't know if that's what's happening in Creek County. Trying to get some perspective from other friends in Creek County. The two challengers seem credible at first glance.

In House 29, Speaker Kyle Hilbert is being challenged by Sand Springs City Councilor Brian Jackson. Jackson's campaign Facebook page is frequently targeted by Sand Springs citizens upset by his vote to rezone land for a data center. A search for ethics reports from Jackson on the Guardian website comes up empty -- not even a statement of organization. Hilbert is the CAMP candidate, has raised nearly a half-million dollars, and is spreading money around to help his loyal lieutenants with their primaries. I don't see a good option here.