It’s yet another aspect of the 2026 Oklahoma primary election that you’ve probably not read about anywhere else—and why you always make sure to read your OSC missive, to stay in the know: that Democrat blue wave, the type of blue wave that usually occurs in the off-year election cycle in response to the party in power in D.C.?

It’s looking as if it will be skipping Oklahoma this year. At least, that’s the conclusion one will reach upon analyzing the partisan breakdown of the 2026 primary election results in comparison to its most comparable recent election, 2018.

And it’s a story told by this map: the amazing decline of Democrat primary participation from registered Democrat voters when comparing 2026 to 2018.

While, at the time of this writing, three counties have yet to update their voter history files, based on data from the 74 that have, it’s become clear that the Democrat decline from 2018 is of epic proportion, dropping from 39% of the primary voting electorate in 2018 to just 28% in 2026.

That fallout is most pronounced in Coal County.

In March of 2024, Coal County became the last county in Oklahoma to officially flip the red switch, with the Republicans finally gaining the advantage in voter registration, meaning that all 77 counties in Oklahoma are now officially majority Republican.

In that county, 1,547 Democrats cast their primary ballots in 2018. In 2026, just 261 did, dropping Democrat participation from 77% of the county’s voting public in 2018 to just 21.5% in 2026.

In all areas of the state, with the singular exception of Oklahoma County, Democrat participation fell, in some cases to near-nonexistence levels, such as the case of Beaver County, where participation dropped from 13% to just 5%, with only 42 Democrats casting their ballots.

This low participation effectively had the impact of de-anonymizing the votes of Democrats voting in 48 precincts statewide, where the vote for governor was unanimous, usually due to low participation numbers.

My take: there’s simply no excitement in the Democrat base, outside of perhaps Oklahoma County, home to both Cyndi Munson and Connie Johnson, whose bases of support on Oklahoma City’s north side likely allowed Democrat turnout to hold its own in that county, where, contrary to the public narrative, Democrat Party registration, even in Oklahoma County, continues to fall further and further behind, having dropped from 37% of that county’s registration in 2018 to now just 33%.

As the Democrat nominee, Munson simply doesn’t inspire voters in rural Oklahoma, and thus, any Democrat gains in this election cycle will likely be limited to the small number of competitive legislative, urban-area seats, as a best-case scenario; meaning that, in the one year most favorable to Democrats, a once-in-every-eight-years phenomenon, there’s little reason to believe, even if a blue wave washes over the nation as a whole, that more than a few drops of that blue water will land in Oklahoma.

It gets worse.

There’s another map that also tells a very interesting story: as expected, the “yes” vote on the state question to raise the minimum wage was highly correlated with partisan voting. In areas where Republicans were strong, the state question was defeated, and likewise, that correlation reverses in the Democrats’ strongest precincts.

This would suggest that the state question, also as expected, and likely as intended, boosted turnout among left-leaning voters. To the extent that Democrat turnout was artificially higher based on this turnout, it paints an even more dismal picture for their enthusiasm.

Or, it may also suggest that the left-wing money machine, attempting to impact Oklahoma electoral composition through the initiative petition process, got its sequence of proposals out of whack, having mistakenly first advanced the medical marijuana proposition and then the minimum wage proposal instead of vice versa. Getting their electorate into a state of marijuana-driven non-motivation, then asking those voters to show the initiative to turn out and spike the minimum wage—well, that was perhaps their biggest mistake.

The Most Fascinating Map of the Election Cycle

It’s perhaps the most interesting map of the entire 2026 election cycle: the correlation map between GOP-voting precincts and the “no” vote on State Question 832. It’s the type of map one could spend hours analyzing; there are so many fascinating narratives to discover.

As expected, at the statewide level, the correlation between partisan turnout and the “no” vote is heavy: 583 precincts, with the most lopsided GOP turnout, also heavily defeated the question. Another 821 precincts with GOP-leaning turnout defeated the proposal. Meanwhile, the Democrat precincts shared the inverse correlation.

And don’t look now, at least if you are the State Chamber type, but let’s just say that your Keating/Merrick precincts tended to correlate more heavily with the no vote, and in a couple of key races, there’s a similar correlation between your Swamp 7 supporter, who voted “yes,” and the inverse with the grassroots challengers whose supporters appear to have defeated the state question.

It’s yet one of the small reminders of how corporate welfare has corrupted the soul of the State Chamber, turning it into just another tool to be used by those who would like to make some bank on the power of government, because at its core, when addressing across-the-board, pro-business issues, sans the legalized corruption of corporate welfare, the most free-market-minded voters are indeed the grassroots conservatives, not the sick establishment politicians who are playing the money game. And because those conservatives operate on principle, not money, the Chamber doesn’t have to spend a penny to pick up their support, so long as the Chamber’s priorities truly align with the free market, instead of a state-managed economy that’s more characteristic of a socialist scheme. But all of that is best analyzed on another day.

The geographic nature of the correlation is certainly intriguing.

Opposition to the question is a bit lighter in the east, where the Trump endorsement of Mazzei carried the day in the governor’s race, with, at my best guess, a certain, perhaps small subset of the MAGA Trump base appearing to cross over to support the plan.

But, notably, the “yes” vote fared much better in the suburban Republican precincts than the exurban and rural precincts, showing that government price fixing and socialist economics takes root in those urbanized areas and the wisdom of the founding fathers when they designed a government which gives balance to the rural areas first, with policies such as the electoral college, and state-based Senate seat allocation.

But, to the point of this article: even with a minimum-wage state question on the ballot, and even with an off-year election cycle that should favor the party out of power in Washington, and even with a Democratic gubernatorial nominee from Oklahoma County, the Democrats’ statewide turnout picture remains remarkably weak.

The blue wave may be forming somewhere else. But in Oklahoma, at least for now, it appears to be breaking before it ever reaches the shore.

The Vanishing Democrat Vote in Oklahoma
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




July 13, 2026 at 07:07AM - J Murphey

As this year’s Senate session came to a close, Sen. Dusty Deevers took to the Senate floor for what we now know was likely his final day in legislative session—at least for now. There, Deevers, the Senate’s leading advocate for opening up the rules and allowing senators to actually do their job, forever sealed the legacy of his first term on the side of transparency.

Deevers simply sought a vote on key legislation that no Republican senator would dare return home and tell their constituents they opposed.

It was a key part of the Trump agenda: a proposal to check for and expose medical welfare fraud by illegal aliens, which many senators had already voted to advance out of committee and place on the Senate floor for a final vote.

Deevers called the bluff of Senate leaders and exposed the smoke-and-mirrors game they were playing.

The courage of Deevers and his allies, and the dastardliness of the senators playing this smoke-and-mirrors game, have been widely analyzed within grassroots circles.

There is, however, a fascinating component of the now-infamous episode that has not received the analysis it deserves.

The Senate’s ability to bottle up the bill depended upon the Senate floor leader’s refusal to bring it to a vote, even though the Senate had voted to make the bill eligible for the vote, in what in retrospect was almost certainly a faux vote, purely for show so that those senators could claim to have supported the Trump plan, without having enacted it, thus keeping the monied special interests happy: i.e., eating their cake, and having it too.

As Deevers took to the floor, under the Senate leadership’s interpretation of the rules that day, in the most technical sense, one person—not the members of the Senate—held all the cards: Majority Floor Leader Julie Daniels.

This allowed just about every other member to play the smoke-and-mirrors game of helplessness: passing the buck, hiding behind Daniels’s skirt tails, and suggesting that it was her sole decision to refuse a vote on the bill.

Now, ask just about any voter in Daniels’ Senate District 29 if they support analyzing, exposing, and ending the healthcare welfare spending for illegal alien fraud, and time and again, they will say, “Yes!”

But Daniels—well, she’s a lame duck, not at all likely worried about the sentiments of those voters. So she won’t likely mind being the fall guy, the sole reason for it’s failure.

Allow me to suggest that those voters are the victims of the big grift, the same big grift that any number of other Oklahomans just fell victim to in recent days, as they re-elected members of the Swamp Seven on a platform of hardline opposition to all things illegal alien invasion, time and again sending out consultant-crafted messaging with Trump clip art, or shaking the hand of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the official in charge of the matter at the federal level.

But it’s Daniels who most clearly illustrates the grift. She could have easily said, “OK, we will hear that bill now,” albeit perhaps at great risk to her standing with Senate Pro Tem Paxton and the dark-moneyed special interests who ensure the survival of the Swamp Seven and Paxton’s position of power. And just two short years ago, she campaigned to her very conservative electorate, as did more recently the Swamp Seven, as an immigration hardliner.

Certainly, she did not campaign on a platform of single-handedly and in the most tyrannical of fashions refusing to give the Senate even the chance to cast a vote on key immigration reforms.

But it’s not as if the voters of Senate District 29 hadn’t been warned. They, unlike so many other districts, had their own Paul Revere—an individual of great courage and conviction. At great personal sacrifice, she spent substantial time traveling throughout the district, informing voters that Daniels had already betrayed them by supporting an official Oklahoma government identity for illegal alien invaders. This was the now-infamous driver’s license proposal brought before the Senate by a liberal Oklahoma City Democrat immigration attorney.

This modern-day Paul Revere has served her neighbors time and again, standing in the gap that no one else will fill, to take on the unthinkable: challenging an establishment incumbent with tens of thousands of dollars at their command and the ability to obfuscate any issue, any past transgression, and convince the voters that they are in fact the “conservative” choice.

Wendi Stearman knew she faced long odds, but she knew that voters needed the option of doing the right thing, even if they didn’t choose to exercise it.

As she sought to stave off Stearman’s strong challenge, and courageous truth telling, Daniels’ 2024 re-election followed the usual consultant-crafted formula: time and again, flood the mailboxes declaring herself to be a hardliner, make a very personal commitment to defending those values, and then attack the opposition for “misleading,” but of course never substantively answer the specifics of any of the opposition’s charges, because of course, they weren’t misleading—they were spot on.

It’s a flawed system, as shown by a glossy mailer claiming Daniels was protecting “state resources” on illegal immigration—an ironic claim given she just blocked the Senate’s ability to do exactly that, even after many senators voted to consider the bill.

The reader will also note how skillfully Daniel’s consultant sought to obscure her vote for the illegal alien driver’s license by a little-known amendment vote, that’s rather difficult to even confirm. This, in tandem with Daniel’s mailer declaring her opponent to be “mudslinging,” would no doubt create enough confusion among voters to give them the fig leaf they needed to keep Daniels in office, perhaps leading them to believe that Stearman was mistaken or, worse, intentionally misleading—which, of course, she was not.

Daniel’s content writer followed a familiar establishment playbook: obscure the issue, then attack and discredit. T

The Warning Senate District 29 Ignored: How Senate Majority Floor Leader Julie Daniels Proved Wendi Stearman Right
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




July 9, 2026 at 08:31AM - J Murphey

Those who have given in to the doom and gloom surrounding the potential return of establishment Senator Lonnie Paxton to preside over the State Senate are overlooking one very important factor—a wildcard that simply isn’t being properly analyzed.

And it’s not the only important observation from the 2026 Republican primary that isn’t being given its proper attention.

Consider the following.

A nearly nine-decade pattern in Oklahoma politics now appears poised to be broken: Not since Leon “Red” Phillips won the governorship in 1938 has a former speaker of the Oklahoma House—the holder of what is arguably the most powerful political office in state government—subsequently become either governor or lieutenant governor.Others have tried.

In 2006, even as Oklahoma was steadily moving into the Republican column, Todd Hiett—the first Republican House speaker in more than eight decades—ran for lieutenant governor. He was defeated, suffering the same fate that had befallen former Democratic Speaker Steve Lewis in his 1990 gubernatorial bid.

It is a striking political paradox: The speaker controls recognition, committee appointments, committee membership, and the referral of bills—extraordinary institutional powers. Yet, despite all that power, the office has proved an exceptionally poor launching pad for the governor’s mansion.

But there’s an even more striking paradox: the sharp contrast between the two ex–House speakers vying for the offices of governor and lieutenant governor during this election.

The first was T.W. Shannon, who became House speaker at the height of the transparency movement that defined the first generation of majority Republicans. Shannon embraced the concept. As speaker-elect, he commissioned a committee to apply a new generation of transparency principles to the House rules.

As Shannon prepared to take office, that committee met repeatedly and ultimately proposed a remarkable reform: removing control of the House floor agenda from the speaker’s office and vesting it instead in a committee meeting publicly, where the public itself could observe its deliberations.

Under the proposal, only that committee could determine what legislation reached the House floor. Not a backroom group. Not the majority leader. Not even the speaker.

The concept was this: on the road to transparency, this would be a big step. If a bill came out of committee with a do-pass recommendation, then it would no longer be possible for one tyrannical individual, behind closed doors, to stop that bill from being heard. And any member of the committee, known as the “Calendar Committee” could propose that the bill be added to the House agenda.

In endorsing this plan, Shannon had given away a considerable amount of his power. No longer was the floor agenda a matter of smoke and mirrors; rather, it was a public committee casting public votes, for which its members could be held accountable.

But what the public never did see, but I did, was what Shannon didn’t do: he didn’t attempt to become an imperial speaker.

For you see, Shannon was subject to the House Republican caucus’s four-year term limit for speakers—a common-sense rule reflecting the American principle that political power should be temporary rather than permanent.

But Shannon wasn’t set to be term-limited from his House seat for another eight years.

And so the suggestion quickly started circulating, under the faux logic of putting the House on parity with the Senate—which apparently had no such limitation on their president pro tempore—that we, the Republican caucus, should remove that rule.

But to Shannon’s great credit, he never attempted to do so. He left the rule in place, meaning that had he stayed in the House throughout his full term as state representative, he would have spent the last four years on the back benches with the regular members of the House.

By complete contrast, four short years later, one of the first actions of Charles McCall’s leadership team was to do the exact opposite. They struck the caucus term limit and endowed McCall with what would become known as the imperial speakership—or, a title McCall would later endow himself with, Speaker Maximus.

Under the imperial speakership, McCall and his lieutenants steadily stripped power from rank-and-file members and concentrated authority in the speaker’s office. By the time McCall departed, an individual representative scarcely retained the practical authority to rise and make a motion on the House floor.

The practice remains alive today, as House Speaker Kyle Hilbert’s appointed majority floor leader, Josh West, refuses requests to enter motions.

Put simply: without that right, there are few reasons to even elect state representatives in the first place. The state should simply save the expense and directly elect the speaker in a statewide vote.

Against that backdrop, the contrast in their political fortunes is difficult to ignore. Shannon won his nomination outright in a crowded six-way primary and now appears poised to become the first former House speaker in nearly nine decades to reach higher statewide office. McCall, despite spending millions on his gubernatorial campaign, finished fifth.

One gave up great power.

The other seized more of it.

Had McCall followed Shannon’s example, had he accepted the advice of his wisest advisors and returned the House to the path of transparency, he could have had a real campaign, of real accomplishments, that meant something to the average voters. He had all the money he ever needed to deliver a campaign message, but despite all of those years as perhaps Oklahoma’s most powerful office holder, he had no credible campaign message.

So, that paradox aside, here’s what people are overlooking:

Shannon knows what transparency looks like.

He came of age, politically, as a first-generation majority Republican who knew a time when Republicans had been in the minority and aspired to reform the legislature.

The question is, does he still hold those values?

If so, he will look at what occurred in the Senate on the last day of this year’s session, when the Senate’s presiding officer refused to allow a vote on one of the Trump administration’s top priorities, and he will see an opportunity: to do in the Senate what he did in the House—restore transparency to a body whose reputation for open and robust debate was so badly damaged that day.

If he wins in November, Shannon will need to understand the role in two key respects. First, the Senate has historically been a forum for open deliberation, giving its members greater latitude to bring forward debate than their counterparts in the House. That tradition has helped define the institution—at least until the recent leadership decisions so diminished its deliberative standing.

Second, will Shannon recognize that the lieutenant governor’s role is more than ceremonial and choose to actively preside over the Senate out of a sense of responsibility to both the office and the public, as the Constitution envisions?

That is the wildcard few are discussing: the possibility that Paxton could, at least to some extent, be checked by Shannon, who has a record of advancing transparency and openness.

For Shannon, the easy path is to do what most do in the lieutenant governor’s office: coast. Waiting for his turn to move into the big house.

But, Shannon didn’t take the easy path last time.

And, here’s betting that he might not do it this time either.

Coming Thursday: When Oklahoma Senate Majority Floor Leader Julie Daniels held up a key part of President Trump’s welfare-fraud agenda, she did more than help Senate leadership keep a conservative reform bottled up.

She proved her 2024 challenger, Wendi Stearman, right.

Can’t wait until Thursday?

Paid subscribers can read the article now at the OSC Article Preview page, a special benefit reserved as a special thank you for those who make this work possible.

The State Senate Wildcard Nobody Is Talking About
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




July 7, 2026 at 08:31AM - J Murphey

In this first-ever Oklahoma State Capital AMA, special to the paid subscribers of OSC, we will take a closer look at the questions you’ve been asking Jason Murphey: whether OSC was unfair to Jon Echols; which OSC post went most viral; the number of free and paid subscribers to OSC; what’s next for the No Lobbyist Money pledge; and how campaign dynamics are shaping up for 2028.

We also break down the mechanics of dark money, whether it should be “outlawed” in Oklahoma, and offer practical advice for grassroots candidates of the future, and more.

Let’s get started.

Why did you start writing again?

It all started with a call from Marven Goodman, the publisher of The Sooner Sentinel. He had attended a meeting where an officeholder was speaking. I had substantially supported this officeholder during the previous election. Goodman sat quietly in the back and observed what was going on. He knew right away that something was wrong, and he brought to my attention that the candidate wasn’t holding to the values of small-government conservatism.

For me, it wasn’t an uncommon phenomenon: helping someone run, and then feeling betrayed.

Candidates take advantage of good-hearted volunteers who still believe in the foundational principles of our nation, principally small government, and invest their most important resource, God-given stewardship over time, because they just want to do their part to save our nation by electing those who purport to hold our views.

But then, once those candidates get elected, they act as if we are naive for believing they, the now-all-wise governing officials, can stick to their campaign “rhetoric,” and they ignore or dismiss the concerns of the most loyal volunteers who helped them get to that position.

For me, though, this ended up being a type of last straw. The last betrayal. I couldn’t keep making the same mistake: helping candidates, and taking their word for it that they would actually govern as small-government conservatives. It hardly ever happens.

So I figured that I could best make a difference by returning to writing, educating, training, and even reporting, some of which I had already done dating back to 2000. To the extent that I would help, or even endorse, candidates in the future, I am mostly limiting those endeavors to assisting those who made clear and specific commitments before getting elected, such as the No Lobbyist Money Pledge.

Read more

Why I Started Writing Again—and What Comes Next
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




July 6, 2026 at 04:26PM - J Murphey

A few days ago, I described the dark art by which the state’s foremost political muckrakers take facts that may be technically true, strip them of context, and weave an entirely new narrative—one that bears little resemblance to the truth.

Those skilled in this art often avoid legal liability by carefully avoiding any statement that, in the narrowest technical sense, their victim could prove they knew to be false.

The now-infamous AI ad depicting Mike Mazzei meeting with and embracing Hillary Clinton—and branding him a “Clinton lover”—is yet another example of this dark art.

The underlying fact is true: In 2014, Mazzei voted for Senate Bill 906, which would have placed Oklahoma in the National Popular Vote compact. It was a terrible vote.

But the extrapolation—that Mazzei loved Hillary Clinton or cast the vote because he wanted her elected—is not established by that vote.

Indeed, the evidence points toward a very different explanation, a much more mundane line of attack: Mazzei likely, and naively, believed the proposal would help Republicans.

Now, more than a decade removed from what I believe was one of the greatest political confidence games ever attempted at the Oklahoma Capitol—a behind-the-scenes story to be told another day—the average Fox News–watching Republican who saw that ad probably has not clue how the National Popular Vote was marketed to Republican legislators in 2014.

But those who inhabited the Capitol world at the time remember it well. Notably, these are many of the same behind-the-scenes players active today.

The lobbyists did not walk into Republican offices and announce that their proposal might one day deliver Oklahoma’s electoral votes to Hillary Clinton.

They sold it as a way to help Republicans.

Consider one of Oklahoma’s best-known political consultants, Chad Alexander.

Name almost any major establishment campaign from the past two decades, and there is a fair chance Alexander has been involved. Most recently, he helped get Jon Echols across the finish line in the Republican primary for attorney general.

More important to this story, Alexander was one of the high-profile advocates for National Popular Vote in 2014.

Consider Exhibit A of how the Oklahoma City establishment was making this case: Alexander’s 2016 personal response to my tweet opposing the proposal, just weeks before Trump defeated Clinton.

That response is important because, just two years after that 2014 vote, it illustrates Alexander still making the same sales pitch used to move Oklahoma Republican legislators toward the National Popular Vote compact.

The argument went something like this: Because Oklahoma’s presidential outcome was considered predetermined, Oklahoma voters didn’t show up on general election day. If there were a national popular vote, disengaged Republican voters would turn out and then vote for Republican candidates all the way down the ballot.

It was convoluted reasoning, but it was presented as a Republican turnout strategy.

The lobbyists did not emphasize how the compact would strip Oklahoma voters of control over Oklahoma’s electoral votes. They did not dwell on the differing election procedures among the states that allow blue state activists to cheat in a way red state voters would never tolerate. And they certainly did not emphasize how the wisdom of the founding fathers has created the Electoral College to favor the standing of rural voters, and that by bypassing this wisdom, Oklahoma lawmakers were committing a great malpractice against those they were supposed to represent.

Instead, they overwhelmed lawmakers with purportedly conservative arguments for supporting it.

I still remember the enormous book National Popular Vote advocates left in legislators’ offices. It must have contained close to a thousand pages explaining why the proposal was supposedly sensible.

I doubt any legislator actually read it. But its sheer size created the impression that there must be an overwhelming intellectual case for the idea.

The lobbying campaign did not stop with legislators. I also remember receiving a call from the leader of one of Oklahoma’s largest and most influential grassroots conservative organizations, informing me that he, too, intended to support National Popular Vote.

The lobbyists knew how to present the proposal to conservative audiences, and they took more than a few conservative legislators to school.

Mazzei appears to have been among them.

That does not excuse his vote.

But there remains an enormous difference between these two claims:

A naive Mike Mazzei cast poorly informed vote for National Popular Vote.

And:

Mike Mazzei loved Hillary Clinton and wanted to help elect her president.

The first claim is supported by the record.

The second assigns him a motive that the record does not establish.

That distinction becomes especially important when considering the political network responsible for the attack.

The operator of the political group airing the AI-generated anti-Mazzei ad was connected to CAMP Political, the firm running Gentner Drummond’s campaign. And Stephanie Alexander—Chad Alexander’s wife and longtime political partner—served as a top Drummond campaign official.

And, of course, who took to the Senate floor to ask Mazzei to support the proposal? That was Sen. Rob Johnson, who, until earlier this year, served as Gentner Drummond’s chief of staff.

Drummond’s independent-expenditure group is asking viewers to reject Mazzei as a “Clinton lover” for voting for a bill sponsored by a man whom Drummond himself later trusted to serve as his chief of staff.

I cannot prove who wrote the ad’s script, but I have no doubt that they understand the circumstances, given their likely association with the same personalities who made the case to Republicans in 2014.

Mazzei deserves criticism for his National Popular Vote vote.

But he deserves criticism for the vote he actually cast—not for a motive invented more than a decade later by political operatives seeking to destroy him.

Mike Mazzei was not trying to elect Hillary Clinton.

He was a Republican legislator who bought the lobbyists’ faux-Republican reasoning and cast a very bad vote.

That may demonstrate gullibility. It may demonstrate legislative malpractice. It may demonstrate the power of well-connected lobbyists to lead Republican officeholders away from the interests of their own voters.

But it does not make Mazzei a “Clinton lover.”

And for political professionals who knew the real history of that 2014 lobbying campaign to suggest otherwise makes this one of the most dishonest attacks of the 2026 election cycle.

And that is a difficult neighborhood to break into.

A “Clinton Lover”? The truth behind that controversial Mike Mazzei AI video.
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




July 2, 2026 at 08:30AM - J Murphey

In an election cycle when Oklahoma’s Senate leaders would have you believe voters endorsed its policies, the establishment’s own gubernatorial candidate, Gentner Drummond, closed his campaign by attacking what may have been the Paxton crew’s most defining “achievement” of the previous legislative term: a massive giveaway to a sovereign wealth corporation owned by the United Arab Emirates.

The $255 million giveaway was filed by House Appropriations Chairman Trey Caldwell over a weekend and became a fait accompli in the House by the following Tuesday at 3:26 in the afternoon.

The public had virtually no opportunity to become aware of the proposal, much less organize against it. To the extent legislators knew about it beforehand, that knowledge appears to have been confined to a special committee whose members were likely prevented from making public disclosures by some form of nondisclosure agreement.

In my view, requiring legislators to keep such consequential public policy secret is an affront to their constitutional responsibility to represent the people.

Yes, several high-profile establishment candidates aligned with Senate Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton were reelected. But the election data appears to show that some of them did so by riding Drummond’s coattails—the same establishment candidate whose principal closing message condemned the most defining policy of the legislative establishment those candidates represented: the UAE giveaway.

The irony is striking.

Drummond apparently concluded that the people of Oklahoma do not support massive corporate-welfare giveaways. He believed it strongly enough to make the issue central to his closing campaign.

I believe he was correct. It was also savvy politics.

One is certainly entitled to suspect that it was nothing more than politics. Nevertheless, it is affirming to see the most insidery of insiders—a candidate with access to the state’s best campaign infrastructure, consultants, dark money, and polling—define his campaign around opposition to this giveaway.

But it is not just the policy; it is the process—or lack thereof—that allowed this to happen. That process is an indictment of Paxton, his cadre of allied senators, and the House establishment as well. It is opaque, abusive, and difficult for the public to fully grasp—and that should concern us all. Yet it was foreseen by none other than Thomas Jefferson.

In his December 1787 correspondence with James Madison about the proposals emerging from the Constitutional Convention, Jefferson offered his opinion on the need for a bill of rights and wisely observed:

“I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.”

With remarkable foresight, he continued:

“I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.”

Then, in a postscript—almost as if it were an afterthought—Jefferson offered a proposal that, had it been adopted by the nation’s legislative bodies, would almost certainly have prevented Oklahoma’s $255 million UAE giveaway:

“P.S. The instability of our laws is really an immense evil. I think it would be well to provide in our constitutions that there shall always be a twelvemonth between the ingrossing a bill and passing it: that it should then be offered to it’s passage without changing a word: and that if circumstances should be thought to require a speedier passage, it should take two thirds of both houses instead of a bare majority.”

Imagine the benefit to those Oklahoma legislators who cast this ticking-time-bomb vote—a pox on their future political ambitions—a vote for a giveaway so toxic that it became the flagship closing issue of the establishment candidate for governor—had they been given a year to evaluate it.

How many would still have supported it after the public had time to scrutinize the proposal, identify who truly stood to benefit, assess its costs, and perhaps conclude that it was a special law in violation of the state Constitution’s prohibition on such corrupt policies?

The bill would not have stood a chance, particularly in an election year.

That is the wisdom of Jefferson’s proposal.

If the Legislature insists on returning to Oklahoma City every year—an unnecessary and wasteful expenditure of taxpayer resources—then, at the very least, its two-year session should be divided into two phases.

The first year should be devoted to constructing, introducing, examining, and amending legislation. The second should be reserved for final passage, after the people of Oklahoma have had an opportunity to study the proposals and make their voices heard.

No more final-passage votes after only a few hours of public transparency.

A genuine emergency could still be addressed under Jefferson’s model, but only with a two-thirds vote of both houses rather than a bare majority.

And if Jefferson is not to your liking, perhaps the example of Oklahoma’s first generation of majority House Republicans will be.

Those Republicans remembered what it was like to serve in the minority. They remembered decrying the many abuses committed by the Democratic majority, and they sought to ensure that Republicans would not repeat them once they gained power.

As a member of that group, I knew our goal was to prevent major policy from being inserted into legislation late in the session, when legislators had little time for deliberative consideration.

When a legislator attempted to advance a “shell” bill, he had better have had a compelling reason for doing so.

The House rules were constructed around this reform. They attempted to limit late-session legislation to genuine matters of appropriation—not sweeping policy proposals concealed inside “budget” bills.

Today, the House and Senate routinely insert major policy into shell bills late in the session. These proposals can carry enormous consequences, yet they advance with almost no transparency or public scrutiny.

This is an invitation to legalized corruption of the highest order, especially in an era when the courts have green-lighted special laws and giveaways benefiting specific recipients despite the state Constitution’s clear prohibition against such conduct.

All of this leads to two conclusions.

First, this is why what initially appears to be a boring debate over House and Senate rules becomes one of the most important issues at the Capitol. When your representative or senator votes for rules that allow these abuses, that legislator is voting to enable a sick system.

Second, if legislators insist on continuing this conduct, the time should soon come when the people of Oklahoma must amend the state Constitution through the initiative process and impose the restraints their policymakers refuse to impose upon themselves.

Allow me to suggest that Jefferson’s proposal would make for an excellent starting point.

Thomas Jefferson’s Answer to Oklahoma’s $255 Million Giveaway to the United Arab Emirates
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




July 1, 2026 at 11:10AM - J Murphey

Good news: A picture tells a thousand words, so, in a stunning departure from the norm, I won’t need to treat you to one of my patented super-lengthy, in-depth analyses. You can simply see it with your own eyes.

Just published at OklahomaStateCapital.com, check out the color-coded interactive map showing the 2026 governor’s race, right down to the precinct level. It turns the casual politico into a bit of a campaign insider, allowing viewers to quickly observe some of the most fascinating narratives from the 2026 Republican gubernatorial primary.

For example, you can’t miss it: It’s back—the clear dividing line between Western Oklahoma, with its Midwestern sensibilities and roots in the original Oklahoma Territory, now once again distinctly separated from the Osage Nation and Indian Territory.

The former was all in for Chip Keating and Jake Merrick, with the two trading precinct leads back and forth. Merrick carried his Canadian County base—one of Oklahoma’s largest counties, ranking fourth in the state in raw voting power—and scored a stunner in Garfield County, the ninth-largest county in raw votes. Keating had to settle for a decent consolation prize: Woodward County, which ranks 35th in the state.

Moving east, Drummond flexed his support in his home county, Osage County, and the surrounding counties, with a corridor of support extending from Barnsdall in the east, thriving in the Stillwater precincts, and reaching all the way to Coyle in the west before slamming into a wall of Logan County conservatives who haven’t yet quite developed a taste for Drummond’s John McCain-style maverick liberalism.

In the Drummond corridor, it is reasonable to infer that Drummond provided coattails for establishment Swampy Seven senators Coleman and Hall, who, aside from Lincoln County’s Grant Green, were the most at risk of defeat. An overlay of these races shows that where Drummond was strong—in Osage, Pawnee, and Payne counties—so were his Swampy Seven counterparts, a benefit that Green, who nearly went down to defeat, did not have.

It is just one of the unique variables of the 2026 contest that happened to favor the establishment: Two of its most vulnerable members benefited from that extra 10-point-ish tick upward in favor of the establishment’s gubernatorial candidate of choice.

Little Dixie tells its own story. Drummond’s failure to hold his own against Mazzei suggests that his Little Dixie base—a base that had been key to his razor-thin 2022 defeat of conservative incumbent Attorney General John O’Connor—has eroded, perhaps because voters are no longer motivated by his pro-Indian-tribe branding.

It is a warning sign for Drummond that will become a pivotal question in the August runoff: Does Mazzei’s Trump endorsement mean more to those Little Dixie voters than tribal issues—issues that perhaps now cut more against Drummond after four more years of McGirt insanity have opened the eyes of both tribal and nontribal Oklahomans who have been so greatly harmed by those policies?

There is a slight silver lining for Drummond. While the detailed map of Drummond’s relative strength, compared with his 2022 performance, shows a decline in 219 of Little Dixie’s 306 precincts, that decline is heavily correlated with areas where Charles McCall was strong.

McCall finished in second place in Little Dixie, where he overtook Drummond but fell short of Mazzei.

In Little Dixie, McCall could play kingmaker. No doubt, establishment forces will be quick to remind him that he is, in fact, one of their own. Even if it is simply by staying silent and working behind the scenes, his loyalty to the establishment will likely dictate that he do whatever he can to get Drummond across the finish line.

If Drummond is to get across that finish line, it will be on the strength of Oklahoma County votes, where the north OKC metro provides perhaps the most fascinating breakdown of the four geographic classifications: urban, suburban, exurban, and rural. This is a concept I describe at some length in my upcoming book, a guide to running for office, as it is an essential element of truly understanding a district.

Starting in downtown Oklahoma City and working north, one will note Drummond scoring as high as 50 percent in the precincts he won. Even when bested by Chip Keating, whose previous run for the House took place on the northwest side of the metro, Drummond still scored well above his statewide average. This suggests that, if he can pick up those northwest Oklahoma City Keating votes—an area where Keating’s endorsement carries value—he may have a path to offsetting Mazzei’s Tulsa strength.

Drummond’s support holds well into the Edmond suburbs, where Mazzei begins to perform, and the two start trading precincts. Once one reaches the Logan County line, however, the exurbs begin. These contain a mix of blue-collar “section-liners” who moved to the exurbs to escape the cities, combined with modern, Edmond-style neighborhood invaders.

Here, likely on the strength of the section-liners, Mazzei gains the upper hand, carrying much of southern Logan County’s exurbs.

Once one passes that initial wave of exurbs, however, Jake Merrick country begins. It marks the start of an expanse in which Merrick and Keating trade precinct for precinct. This territory extends from the end of the metro’s Logan County exurban sprawl to the New Mexico state line, wrapping around the metro to the west, north, and east before yielding to the old Indian Territory back-and-forth between Drummond and Mazzei.

And then, another observation of note: All throughout the state, even in areas dominated by other candidates, there is that one inner-city precinct where one is likely to conclude that the local public education establishment—and perhaps the government-dependent chamber types—holds sway, and where, invariably, Drummond picks it off.

One usually needs to zoom far in to see it, but time and again, it is there: the compact, inner-city precinct where Drummond pops upward by 10 points or so, bucks the local trend, and, in that one precinct, grabs the win from the other candidates.

It is a fascinating trend, and if the constitutional conservative is in any doubt, it is yet another confirmation: Drummond is not your candidate. He is the choice of the institutionalist insiders.

But let’s go back to Indian Territory, where Drummond holds his own but Mazzei’s strength is notable. From time to time, one can also take note of the power of the grassroots, as certain anomalous Jake Merrick precincts appear seemingly out of nowhere in a sea of Mazzei blue and Drummond green.

I believe this phenomenon reflects the work of grassroots organizations. Their work in these communities is now visible from a mile-high view of the results—no zooming in required.

And finally, perhaps the most interesting observation of all: the Inola exurbs.

Here, as with the Logan County example, one would normally expect that, as the viewer navigates east out of Tulsa through the Broken Arrow suburbs, Drummond would settle into his normal 20-to-30-percent band. Indeed, just outside Tulsa County, Wagoner County’s Precinct 101 shows Drummond right on his mark, finishing second to Mazzei.

But as one continues east and draws closer to Inola, the trend reverses. There, Drummond jumps to more than 50 percent, winning with a very rare outright majority in what, for much of the election cycle, was set to be some of the most enthusiastic Mazzei country—the exurbs of Mazzei’s strong south Tulsa suburban base.

But when that precinct gave Drummond the win—a precinct, by the way, that voted for grassroots conservative champion state Rep. Tom Gann with 80 percent of the vote—the swing helped throw the entire exurban county of Rogers to Drummond. The county fell into Drummond’s column by a single vote.

In the two Inola-area precincts, Mazzei’s support dropped into third place behind Merrick, who was a clear beneficiary of Mazzei’s smelter flip-flop.

And then, just for fun, you’ve got to check out the Merrick-v.-McCall map.

On one side: a half-term senator who spent just enough time at the Capitol to see how corrupt it had become—and escaped with his soul intact. Jake Merrick then became a groundbreaking gubernatorial candidate: the first to campaign on the No Lobbyist Pledge, with less than six figures to spend on his statewide campaign.

On the other side: the Imperial Speaker of the House, the longest-serving speaker in state history—a man who embodied Oklahoma’s powerful establishment, ushered in an era of corporate welfare on steroids, helped advance legalized corruption on a scale never before seen, and had millions of dollars at his disposal.

The insurgent versus the empire.

It’s all there on the map.

If you enjoyed this type of analysis, you might also enjoy the breakdown of the superintendent of public instruction race, which you will also find on the OSC website. It’s a fascinating observation of how those politicians who for years pandered and shilled for the education establishment, in the legislature, simply weren’t supported by the Republican electorate.

A link to the various OSC maps may be found online at https://www.oklahomastatecapital.com/maps.

And, as always, your generous support through paid subscriptions to this Substack makes these types of resources possible.If you have yet to upgrade to a paid subscription, please consider doing so at this time, as OSC continues to provide the tools through which you can become more knowledgeable and better prepared to engage in the battle to return state government to one that is truly of the people—not controlled by monied special interests and their legalized plunder and corruption

And for those who are already paid subscribers, stay tuned for the imminent release of the first OSC AMA.

You won’t want to miss it.

The Map That Explains Oklahoma’s 2026 Republican Primary
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




June 26, 2026 at 02:57PM - J Murphey

Yes, the same Capitol lobbyists and consultant class who, when they are not anonymous, exist in a perpetual state of pandering to those who work in the government-education space show their true selves once given a thin veil of anonymity: mocking and deriding the blue-collar person who resigns herself to the menial task of “driving a school bus,” before deeming herself worthy to join their class of political elites.

Here is my thesis: Some of Oklahoma’s most aggressive dark-money forces—the forces preserving the establishment’s control over the Legislature--are deeply bitter people.

These are the special-interest Democrats of old, now forced to play in the Republican arena. Gone are the days of old, and they aren’t allowed to use their dastardly skillset to elect the Democrats, anymore. Rather, they must keep in power some of the most dishonest people on Earth: Republican politicians who pretend to be conservatives but who are, in actuality, institutionalists, who, were this to be a blue state, would happily seek election under the donkey’s flag.

These now-secret Democrats, governing-class special interests are living a lie, playing a game they don’t want to play. They want to be out-and-out Democrats, but now, especially with their open-primary/jungle-primary scheme sidelined, will never be allowed to be honest.

So, instead, they do what bitter, closeted people tend to do whenever they can get away with it — without being directly exposed: They self-indulge in pure, absolute, unchecked meanness.

One of those self-indulgences is mocking the “ignorant” blue-collar workers who still possess a purity of belief—people whom the self-described intellectual elite view as naive enough to believe in bygone principles and dangerous enough to demand that those principles actually be put into practice, not just talked about in consultant-crafted bullet points during the campaign cycle.

Once one realizes the mindset of this governing class, one can see its fingerprints in its work product.

Exhibit A was recently provided courtesy of the dark-money group known as 2026 Conservative Victory, the anonymous organization, formed as a Delaware LLC operating out of a Yukon Staples store that endlessly spammed the Facebook feeds of the gullible during the final days of the 2026 primary cycle.

The group’s sense of superiority simply oozes from its many attack ads as its creators gleefully kneecap hardworking, ordinary people who simply want to do their part and make a real difference.

Perhaps no ad better demonstrates this tendency than the group’s attack on well-known grassroots personality and House District 39 candidate Ronda Peterson.

Broadcast to a purported audience of more than 100,000, the ad’s smugness is evident from the first utterance of its condescending voice-over: “Oh boy, bus driver Ronda Peterson is running again, and she is following the same tired route,” pictured over a black and white photo of Peterson, and a school bus, doing circles in a cul-de-sac.

The ad then features several of the usual context-murdering references to no-doubt-routine content pulled from Peterson’s social-media accounts before closing with: “It’s time to get off the Ronda Peterson bus. Once and for all.”

Yes, the same Capitol lobbyists and consultant class who, when they are not anonymous, exist in a perpetual state of pandering to those who work in the government-education space quickly show their true selves once given a thin veil of anonymity: mocking and deriding the blue-collar person who resigns herself to the menial task of “driving a school bus,” before deeming herself worthy to join their class of political elites.

A few months earlier, during another election cycle, Peterson had developed a well-known reputation for being a school bus driver after photos emerged of her school bus, its interior decorated for Christmas by Peterson, for which, as I recall, she received the mocking derision from some of the liberal-minded elites.

Allow me to suggest that this photo was a type of Rorschach test, a mirror into one’s soul. Those who are grounded in the real world saw the reality: an employee who took pride in her work and who had managed to not give in to the temptation that haunts and renders ineffective so many in the industry—to stop caring, just do the job, and go home.

No, Peterson was going above and beyond, celebrating Christmas with those students and likely providing them with a memorable experience they wouldn’t soon forget.

Now, I would suggest that the collective value added to society by a single school-district employee in the real world—on the ground, where she is making the most difference—far exceeds that of the entire professional consultant class and its dark-money and lobbyist funders.

She has not given in to the temptation to stop caring or stop trying, despite working an absolutely exhausting job: keeping the kiddos from murdering each other on a daily basis, a challenge complicated only slightly by the unthinkable chore of driving a 40-foot school bus through Edmond’s rush-hour traffic. Meanwhile, the consultant class and its funders, through their arrogance and dishonesty, coarsen society, wear away at its virtues, and, to the extent that society pays attention to their gruesome work product, transition it toward madness.

Put simply, those dark money ads are a direct pipeline directly into the true and actual psyche of those who control the Legislature.

One can detect this same anit-blue collar arrogance in the recent pronouncements from Team Lonnie Paxton as its members promote the narrative that their cause succeeded because they defeated the “populist” elements of the Republican base.

They are now advancing the claim that voters reelected them because these establishment politicians are the all-wise guardians—the “kitchen-table issues” Republicans who do not mind compromising and prefer to focus on practical policy because they know what is best for voters.

It’s obviously frustrating to the grassroots, at least those who still watch the corporate media, forced to stand by and cope with Paxton and his crew of elite establishment goons taking their victory lap.

However, I think that, in all their hubris, these establishment Republicans are walking into a trap.

They are exposing the game for what it really is.

Their post-election rhetoric is far removed from the five bullet points their consultants’ content factory repeatedly churned out through direct mail, video, and text message.

Those bullet points did not declare that the Swampy Seven should be reelected because they were “non-populist” members of the all-wise establishment. They also said little to nothing about the repeated corporate-welfare giveaways, inflation-busting budgets, pork earmarks, lobbyist-carried bills, bureaucratic wish lists, end runs around transparency laws, or refusals to act on conservative legislation—approximately 98% of the Senate’s actual work product.

No, those bullet points attempted to convince voters that these establishment senators were the real “hardliners”—the MAGA Trump Republicans who were fully committed to everything red-meat, MAGA, and conservative.

When Paxton or any other member of the insider political establishment takes to the news media to declare that they are members of the elite establishment—the compromisers—they are mocking the very people they just deceived.

Their voters, all too often, did not support them because they wanted compromisers. They supported them because, by a factor of X, these candidates outspent their underfunded challengers while presenting themselves as something very different from what they, as soon as the polls have closed, claimed to be.

That is the sickness of the game being played. Yet, judging from the public appearances of these candidates, it almost seems that they do not realize they are playing it. It is as though they truly believe the public wants them to be exactly who they are: sellouts of Republican and conservative principles.

That is where one begins to conclude that, for the most part, these elected officials are merely empty pawns.

They are dull-witted suits who enjoy their membership in the political class, are about to receive a substantial pay raise—a subject, by the way, that cannot be overlooked, stay tuned—and are funded at absurd levels by the monied special interests determined to ensure that the populist hordes at the gate never quite break through.

But that is also where their bragging becomes dangerous. Slowly, one voter at a time, they are opening the eyes of those who have been deceived.

And the careful observer of human history cannot help but believe that, one day, sooner than later, all of the factors will align, and the dam will break. As all that money continues to produce diminishing returns, no amount of spending or favorable circumstances will be enough to bail out these political pawns. For now, they remain free to play their game, at least for another two years, never realizing that a day of reckoning—the return of the people’s voice—is on its way.

Until then, the consultant class and the monied special interests, and the closeted Democrats who pretend to be Republicans, will continue doing what they do: destroying those pesky blue collars who deem hold the system to account, funding the unending, deceptive campaign messages that tell Oklahomans just how closely their leaders supposedly share their values and beliefs, then thriving on the largesse that follows when those same out-of-touch leaders return to Oklahoma City to play the political game of legalized corruption.

But the voice of the people will get its opportunity to be heard sooner rather than later.

The only question is: When?

That is where you play a part. You no doubt are in contact with those good-hearted, conservative-minded constitutionalists in your community or sphere of influence who were deceived by an establishment politician during the last election cycle—perhaps even by a member of the Swampy Seven.

Share this update with them, encourage them to subscribe, and, in the next election cycle, there will be one more voter who understands the arrogance of the elites—who are all too happy to deceive them on Election Day and, then, minutes after the polls close, arrogant enough to boldly brag about their deception.

And, to support this work, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. With your ongoing support, great things are planned.

To get a hint of some of these plans, paid subscribers should keep an eye out over the next few days for the first-ever OSC AMA. I will answer questions about why I started writing again, explain how the No Lobbyist Pledge is ready to officially graduate from the proof-of-concept phase ahead of the 2028 primary cycle, and envision how some of those NLM grassroots will go to an all-new level, reaching a next level of viability in the next campaign cycle.

I will also provide an update on my next book, explain the plan to deputize OSC subscribers, and share the story and, for the first time, actual metrics behind a recent post that became OSC’s most viral yet.

Just how far is OSC’s reach?

Stay tuned.

Oh, and one more thing: If you are ready to be brave like Rhonda Peterson—to put your reputation on the line and step out of the real world to clean up the fake world of the Capitol—know that your time to decide will arrive soon.

Reclaiming a House district from the establishment is not normally something that can be done between candidate filing day and Election Day. It takes time, extensive planning, and sustained effort.

So, you must prepare to make that decision sooner rather than later.

The Dark-Money Machine That Mocks a School Bus Driver: These Are The People Who Control Your Legislature
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




June 25, 2026 at 11:15AM - J Murphey

This wasn’t an election cycle in which the voters were asked to decide between the priorities of the conservative elements of the Senate and the moderate elements. It was a competition between two groups: the “hardliners” and the faux “hardliners.”

If you read the last update, you will know that conservatives in the state House held their tenuous beachhead—a story that you’re probably not reading about elsewhere because much of the public’s attention has been focused on the state Senate, complete with the traditional lazy reporting that propagates the usual false narratives.

In an era of social media, these narratives are quickly spread, demoralizing those who have held so much hope for a state government that actually represents the values of its electorate, as opposed to the legalized corruption of the monied special interests.

There are three potential myths in the mainstream:

“Hardline” conservatism was rejected by the electorate, returning Senate control to the reasonable, wise moderates;

It wasn’t close. It was a landslide; and

Conservatism is dead for the next two years, at least.

False Narrative Number One: “Hardline” Conservatism Was Rejected by the Electorate

This framing is perhaps best demonstrated by one outlet’s description of the views of Senate Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton, the titular leader of a “moderate” group, as follows:

“Paxton had framed the contest as a choice between what he called ‘governing Republicans’ and ‘populists,’ arguing that governing requires compromise and coalition-building.”

Here one must ask: With whom is Paxton “compromising”?

The Democrats, now dominated almost exclusively by radical, inner-city liberals?

The bureaucrats, constantly seeking to expand big government?

The lobbyists, so many of whom represent those who are making bank off big government?

The liberal NGO types, who continually try to sneak in the latest blue-state scheme in the reddest state in the union, so as to make it acceptable for the other red states to follow the same course?

And did the voters in those districts held by the Swamp Seven senators re-elect their senators so as to ensure that they will compromise with these elements?

Now, I would be the first to express my disappointment with the electorate, and would embrace the doomerism, had Paxton’s crew of Chuck Hall, Brenda Stanley, and Bill Coleman won re-election on a well-advertised platform of having voted for illegal-alien driver’s licenses because they endorsed Lonnie Paxton’s vision of “compromise.”

Of course, we all know that’s not what they did.

If you lived in one of those districts, you likely received countless mailers describing those incumbents—who we all know are weak compromisers on issues even as important as our nation’s security—in the most “hardline” of terms.

Those senators didn’t win because they were compromisers. They won because they convinced enough of their electorate that they were themselves the “hardliners” on just about every issue, from crime to immigration to tax policy.

This entailed focusing almost exclusively on a set of five hardline bullet points, with the normal pandering to the government classes that previously defined the faux group notably absent—you know, the picture of the politician in the school library talking about how teachers deserve more money, that type of thing.

This time, those establishment campaigns didn’t leave any clue that they were, in fact, the establishment.

Of course, they were funded by those who depend on big government that is anything but reflective of the values of the voter. But that’s the great deception. That’s why the system is so sick: Voters, the employers, are making hiring decisions based on a system that’s built on dishonesty and deception.

This wasn’t an election cycle in which the voters were asked to decide between the priorities of the conservative elements of the Senate and the moderate elements. It was a competition between two groups: the “hardliners” and the faux “hardliners.”

It was an election cycle in which the faux faction, as it always does, had significantly more resources to deploy and, often, the power of incumbency. They convinced the electorate that they were, in fact, the real “hardline” element. A very impactful state question and a contentious governor’s race produced an outsized electorate, meaning the faux group, with its embarrassment of riches, was able to reach the wider audience, even as their massive expenditures, returned a smaller and smaller return on the dollar with each passing election cycle.

You certainly didn’t catch those faux “hardliners” campaigning very much on the issues that dominate much of their time in Oklahoma City: big budgets, pork earmarks, exemptions from central-service controls and transparency laws, mandates to local governments—especially schools—their virtue signaling with blue-state proposals, and especially the corporate-welfare giveaways, on steroids, that have defined the terms of those senators.

So, when the corporate media crow attempts to make their case that constitutional conservatism was rejected at the ballot box, know that this is simply lazy, lazy reporting. The real story wasn’t the rejection of conservative principle and thought, but rather confirmation of its standing with the electorate, as evidenced by the campaign messaging of just about every serious candidate on the ballot that day, whether “hardliner” or faux “hardliner.”

Myth Two: The Senate Vote Was a Wipeout, a Landslide of Epic Proportions

Had just 37 voters in Senate District 28 made the wise choice of voting for the no lobbyist money candidate, Robert Trimbal, instead of being deceived by the message of the swamp’s Grant Green, and had 79 voters in Senate District 32 voted for Dusty Deevers instead of Curtis Erwin, then the issue of the pro tem to be would potentially remain in doubt.

With all of the resources the establishment forces had at their command across the whole state, their lock on the pro tem’s seat appears to have been preserved by little more than 100 votes.

As the ethics filings are posted, we are likely to find that, on average, those establishment candidates and their dark-money forces paid 5x per vote. Such was the likely case in Senate District 20, where Senate Appropriations Chairman Chuck Hall lost the district’s largest county to a challenger who had just a fraction of Hall’s budget.

This money represents the largesse of the taxpayers: Those special interests who funded the establishment’s campaigns, in so many ways, benefit from the size and scope of big government—a big government that has only grown under the “Republican” leadership of the last decade—and it’s not unreasonable to make the case that it is simply laundered money from the taxpayer. The government grew by taking from the taxpayer, and the special interests that depend on large government then reinvested that money back into the re-election of those who will keep growing the government.

Put simply, the Paxton faction might cling to power, but it will have done so not unlike the old Soviet leaders in the declining days of that empire: through deception, backed up by the sheer brute force of resources forcefully taken from others.

Myth Three: The Conservatives Are Entering a Nuclear Winter, With Their Leaders Locked Out of the Decision-Making Processes

This is all dependent on the savvy of both the conservative coalition in the Senate and the incoming governor.

That incoming governor must learn from the mistakes of Kevin Stitt. When Stitt took to social media on the last day of the 2025 session, he spoke loudly and carried no stick. But he tried to bluff, suggesting there would be consequences for the legislators who would override his vetoes and decapitate the leadership of one of his state agencies with no due process or forewarning.

Many of Stitt’s vetoes had been made according to conscience and well-articulated conservative principles. Thus, the conservative coalition in the Senate was the ideal place where those principles could have been defended.

But unfortunately for Stitt, he had never managed to form a consistent coalition that could defend his vetoes, based not on personality or loyalty, but on principles—the very principles that all Republican candidates swear fealty to as they seek election, bu

The Day Every Republican State Senator Became a "Hardliner"
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




June 20, 2026 at 12:03PM - J Murphey

But a funny thing happened this time. The establishment still had its Darth Vader, its stormtroopers, and its dark-money arsenal—but the voters refused to follow the script.

To the naive who don’t realize that much of the Capitol world is just one big smoke-and-mirrors show, it must have looked strange. The mastermind of the 2018 purge of conservatives from the House of Representatives—and “special counsel” to the powerful speaker of the House—Chris Kannady, perhaps rightly perceived as the “brain trust,” the power behind the chair, was clearly desperate to hold the line and ice out conservatives, keeping their bills bottled up and potentially setting the state for the institutionalist challengers to re-claim their seats for the establishment.

Even when the legislation had been requested by the popular Oklahoma Second Amendment Association (OK2A), and even when it meant he had to do the dirty work himself, literally showing up in committee to argue and/or vote against legislation because apparently, a panicky, weak committee chairman was clearly struggling to hold the line and “ice out” the upstarts, determined to have the voice of the people heard.

What was really going on?

To the perceptive, it was clear: an impending purge of the upstart conservative grouping in the House of Representatives was being attempted, and this one, perhaps, was even more sinister than the 2018 purge that had defined and haunted the institution for nearly a decade.

As early as the spring of 2025, it was clear that House leaders, witnessing an independent streak emerge in the House after the 2024 victory of conservative icon Jim Shaw over powerful House Appropriations Chairman Kevin Wallace, were attempting to keep Shaw from so much as receiving a hearing on his legislation. By 2026, it was becoming clear that the kibosh had also potentially been extended to Shaw’s ally, House District 33 Representative Molly Jenkins.

Shaw and Jenkins anchored a group of legislative freshmen who had proved especially resistant to leadership’s traditional efforts to assimilate the freshman class into a moneyed-establishment status quo in which lobbyists and bureaucrats run the show, with an occasional token vote for conservatism—just enough to give the consultant class a set of bullet points, spammed without end to the mailboxes of the gullible of the electorate, keeping voters in the dark about the regime of legalized plunder that dominates much of the House’s actual day-to-day activity.

And by putting these two on ice, along, perhaps, with other conservative leaders such as House District 8’s Tom Gann, the table was set to once again exterminate those pesky ideals of honest, constitutionally minded representation—and the new generation of leaders who attempted to vote according to the principles on which they campaigned—just as the monied establishment had done in 2018.

Indeed, as tracked by the Capitol Conformity Tracker, the mindless “yes” voting, by which members simply rubbers stamp what legislative gate keepers had pre-vetted, had dropped from 94% where it had held steady for several years, to 90%, a significant drop, and a no doubt worrying sign of a house that was becoming more open, and deliberative. And, much of that drop was due to the new generation of freshmen, almost every one, to a man, was voting better than his predecessor.

Now, to be clear, while there were less targets then there had been in 2018, mostly because the population of constitutionalists in the House has not returned to pre-2019 levels, the effort to exterminate conservative leaders was perhaps even more dastardly. There had clearly been considerable forethought and planning, to the point that the tools of the institution itself seemed tuned to keep the conservatives on ice and unable to pass legislation.

The game became especially clear when one committee chairman—clearly not well suited to playing it because he represents a largely principled district, boasting a large number of voters who can see the game for what it is, and facing a challenger who was helping bring the status quo to light—began to give in and hear bills from both Shaw and Jenkins.

Under that pressure, Kannady himself had to appear in committee meetings, cast votes, and throw enough confusion against the wall to stop the bills from moving forward.

To the observant, it was clear: yet another dastardly purge of the conservatives was underway, and its architect? It was very likely the mastermind himself, the term-limited Chris Kannady, set to leave the House in his own image: in full control of the monied special interests, institutionalists, and mindless lemmings.

Indeed, as Kannady and crew struggled to hold the line in the Legislature, the professional consultants and dark-money groups—including the massive, government-subsidized green-energy wind industry and a bizarre new dark-money machine headed by Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt’s special adviser, Dustin Hillary—were already working the districts, attacking the conservatives and clearing the path for their challengers. Those challengers seemed all too happy to benefit from playing stormtrooper to Kannady and the establishment’s Darth Vader in what was clearly intended to be the sequel: The Empire Strikes Back.

But a funny thing happened this time. The establishment still had its Darth Vader, its stormtroopers, and its dark-money arsenal—but the voters refused to follow the script.

The constituencies of House Districts 8, 32, and 33 not only withstood wave after wave of dark-money attacks, but stood by their constitutionalist incumbents by significant margins.

In House District 8, Tom Gann—the conservative leader whose willingness to stand on principle has placed him at the center of the “Gann was right” meme, giving him the well-deserved air of a prognosticator—defeated a well-orchestrated attempt to reclaim the district by the old Democratic machine that once dominated Oklahoma politics.

The State Chamber-endorsed “Republican” son of a former Democratic majority leader, ran on a platform of government-subsidized industry and the unfortunate slogan “Not Just Standards, but Results”—a clear swipe at the principled Gann, whose campaign motto, “Raising the Standard,” has since become the motto of the no-lobbyist movement as it has spread statewide.

For the now-term-limited Gann, who began his involvement in state-level politics with a 1990s-era campaign in which he gave a prominent Democratic senator all he could handle in deep-blue Little Dixie, it was a fitting final election as he stopped the resurgent remnants of that same old corrupt machine from co-opting the Republican Party in his district.

In House District 32, Jim Shaw absolutely demolished his challenger, winning all but a single precinct. The result proved that a principled constituency will stand behind its leader regardless of the circumstances and sent a strong message to Kannady, Hilbert, and every committee chairman who took on so much risk by trying to bottle up Shaw: You wasted your time. We are voting on principle, not politics.

Shaw didn’t have to pass a single bill. He simply had to vote against the many bad bills introduced by other lawmakers, keep a strong consistent voice, show fight and leadership, and his constituency would stand behind him, no matter how strong a ringer the establishment recruited against him.

This victory now enshrines Shaw’s profile as a future leader of constitutionalist principle in the state and positions him as a next-level candidate. This was the establishment’s one opportunity to stop Shaw before he arrived on the statewide scene. They took their shot, and they failed.

It also demonstrates the value of first establishing a base of support before attempting to compete on the statewide political stage. During his first term, even while facing significant adversity in the House, Shaw used social media to remain close to his base and stayed prominent in the district where he was known to attend and speak at grassroots events. I’ve observed that often, those with the most potential in the conservative world, attempt to hit the statewide stage too quickly, without first securing a local base, making them very vulnerable in their first re-election campaign. These election results suggest that Shaw didn’t make this mistake.

And then there’s House District 33 and Molly Jenkins.

I think the establishment forces falsely believed Jenkins was an easy target. She proved them very wrong.

Jenkins won all but four precincts, defeating the state’s leading consulting firm, CAMP—the same firm that, in the last election cycle, brought down the incoming Senate president pro tempore. But it could not bring down Molly Jenkins.

That is a resume booster few political figures can boast of, and something everyone involved in Jenkins’s amazing victory should put on their list of life accomplishments. That includes everyone on that team, from those who worked behind the scenes, delivering valuable, on-the-ground insights and giving Jenkins the intelligence necessary to deploy quickly and meet the challenge, to the amazing election day volunteers who stood beside the road on Election Day, waving Jenkins’s “No Lobbyist Money” signs.

They beat CAMP.

This, this was a historic campaign.

The Gann and Jenkins campaigns now become Exhibit A—case studies in how elected officials can turn down thousands of dollars in lobbyist money and still survive even the most determined opponents, backed by all the resources the establishment can command.

Those campaigns experienced it all, from the twists and turns of the Inola aluminum-smelter issue that highlighted the Gann campaign to the zombie campaign-money funneling that poured funds into the campaign of Jenkins’s opponent (it’s a story you will want to hear). There is much to analyze and preserve as we prepare for the wave of 2028 candidates who will step forward to do their part and follow these examples.

So as much of the online grassroots world currently obsesses over the ins and outs of the Senate races, and although some may misread the results and become discouraged, they should not (See the next OSC article, headed your way posthaste;) as first, it is important to realize that the more important side of the Capitol—the people’s House—just sent Darth Vader, the Gene Stipe of the Republican Party, Chris Kannady, out the door without allowing him to put the frosting on the cake of his legacy: wielding his power to drive the beachhead back into the sea, to eliminate the small group of budding, courageous, independent voices that had the nerve to stand for honesty, openness, and actually representing the constitutionalist and conservative platforms on which they campaigned.

The Conservative Beachhead Held: Kannady’s Final Purge Ends in Failure
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




June 19, 2026 at 02:26PM - J Murphey