Against all odds, not only had Shaw passed a bill, but he did what was pretty rare, he actually revived and resuscitated legislation from a previous year.
It’s an amazing vindication of the Republican system of government as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.
Two years ago, as the day approached for candidates to file for office, a longshot candidate emerged from nowhere, shocking and terrifying the Oklahoma Capitol, politics-as-usual world.
In defeating the powerful appropriations chairman, not only did Lincoln County’s Jim Shaw pull off what might have been the biggest House primary upset in the modern-day history of the House of Representatives, but he sent a powerful message: no establishment, “status-quo” funded candidate is safe from the verdict of the people.
Powerful appropriations chairman Kevin Wallace had followed the special interests template for re-election to the letter.
He had doled out many thousands of dollars in pork to his district, and he had played the insider game for years, working himself into and becoming the long-term holder of what is likely the 2nd most powerful position in the 101-member state House.
But Shaw represented the 180-degree contrast to Wallace. He wasn’t a politician, he wasn’t from the fake political world that offers little in actual value to society; he was instead a regular citizen, a self-made business success from the real world.
To the great credit of the voters of House District 32, who turned out in large numbers to support Shaw in the 2024 runoff election, they saw through the big grift played by the politicians, touting conservatism but delivering bigger and bigger government, few having done more than Wallace to grow the size of state government spending, and they weren’t bought off by the wasteful pork, even if it was to the benefit of certain personalities in their district.
To those in the Capitol world, this was the type of earth-shattering warning not unlike how the early republican movements terrified the monarchs of late 18th and 19th century Europe. A republican uprising in one nation was sure to inspire free-minded peoples in the nation next door, and the spread of freedom could flash over in an instant.
If the citizens’ revolution to retake the House of the People, as designed by our nation and state founders—the House of Representatives, currently dominated by the institutionalists and an elite political class since 2019—were to spread, then no one was safe. If Wallace could be defeated, even as he spent hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars, likely a record amount for a primary election cycle, then no one in that institution was immune from a similar potential defeat.
As Shaw, accepting his role as emissary of the people to state government, made his way into the establishment’s sacred ground, the Capitol, the forces of the political old guard, the establishment, had a choice to make.
They could do what was right for the voter, accept the will of the people, act wisely, and welcome Shaw into the House, recognizing the fact that his business acumen was the ultimate benefit to them, to return to conservatism and bring about efficiencies and wise spending in a state government that’s rife with inefficiency and corruption, as one will immediately realize by reviewing the state auditor’s audits and the reports of the Legislature’s LOFT office, having accumulated out of control in the era of government spending on steroids as overseen by Wallace and the other institutionalists in the House since 2019.
Or they could act unwisely and do as they did: place Shaw in ice, discriminating against him and the voters of his district, making it clear that Shaw, by virtue of his status as the emissary of the people, was not, in fact, a member of the political elite, and thus didn’t have the same standing as the other representatives.
They chose the latter path and embarked upon a strategy that was clearly predicated on:
Refusing to acknowledge Shaw’s existence, or mere presence within their ranks;
Biding their time, waiting for the grassroots forces to lose energy and focus, as many grassroots efforts do, hopefully allowing those grassroots to start infighting and turning on themselves instead of focusing their energies on the political class; and
Bringing about episode two of the prologue: the empire strikes back, finding a tool to run against Shaw and to reclaim what was theirs—the House District 32 seat—thus assigning the grassroots revolution of 2024 to a mere blip in the history of the state, a very notable but nonetheless temporary uprising of the common man.
Indeed, as House Speaker Kyle Hilbert’s very select number of House chairmen, bolstered by their defeat of State Rep. Tom Gann’s effort to ensure that every representative should have the right to get a vote on their bills, aka The Gann Plan, set about to discriminate against Shaw, squashing his bills at every turn, a leading member of Speaker Kyle Hilbert’s team reportedly took to the caucus floor to encourage the Republican caucus, dominated by members of the special interests and political elite, that, in fact, the grassroots movement was just “10 people on Facebook.“
Wise representatives saw through this bluff. The advent of free and open social media platforms, especially X, continues to demonstrate a nascent but fast-growing state-focused grassroots movement, the potential of which has only begun to manifest.
It’s a movement that those of us in the first generation of Republican leadership could foresee as we built the policies of Transparency 2.0 and pushed out the means, methods, and tools by which the ensuing generations could hold the government accountable. This missing piece—free and open social media—is the last piece to this puzzle and the grassroots effort to retake the state government for the people is just getting started.
One can’t help but get the sense that today’s legislative establishment leaders are not unlike the Soviets of the early 1980s: antiquated, without the mandate of the popular will, desperate to hold on to power, solely by means of having inherited power, and frightened, very frightened.
So for legislative leadership, set about on the unwise strategy of putting Shaw in ice, they had a challenge.
Which committee chairmen would be willing to take the fall for bottling up Shaw, the outsider whose portfolio of legislative initiatives were as consistent with popular thought as they were offensive to the special interests whose money funded the establishment?
This was a tricky chore. For you see, as a rule, leadership protects its freshmen. Viewed as the most politically vulnerable, these freshmen often struggle to pass legislation in their first year—a highly overrated achievement but one of importance in the artificial world of the Capitol where most mistakenly view the passage of legislation as necessary in order for legislative advancement and being able to tout the legislator’s prowess as he seeks re-election.
It’s a skewed view. For the most part, the people of Oklahoma don’t want more legislation, as they have the wisdom to know that most legislation simply means more laws, the size and scope of which are already far beyond anything envisioned in a government of intelligent design.
But it’s a fascination point of the Capitol world, so leadership, as they pawn and cultivate the next generation of politicians, often make it a point to ensure that each legislative freshman gets at least one bill heard on the House floor.
So when it was time to put Shaw in ice, in the view of this writer, those conniving in the back rooms clearly set about to punish him the best way they could: by ensuring he wouldn’t get a single bill out of committee, in clear contrast to how they treated the other freshmen.
It’s the great irony that perfectly demonstrates the upside-down nature of the Capitol world: while countless bills advanced that violated conservative and constitutional values and principles, or made no sense, or maybe were even admittedly not ready for passage, it was one of the most professional members of the House, with an amazing portfolio of real-world success, that wasn’t allowed to get a hearing on a single bill, even though those bills were in line with the principle of that office holder’s campaign, delivering on his promises, as he achieved what might have been the greatest political upset in primary election history.
So as most House freshmen, including Democrats, received hearings in committee, Shaw’s did not.
Throughout 2025, those chairpersons held firm.
With two exceptions, leadership had assigned Shaw’s bills to committees where it appeared that the chairman could easily take the fall. These chairmen were long ago in the tank for the special interests, and they were well positioned to absorb the populist hit that would come their way for discriminating against Shaw and his good ideas.
But there was one very obvious exception, a legislator who clearly made the decision to play the leadership game, but who represents an electorate that not only is widely opposed to that game, but which has the capability of sponsoring and supporting a viable challenger.
That chairman was House District 31 State Representative Collin Duel, who, not only has the misfortune of residing in an extremely grassroots-centric constituency, one of the best in the state, but who, in a move that would lead an insightful observer to question if he was purposefully being sabotaged by leadership elements, was assigned a Shaw proposal that was absolutely impossible to oppose: making it clear that foreign entities shouldn’t be allowed to buy up Oklahoma farmland.
Duel had a tight needle to thread. It’s clear, from this writer’s point of view, that Duel couldn’t afford to be the chairman who let Shaw crack out of the ice. To do so would clearly be viewed as weakness by leadership.
But remember, Duel is sitting on a powder keg of grassroots energy, one of the best districts in the state and a district that resides right next to Shaw’s, where the two representatives both stake a part in the best county in the state, Logan County, a county where the people have been known to insist that their leaders turn down lobbyist largesse, of which Duel eagerly scoops up, and home to The Sooner Sentinel, published by two-term Logan County Commissioner Marven Goodman, an individual who had the natural curiosity to write a story about Duel’s actions, and who wasn’t afraid to contact Duel to ask, “Why didn’t you hear Jim Shaw’s bill?”
Duel, clearly grasping at straws, pointed Goodman to a couple of points of concern, both of which a clearly thinking observer could easily assess for what, in the view of this writer, they were: fig-leaf cover points designed to deflect from the real reason for Duel’s refusal to hear the bill. He simply couldn’t lose face with leadership, so he had to join in with the mob in trying to push out the emissary of the people, even at electoral risk to himself.
And if the reader of Goodman’s description of Duel’s explanation had any doubt as to Duel’s real intent, they simply needed to look at the portfolio of other bills Duel advanced, including those of Democrats, to quickly realize that Duel was gaslighting.
While Duel couldn’t be bothered to give Shaw’s prohibition of foreign ownership a hearing, he was hearing, voting for, and advancing legislation such as that by liberal Democrat Ellen Pogemiller, placing a massive fee increase on those who seek to pursue justice via small claims court. It enacts a staggering 88% increase—from $45 to $85—and would spike court revenues by $2.2 million. Notwithstanding Duel and his committee’s support, the fee increase was one of the few to actually meet defeat on the House floor, being, yes, too big of a power grab on the people for even the institutionalist-dominated House to co-sign, going down in a vote of 39-50, but still providing just one example of numerous government-expanding pieces of legislation Duel green-lit and supported.
But then a funny thing happened.
Election year rolled around. And the ice, well, the ice started to thaw.
Normally, when a bill isn’t heard in the first half of a legislative session, it’s dead forever.
But word started to get out: Duel’s 2022 opposition, a candidate who had been on the receiving end of the most heinous dark-money attacks in the history of that district, and who, notwithstanding, had still almost defeated Duel, even though he possessed just about every institutionalist advantage, including the best consultants and the support of the government class, was courageously challenging Duel again.
When Duel won his election in 2022, he had no voting record. When the dark money attacked his opponent on an unprecedented scale, he was able to stay on the sidelines and stay clean.
Now, however, he has four years of values-betraying votes, allowing the voters to know exactly why it was that the special interests spent so much dark money to get him elected.
Just one example of Duel’s biggest missteps? In 2024, as the pro-life community pleaded with legislators to allow the people of Oklahoma to have a vote on breaking up the red-state, blue-judiciary dynamic—an anti-republican policy that allows unelected, liberal attorneys an outsized influence on nominating liberal judges to rule over conservative Oklahomans—Duel had a decision to make: he could side with the pro-life advocates and allow the people of Oklahoma to vote on ending this abuse, or he could side with his occupational associates who want to retain this anti-republican power, and Duel, an attorney, chose the latter path.
Now, under challenge from a courageous challenger—one who presents a clear contrast to Duel by virtue of the fact that she has taken the no-lobbyist-money pledge—and faced with the prospect of being exposed for ignoring the pleas of the pro-lifers and keeping those blue-haired, abortion-embracing entrenched leftists on the bench, ruling over conservative-minded Oklahoman, amongst numerous other missteps, in the view of this writer, Duel simply can’t take on the added risk of being exposed for bottling up Shaw’s proposal to prevent foreign ownership.
Thus, on Thursday, something very remarkable happened: On the very last day before the deadline, Shaw’s proposal, though shelved for a year, not only made a sudden return to committee but became Shaw’s first proposal to win committee approval and advance.
Not only had Shaw passed a bill, but he did what was pretty rare, he actually revived and resuscitated legislation from a previous year.
It’s an amazing vindication of the Republican system of government as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.
Though, in this writer’s view, the most powerful forces in Oklahoma had conspired to put Shaw in ice, he, with the disciplined team effort of the grassroots who believe as he does—one of whom is directly challenging the committee chairman—clearly changed the equation. For all of the time and effort spent putting Shaw in ice, it was to no effect. He simply couldn’t be stopped.
For Shaw, this is likely just the first of many future legislative successes, as now that he has broken out of the ice, his tale
February 19: When the Ice Finally Cracked in the Oklahoma House
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog
February 23, 2026 at 10:55AM - Rooke
RSS Feed
