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

In this election, there are a lot of politicians, guided by their annoying consultants, who think they are going up but are speeding earthward at breakneck speed.

It’s an election cycle that has reached new lows, perhaps unlike any other, and we’ve entered the four-day period in which Oklahoma’s most annoying industry—the professional political consultants—can go full-on into the insanity of the dark arts without having to worry about blowback or repercussions; that is, because the opposition has little time to respond.

Here is some of the late-breaking insanity taking hold over the weekend:

What may be the first-ever use of an AI text bot, apparently named Tom for some reason, desperate to talk to naïve boomers about the importance of voting for Charles McCall. Spending a Saturday morning talking to AI about Charles McCall? That’s absolutely worthy of a work by Dante.

The uncontrolled, unbridled political texting has reached a level that must be infuriating to most voters. From John Pfeiffer’s unsolicited tutorial on how to pronounce his name to so many CAMP candidates using the same text formula, a duplication that seems especially annoying when their Senate candidates’ areas overlap with the representatives’ districts—especially when they are parading their relationships, clearly brokered through CAMP, with Markwayne Mullin to make it look as though he supports their candidates.

That loses credibility when multiple texts arrive and step on one another, each featuring an establishment politician and pretending to have Markwayne’s endorsement.

Each election cycle is a turning point. In 2022, we saw anonymous dark-money attacks lose their power—to the point that I believe dark-money attacks now actually help the victim more than they hurt. In 2024, we saw Kevin Stitt’s endorsement lose its power—to the point that candidates don’t want to reference him in their 2026 materials.

As of now, the only endorsement that still matters is that of Trump and, perhaps, in CD 2, that of Josh Brecheen. Other than that, there are very few power brokers left.

And I think that, in 2026, we may just come away from the cycle concluding that the avalanche of templated CAMP mail, text polling, and text advocacy actually hurt their candidates as the dark money advocacy, steps on the candidate’s advocacy, and angers the voter who rightly concludes that the opulence and waste is reflective of the problem as a whole: too much money in government, making its way to the special interests and politicians, and thus, wasteful spending beyond anything previously imagined. Thus, we will have officially seen money itself lose its power.

Many of those candidates have overlapping district lines. The impersonal, templated approach overwhelms and annoys helpless voters who are just trying to live their lives, especially as it relates to text messaging. Unlike the TV, they can’t simply turn off their phones and escape the never-ending unsolicited texts, clearly written by the same consultants. It exposes just how fake their politicians are—not even in charge of their own messaging or strategies.

Then there’s the late dark money.

Tracking this dark money allows us to see where the key races are—where the polling data suggests help is needed.

One of my favorite sources of late money to watch, because it is so telling, is the Oklahoma State Medical Association.

This group has been the absolute bane of conservatives dating back to the 2018 purge of conservatives from the state House. Its drive to elect establishment Republicans only deepened during the COVID era, as it clashed with grassroots conservatives over medical policy.

Its state PAC, and the dark-money group that I believe belongs to it, have been highly active over the weekend, eviscerating conservatives with mail drops timed to prevent a timely, in-kind response from those they victimize.

And, of course, just as Jeff Starling suggests he has polling indicating that he can beat John Echols, the Oklahoma State Medical Association has put in another $75,000 to push Echols over the finish line. Apparently the $58,000 they already spent on Echols, wasn’t quite getting him there.

That is just another strong warning sign to conservatives: You do not want to put Echols behind the desk of the top law-enforcement office in the state. You will not like the results.

And if Echols is telling you that he will adjudicate the COVID crimes, just ask yourself: Would the Oklahoma State Medical Association, the leading force behind COVID policy, be throwing in this much money at the last minute if it weren’t 100 percent sure that Echols was with it?

Of course, Echols is doing a service in that, at least, the money isn’t going to the association’s Senate candidates of choice: the Swampy Seven.

Heavy money from all quarters of the establishment swamp is pouring in to bail out what is likely the weakest of the Swampy Seven: Grant Green. One of the leading sources for late money investment in Green is the extremely suspicious dark-money group operated by Kevin Stitt’s senior adviser, Dustin Hilliary. It was connected to the notorious “Don Lemon” dark-money mailers from earlier this year.

One has to feel for those poor Lincoln and Logan County residents who are once again at the epicenter of the political world due to the establishment’s effort to take out the conservative leader with so much potential, State Representative Jim Shaw, whose opponent is also financed by late money from Hillalry’s dark money group, while also defending the establishment’s weakest: Green.

Here’s betting that the concerted and combined effort of the establishment has become so obvious to all but the most obtuse voters that Shaw will cruise to an easy reelection, while Green—renowned for evicting a citizen from a Senate meeting room simply because she had the courage to hold up her cell phone and take a picture of what was going on—will be evicted from his precarious perch in the swamp, making for a great Election Day in that part of the state.

Then there are the massive amounts of late money going toward bailing out the weakest House member, House District 96’s Preston Stinson. A dark-money group named Oklahoma First Patriots has made a $50,000 media buy targeting that conservative House district—one of the best in the state—which has somehow found itself represented by the Republican whom the Oklahoma Constitution has scored as the most liberal.

Stinson, upon finding himself in the unlucky position of having a challenger with the means to communicate this fact to that conservative electorate, has resorted to what might be some of the most despicable desperation campaigning of the election cycle. He has actually launched a website suggesting that his opponent has a “secret” family, reportedly marketing that dastardly attack with billboards, a dedicated website, and direct mail.

You can be assured that this will be analyzed as part of the Oklahoma State Capital’s upcoming awards for the most deceptive campaigning.

Stinson will have some competition for this particular award, though, from a clearly desperate incumbent senator, Bill Coleman. Like Stinson, Coleman has the unfortunate status of being one of the few remaining legislators who voted for illegal-alien driver’s licenses, joining fellow senators Chuck Hall and Brenda Stanley, both of whom face a day of reckoning for that betrayal of our national interests.

Coleman has been launching a massive, last-minute smear campaign against his challenger, along with the usual dastardly dark-money forces, as the last-minute reports continue to show thousands coming in to eviscerate the opposition.

Their attack? Decontextualizing the challenger’s comments at a public forum, in which he opined about the benefits of a society in which both parents are not forced into the workforce.

By the time Coleman and his smear merchants have twisted those words, the conservative opposition is a caveman from the 1950s—which shows you just how much respect self-declared “Republican” officeholders such as Coleman really have for traditional family values.

As frustrating as it is to see this messaging, it is important to realize that this is a good sign.

When someone like Coleman can’t trust the dark money to do his dirty work for him and joins in on the smearing fun, it means he can’t claim to be the good guy anymore. The old good-cop, bad-cop routine made possible by the era of unlimited dark money was effective because it put the conservative into a fight with an unseen assailant while the establishment candidate stayed above it all, pretending to be just as outraged about the assailant as everyone else.

But Coleman just jumped right into the mud, just as Stinson did.

I suspect this is a sign that the CAMP machine has lost its discipline now that Fount Holland is playing a limited and mostly removed role. The firm’s new leadership clearly hasn’t mastered the art of the candidate whisperer: keeping those candidates’ emotions in check.

Then there is another encouraging white pill:

Obtuse, out-of-state dark money that is absolutely clueless about how the average Oklahoma Republican voter thinks.

Case in point: the big wind-turbine, green-energy lobby, which is spam-texting its support for establishment candidates and opposition to conservative officeholders, complete with the standard disclaimer bearing its Washington, D.C., address.

To its credit, it is smart enough not to say that it represents the big wind-energy interests—a clue that it does realize just how unpopular those interests are. But it is not smart enough to find a way to have its Oklahoma operation send out the texts. Instead, it tells everyone that the messages are coming from the most unpopular place on earth: Washington, D.C.

Yes, it would be better advised to have its Beijing office, assuming it has one, send out the texts than its D.C. office.

So now, helpless voters are being bombarded with the endless polling of establishment candidates desperate to find out how they are voting; what appears to be Charles McCall’s cutting-edge AI bot trying to engage them in conversation; the self-indulgent boilerplate attached to a photo of Markwayne Mullin, sent to them by any number of establishment candidates; and an insufferable instructional video from John Pfeiffer trying to teach them how to say “Pie-furr.”

Though I always thought it was really “Fifer,” I never quite got that out of my system. That always made it awkward when, as the presiding officer of the House, I instinctively announced, “Fifer votes aye”—almost never, ever a “nay.”

I prefer to pronounce it as “West” or, if you want more of a challenge, “Janloo,” but the instructional seems to have left those details out for some reason.

Then there are the repeated, scripted endorsement statements from whatever local personality has been co-opted into making two awful decisions: first, endorsing the establishment candidate; and second, accepting CAMP-written campaign jargon as an endorsement statement instead of writing one of their own.

Discerning voters who know the local endorser and how that person really talks will pick up on that fact, allowing them to see just how fake the process has become.

Finally, over the weekend, as voters are credited and early-voting numbers are analyzed, I am getting the first sense that turnout is tepid. If that’s the case, then, aside from being a warning sign about a possible lack of Republican enthusiasm this year, I would suggest that, starting with the governor’s race on down, voters will be expressing their strong sense of annoyance and disgust by simply not showing up.

And who knows? Some might realize that, if they stop voting in primaries, the politicians will leave them alone.

This is, of course, while very understandable, the wrong way to view this.

I think the better way is to apply the no-lobbyist-money strategy: abstinence. Insist on supporting those who have the basic manners, dignity, and respect not to send unsolicited texts, AI bots, or TV commercials by text—especially self-indulgent ones such as the McCall food-on-his-face ad or the Pfeiffer “here’s how to pronounce my name” footage.

Rather, I think I am going to double down on my advice to candidates: Just don’t send automated texts.

Instead, make your commitment to good manners and respect for others a hallmark of your campaign, and put it right after the no lobbyist money commitment:

“I will not send a single unsolicited text.”

I believe that, after the horrors of the 2026 election cycle, the 2028 cycle will be the perfect time to roll out this new campaign dynamic. It seems counterintuitive, but so did no lobbyist money.

And sometimes, as any experienced airline pilot will know, what seems like up is actually down.

In this election, there are a lot of politicians, guided by their annoying consultants, who think they are going up but are speeding earthward at breakneck speed.

Consultants Gone Crazy and the Dark Money Floodgates Open
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




June 13, 2026 at 01:50PM - J Murphey

Jeff Starling isn’t the victim of this dishonesty.

The victim is you.

I would encourage all of those who have been victimized by this operation in the past, either directly when running for office or indirectly by the victimizing of your grassroots candidate of choice, to make this year’s attorney general ballot a referendum on this dark art.

John Echols had a problem.

He had accumulated a garish set of conservative policy betrayals: from ramming through the largest tax-hike package in the modern-day history of the state, to authorizing the pilot plan for turning every Oklahoma road into a toll road — the infamous track-and-tax plan — to going all in on the shocking era of green corporate welfare on steroids, to forcing Oklahoma prenatal nurses to take implicit-bias training, to signing on to the infamous press release that directed Oklahoma teenagers to the gender-affirming “Trevor Project” — you name the policy, and Echols had a liability profile to match.

Now Echols had his sights set on statewide office, but his opponent, a political unknown, had little to exploit. Jeff Starling was a clean-cut, hard-working professional boasting of a resume that made him eminently more qualified for the job of supervising a large team of legal professionals than Echols.

But the savvy Echols had one great advantage: he’s a skilled politician. Echols has thrived in the sleazy world of Oklahoma politics with a manipulative mastery the likes of which were unmatched by other Oklahoma politicians, a mastery developed over a decade and a half, ever since he was the monied establishment’s choice to replace conservative state Rep. Mike Reynolds.

To defeat Starling would take the work of the darkest of muckrakers, their skill set now highly honed after more than a decade of practice in the new world of unlimited, anonymous money.

Team Echols would recreate the state’s original dark-money operation: the now-infamous machine that kicked off the dark-money era in 2012 with the state’s original dark-money operation in the Paul Blair v. Clark Jolley campaign for Senate District 42.

There, Echols’ general consultant headed up the dark-money group that did a deep dive on Blair, finding a small, five-dollar-ish franchise fee assessment against one of Blair’s past business endeavors years earlier — an assessment that Blair likely didn’t even know ever existed. By the end of the campaign, the group had spent many thousands of dollars trying to convince Edmond, a community in which Blair had been a sports hero, successful businessman and church leader, that Blair was, in fact, a tax cheat.

Today, Team Echols has duplicated that model, though flipping it, with his dark-money group being operated by the successor firm to Jolley’s general consultant, Oklahoma’s leading political consulting firm, CAMP.

The subsequent attempt to destroy Starling has shot straight to the top of the nomination pile for the first-ever Oklahoma State Capital Most Deceptive Political Ad Award.

This award is the Capital’s endeavor to memorialize and preserve the most shameful of the dark art used by the state’s worst-of-the-worst candidates to grab power.

It’s only when the public thoroughly understands and shows that it will reject those who get power by these means that this will stop. As such, members of the newly emerging and evolving independent media must step up and do our part.

This ad campaign provides the most fascinating study of this dark art: impugning an opponent by crafting what, for all intents and purposes, according to the rules of common sense, is a big lie — but which, in a very technical sense, when viewed through the most skewed of interpretations, is technically defensible in a court of law.

Now, if you are the normal, honest, hard-working Oklahoman who believes in being truthful and treating others as you yourself would like to be treated, and who knows the great danger of violating the Ninth Commandment, then this will be a hard exercise for you. But in order to understand just how sick this art is, we must climb our way into the minds of its practitioners.

In this mind exercise, let’s imagine the hypothetical scenario of the grandma who has lived the cleanest of lives.

How can she be destroyed?

Well, perhaps a quick review of her social media reveals that she worked at McDonald’s one Christmas season to earn money for her grandkids’ presents.

The smear merchant will do deep-dive research not only on the grandma, but on her employer, McDonald’s: “Didn’t McDonald’s spill hot coffee on their customer back in the day?”

Yes, they did. The target for destruction, the grandma, is now guilty by association with “them” — the fiends who burned their victim so badly with that dangerous, albeit delicious, McDonald’s coffee.

Now, in no way, shape, or form is the McDonald’s grandma responsible for spilling that coffee on that day so many years ago, but that won’t stop the black-and-white ads, with the deep-voiced voiceover and the ominous music.

McDonald’s grandma: a real menace to society. She was with “them,” and she must be stopped.

This, of course, is trivial to the point of absurdity.

But the analogy is quite apt.

Using the same decontextualization techniques, just as the McDonald’s grandma is guilty by association of burning a victim with hot coffee, so too must Echols’ opponent be guilty by association.

Second, of course, it’s not enough just to decontextualize one single fact. In order to convince the viewer that this is a trend, a supporting fact must be established.

Third, having strung together two facts, the lie itself can be crystallized in the viewer’s mind by the use of imagery and a creative pregnant pause or two. That’s the legal protection: not directly communicating the lie with words, but with images and grammatical construction that create a narrative in the viewer’s mind that doesn’t represent reality, with the necessary disclosure relayed within text that flies by at a speed no human eye can process.

So, in this case, deep-dive opposition research on Jeff Starling reveals that after college, but before law school, in the late 1990s, he went on staff with his Republican U.S. senator.

Here Team Echols thought they had something: guilt by association.

The entry-level congressional staffing job? It was for Republican U.S. Sen. John Warner.

Yes, Starling’s crime was not having the clairvoyance to realize that his employer, many years later, wouldn’t support Republican President Donald Trump.

Of course, one might forgive Starling’s lack of clairvoyance on the fact that while he worked for Warner, Warner was voting to impeach the husband of Trump’s future opponent: Bill Clinton, on both impeachment counts.

But, of course, in the real world, anyone of fair mind would know that trying to hold Starling accountable for something Warner would do 16 years after Starling left Warner’s employment is an impossible standard, and those who attempt to apply it should rightly face public ridicule.

And every insider politician in Oklahoma politics with political ambitions of his own should ask himself: How would I feel if this deceptive standard were applied to me?

Tom Coburn was a prominent critic of Trump in 2016. Should all of the Coburn protégés be held to this standard?

Or what about the problematic anti-Trump comments of J.C. Watts, the scion of the Tom Cole machine’s protégés, whose anti-Trumpism came not in 2016, but after the 2020 elections? Should this tarnish the entirety of the Tom Cole political machine?

Or even Mickey Edwards, whose permanent case of TDS might to this day be associated with some of the old-timers still remaining in Oklahoma politics?

Of course not. The entire system of American fairness is built on the character of the individual, not guilt by association — especially when that association happened well before any reasonable person would have had any ability to foresee the problematic conduct of the person to whom he was associated.

But, of course, that didn’t stop Echols’ IE from creating the next component of guilt by association: Starling was hired at a prestigious law firm of a thousand lawyers and several thousand employees across more than 15 offices.

Years after Starling left that firm, the firm hired two attorneys whose past resumes featured legal work for anti-Trump interests. And in 2012, the year Starling left that firm, a subsidiary of that firm took on a lobbyist contract for a Chinese company.

Yes, back to our grandma analogy, our smoking gun: McDonald’s does business in China.

So not only did our McDonald’s grandma have the bad judgment to work for a company that burned its victim with hot coffee, she is now officially a “Beijing granny.”

So now, all that’s left is to string together these two facts with some creative comma placement and some sinister imagery.

Here’s how they did it.

Claim 1: Jeff Starling sided with the people who attacked President Trump.

Many years before Republican Sen. John Warner criticized Trump, Jeff Starling went to work for him in an entry-level job. So, should this go to court, the lawyers would argue that this is true: by taking the job, Starling “sided” with Warner, hoping that the jury will give them a pass on the fact that this occurred many years before Warner’s action.

But, of course, the ad’s sinister voiceover man doesn’t contextualize that fact to the timeline. Instead, to reinforce the claim, the text, represented in spooky font, declares that Starling “sided with THEM.”

Claim 2: Starling worked for a Never Trump senator who backed Hillary Clinton.

Again, the ad leaves out the context that this was “Republican” Sen. John Warner, and that Starling worked for him many years before Trump even emerged on the political scene. Or that as Starling worked for Warner, Warner was voting to impeach Bill Clinton.

Claim 3: “Called Trump unfit for office.”

Predicated by a pregnant pause, the claim referred to a comment made by Warner but most viewers almost certainly assumed it was a reference to something Starling said.

The spinmeisters provided themselves some protection here, though. The viewer won’t catch it with the naked eye, but as the claim is tendered, a scary-looking fake newspaper headline, accompanied by an ominous Starling picture, flashes by. It takes literally pausing the screen at just the right microsecond to realize that the fake newspaper text is attributing the quote to Warner, not Starling. And, of course, nowhere does it say that Warner made that quote in 2020, 20 years after Starling left Warner’s office.

Claim 4: “‘Starling’s’ law firm hired the prosecutors who targeted Trump.”

Juxtaposed over a picture of Liz Cheney and Alvin Bragg, the naive viewer will conclude that Starling himself somehow hired or gave employment to the dastardly anti-Trump attorneys, presumably Alvin Bragg, as an ominous blood-red font declares, “Anti-Trump Prosecutors.”

Never disclosed: the fact that Starling left his employer — again, a firm of thousands of employees — in 2012, long before Trump even ran for president.

Also not disclosed: that the firm has a large government investigations division. One has to ask: with so many anti-Trump investigations, what are the odds that a prominent law firm, especially a large one that sports a government investigations division, would have two attorneys in its employ who were connected to one of those cases?

And also not disclosed is that “Starling’s firm” represented former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the Georgia case — the case where the tenacity of the Trump defendants and their attorneys turned the tide on the Trump prosecutions in the months after Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Echols himself prematurely pounced, clearly expecting that Trump was done for, by becoming what would have been the first red-state domino to fall against Trump, replacing him with Ron DeSantis as the Republican standard-bearer. So, while Echols was attempting to usher Trump off the political scene, “Starling’s firm” was turning the tide in Trump’s favor. How’s that for a different interpretation of these facts?

Claim 5: “His firm pocketed $1.4 million from China.”

Of course, here the communist flag of Red China makes its ubiquitous appearance, appearing alongside the term “Starling’s firm” — again, language clearly designed to make the viewer believe that Starling himself was the decision-maker and worked for “China.”

The reality: records show that starting in 2012, the year that Starling left his employment with the firm, a subsidiary company of that firm took on a client from China.

Now, in all likelihood, Starling had no idea what a subsidiary of his employer, a massive legal concern, was working on. But if he did, then his decision to leave that employer just as it took on its Chinese client could just as easily be a testament to his character, suggesting he didn’t want to work for an employer that was doing business with a Chinese client.

Claim 6: “They trust him.”

Who, exactly, are “they”?

Well, here, the naive viewer will conclude it is the shadowy figures presented behind Starling: Alvin Bragg, Hillary Clinton and Liz Cheney. Of course, not one of those three likely has the slightest clue who Jeff Starling is.

But the naive viewer is almost certain to conclude that Starling is the trusted attorney of these people, the one who provided them with jobs and attorneys to accomplish their Trump-derangement agenda.

In short, though this is the ad that has no tie to reality, unbeknownst to the naive Fox News boomers, they are staring into the very worst depths of the Oklahoma swamp, carefully crafted dark art from the elites of the swamp’s consultant class, who I believe, based on my personal experience, derive great satisfaction from how very skillfully they have pulled off this character assassination. It’s a type of gleefulness that is so very sick.

But Jeff Starling isn’t the victim of this dishonesty.

The victim is you.

Because when Team Echols embraces this type of operation, they are endorsing the art of tricking the employer in order to get a job.

You are going to be Echols’ employer.

Now, Echols isn’t, in any way, shape, or form, the best applicant.

His voting record is a ghoulish dumpster fire of policy betrayals, the likes of which I could, at the risk of being the anti-Echols guy, fill up many updates.

And you know the saying: fool me once . . .

By contrast, Starling, while largely unknown politically speaking, and thus rightly deserving of real scrutiny, has the requisite professional experience for the job.

But should one hesitate to vote for Starling based on the fact that he is a political unknown, one should take comfort in this: when subjected to the overwhelming scrutiny of the state’s most dastardly muckrakers, they have, in my view, invented an attack out of whole cloth. That, and one other thing: they found what appears to be an old Halloween party photo, exposing Starling for having a sense of humor — something he has no doubt relied on as he’s been forced to come to terms with just how sick the state of public affairs has become.

But June 16 is your decision.

Listen to your instincts and ask yourself: if an applicant for employment at your personal business applied for the job in this manner, using the resources of the Oklahoma City consultant swamp in this way, would you hire him?

No, you wouldn’t.

Because you would know that this sleazy operation is a complete reflection of character, and you wouldn’t trust them with your affairs.

Can you do any less for the affairs of the taxpayers?

Fi

Deconstructing the Nastiest Political Attack of the 2026 Campaign Season.
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




June 12, 2026 at 12:14PM - J Murphey

By request: what follows is my ballot for the June 16, 2026, Republican primary ballot for statewide office, along with a leading fact or two explaining why I am making these decisions.

I have included the foremost reason for each of my votes, with a little more explanation in the governor’s race than in the others. In many cases, there are much deeper and more in-depth reasons for these votes, based on my personal knowledge, observations, and experiences. But that would make for a very long read. Since I anticipate this being just a voter guide — one among many, no doubt, that readers will use to research and guide their opinions — I understand that brevity will be helpful to its overall utility (yes, there is a first time to everything.) For that reason, I will keep my explanations limited to one or two leading reasons for each vote.

Regular readers of these articles will know that one of the most important factors in casting a vote — whether as a lawmaker representing the views of others, the voters, or as a regular voter trying to honor the great responsibility that so many have sacrificed so much to preserve for us — is this: removing the human feelings of friendship and personal loyalty from the vote calculation.

Money is the most powerful co-opting factor. Pride and power are the second. Personal relationships are the third. And those relationships compromise the regular voter just as they compromise politicians.

Those who vote based on personal relationships, instead of striving for a truly emotionless, logical analysis, do a great disservice to their responsibility as voters — just as lawmakers regularly betray our values due to their proximity to friends, special interests, and lobbyists who are experts at manipulating through personal influence.

In fact, personal relationships are one of the tools by which many good-hearted, otherwise spot-on conservatives — both policymakers and regular voters — are co-opted on the cheap. Not with money, but by co-opters spending just enough time to build a relationship, manipulating the human emotions of the co-optee into supporting someone they would never otherwise support if their decision had been made in a Spock-like, logical manner.

I say that to say this: I will be applying this important guidance as I cast my vote this year. These choices are not based on who I consider to be personal friends, some of those I am not picking, I do, or on any other reason of personal loyalty. In other words, if you are one of those individuals, don’t take too much offense.

Additionally, the reader will notice a common theme: I believe the voter should endeavor never to be fooled twice. You know the saying.

If a candidate has campaigned as a conservative and then betrayed those values as an officeholder, then, as a basic rule, he has disqualified himself from my personal consideration. It is a strategy I would advise other voters to follow: don’t be fooled twice, or you will have only yourself to blame for the next betrayal.

Finally, with the exception of the governor’s race, these votes should not be considered the official endorsements of The Oklahoma State Capital. They are simply the choices I will be making on my own personal ballot, reluctantly published by me in response to multiple requests from friends and readers, barring the revelation of additional information in the next week.

Governor: Jake Merrick — Endorsement

Constitutionalists have long envisioned a day when a true constitutionalist would win the governor’s election in Oklahoma.

Merrick’s election would likely be the first, notwithstanding what Alffla Bill Murray would have you to think.

Merrick has done a great service to the state through his historic commitment to refusing lobbyist money, allowing, presumably for the first time, every Oklahoma Republican voter to vote for this concept. It is a nascent concept, one spreading across the state thanks to pioneering candidates like Merrick.

And make no mistake: it is the solution to “legalized” corruption — a corruption of such scale and scope that it is destroying the integrity of the government and those who play the game.

Even if he does not win, his impact in spreading the No Lobbyist Money message will be felt for years to come, and it is giving coattails to other No Lobbyist Money candidates across the state.

There has been exactly one reason not to vote for Merrick: if doing so would take enough votes away from the other Republican candidates, Mazzei or Keating, thus sending Drummond and McCall into the runoff.

That would be an absolute disaster for the Republican brand: two quintessential politicians on the runoff ballot, the type of which, in my view, would be just as comfortable under the Democratic brand were this a Democratic state.

But it is not. So it is up to Republican voters to have the wisdom to eliminate from their consideration those who have betrayed conservative values — such as McCall, who sacrificed his authority to represent the Republican Party when he repeatedly voted for and leveraged the power of his office for tax-increase packages, the scope and scale of which were without precedent; and Drummond, who has politicized the role of attorney general more than any other holder of that office in the modern era, doing a great indignity to the seriousness of that office.

Keating, on the other hand, is quite comfortable in the Republican brand. His willingness to bring up a subject one rarely hears about from Republican officeholders — the consolidation of administrative overhead — brings to mind the work of his father, who laid the foundation that the first-generation majority Republicans would build on as we consolidated government agencies and sought to lessen the size of government. That is something today’s Republican officeholders seem completely alien to.

However, Keating’s willingness to support the rapidly evolving surveillance-state technologies disqualifies him from the first-round support of any serious-minded conservative keen to avoid Orwell.

This might be the most important subject facing the next governor: will Oklahoma surrender to the all-encompassing tentacles of an AI-driven police and surveillance state? Or will we, even if every other state goes down that path, remain a jurisdiction of personal responsibility and freedom, where one’s immediate safety is adjudicated by the sovereignty of the individual, not AI?

My recollection of Mazzei’s role as a senator was that I perceived him to be a middle-of-the-road senator — comfortably Republican, but not someone I ever thought of as the courageous type who could hold his own when the time came to stand behind consistent principle in the face of the special interests.

When the National Popular Vote crowd invaded Oklahoma, deploying an array of Republican lobbyists to co-opt Republican officeholders in what I believe to be the greatest political conspiracy of this century to forever transform the country, Mazzei bought in.

That said, Mazzei has touched a chord with his calls for property-tax reform. It is the number one issue of the Republican electorate, and he had the courage to hear that call. I think that is why he surged in the polls, and it is good that he did, because for so long, with Drummond and McCall as the frontrunners, the Republican brand was in real trouble.

Which brings us back to Merrick.

He is principled, and he is stubborn. Unlike the weak Mazzei, I do not think you will ever need to fear Merrick caving to the special interests so long as there is a conservative principle at stake.

For those who supported Randy Brogdon in the 2010 election cycle, you will be very happy with Merrick. He is very much in the Brogdon lane.

And with Trump’s endorsement of Mazzei and the collapse of McCall’s poll numbers, the only reason for not voting for Merrick — avoiding a Drummond v. McCall runoff — has seemingly been removed from the objection docket.

So, absent a late surge by McCall in the next few days, the vote for Merrick is a true constitutionalist conservative’s mandate.

Lieutenant Governor: Justin “JJ” Humphrey

As I described here, the lieutenant governor has exactly one job: presiding over the Senate.

Unless he is committed to doing that job whenever that institution is in session, then he most certainly needs to return his paycheck, and that office should be eliminated from the taxpayer-funded payroll.

Humphrey is the only candidate of whom I am aware who has made this commitment.

His election would be transformative, taking power away from the agent of the state’s monied establishment — Senate Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton — and returning that chamber to its constitutionally compliant status.

Attorney General: Jeff Starling

This race presents a candidate, Starling, who is largely unknown in an office-holding sense, with no prior votes for us to grade, but who is well qualified for the job in a technical and professional sense.

On the other side is Jon Echols, a candidate who is very well known from his time in office — and not in a good way. Like McCall, Echols played a key role in ramming through the largest tax hikes in size and scope, while posting a low score on the Conservative Index during his last nine years in office. In one year, he actually scored just a 10. Nor is he the least bit qualified for the job in a technical and professional sense.

Those whose decisions are guided by measurable standards, such as Conservative Index scores, or by a candidate’s association with the establishment consulting industry, including CAMP, should be outraged by the method by which Echols and his IE group have conducted one of the most deceptive campaigns of this election cycle. CAMP’s conduct this year has earned it a status I would not have assigned before: for the first time, I now believe it is fair to judge a candidate by his willingness to employ them or to stand by as they sling sleeze from one’s IE group.

They have labeled Starling by a standard that, if applied consistently to just about anyone who has worked for a large employer, would probably disqualify even you, the reader, from consideration by conservative voters.

It is despicable and reprehensible, and it demonstrates exactly why Starling’s campaign has correctly described Echols as the ultimate swamp creature.

This is a subject for our next article.

Stay tuned.

Treasurer: Cindy Byrd

It is hard to listen to Cindy Byrd and not be inspired by the professionalism and pride she brings to her work. Even after eight years in office, her enthusiasm is still evident.

By contrast, recent missteps by Todd Russ, as he has been thrust into the arena of the Invest in Oklahoma Board, are a warning sign. The board represents an open and dangerous invitation to a form of legalized corruption by policymakers that Oklahoma is only beginning to understand.

If the state treasurer is going to be involved in investing taxpayer money into Oklahoma businesses — a sure-fire invitation to corruption — then the standard for who fills that role must be exceptionally high. Byrd’s body of work suggests she is best suited for that role. She will have the requisite knowledge of purchasing law, safeguards, and ethics that are essential in this new role, and that should allow her to avoid the mistakes Russ has already made.

Here’s hoping the first thing she does is reverse Russ’s unfortunate decision to hire a contract lobbyist — and not just any contract lobbyist, but one I best remember as the former “super woke” legislator who appointed himself as the gender police. He was a liberal Democrat who continually took to the House floor to harass members who did not use enough “shes” in their hypothetical descriptions of people affected by proposed legislation.

It should offend every conservative voter that Russ has put this individual on the public dole.

That aside, I believe Byrd will be the only member of that board unwilling to simply play the legalized-corruption game. Instead, she will ask the right questions and insist on ethical conduct.

Thus, this is one of the more important items on this year’s ballot.

Superintendent of Public Instruction: James Taylor

Taylor is well known in grassroots circles for his willingness to represent the values of the people, and in past elections he bravely challenged the ensconced, big-spending, Coburn-legacy-destroying, earmarking congressman, Tom Cole, in Congressional District 4. Stepping up to give the voters an alternative to Cole was a vital service to those voters.

Now, I greatly appreciate Taylor for giving me, a constitutionalist conservative, an option on the superintendent ticket, as he is the only leading candidate who can even remotely be considered likeminded.

Commissioner of Labor: Kevin West

In my experience, a representative’s freshman year in the House will usually be his most conservative, as the system is designed to crush an officeholder’s values. The longer they stay in office, the worse they usually get.

West is a fascinating study in Oklahoma politics because he was one of the few who managed to scramble back after a tough first year. In his second year, he stood up to the McCall/Echols tax-increase machine, largely joining with the conservative members and becoming one of the few not to be pushed from office by the infamous dark-money purge of 2018.

In the ensuing years, working within the system, time and again, it was West who authored the keynote grassroots legislation of the year.

Today, when you hear legislators from that time period trying to take credit for policy by saying they “fought” for some given component of social policy, the odds are high that what they mean by “fought” is that they eventually gave in to the overwhelming pressure of the grassroots and voted for a Kevin West-authored bill.

One can only imagine how West must feel time and again when he turns on the TV or opens his mailbox to witness some sleazy politician running on the Kevin West platform, as if it were his own all along.

As labor commissioner, West would likely be one of the few statewide officeholders to still have strongly held conservative principles. As such, he would be on the farm team for future, more high-profile statewide elections, a vital necessity for conservatives everywhere.

Insurance Commissioner: Undervote

Unlike Kevin West, the perceived frontrunner for insurance commissioner, Marty Quinn — a former state senator — caved to the tax-hike pressures of 2018, a career-defining vote and an epic betrayal of conservatism and Republican values when it counted most. He is thus eliminated under my important “don’t be fooled twice” rule.

Of the three alternatives, based on my research, I can’t find a candidate whom I believe to be worthy of my vote. So, the winner here is: Undervote.

Just leave it blank.

Go, undervote!

Corporation Commissioner: Justin Hornbeck

Brad Boles, the perceived frontrunner, like Quinn, betrayed Republican values with tax-increase plans and largely propped up the McCall/Echols machine in the House, which did so much harm to that institution over the years.

In the last few months, Boles seems to have recognized the importance of the grassroots. But there should be no doubt that, once safely ensconced in his new office, he will almost certainly be a complete pushover for the big rate-hiking utility concerns, just as he was for the McCall/Echols machine in the House.

Hornbeck is the regular-person candidate. As such, a vote for him is a gamble, but it is a significantly safer choice than the alternative.

U.S. Senate: Gary “TY” England

Kevin Hern has long been Oklahoma’s second-best member of Congress, and he will be an improvement over Markwayne Mullin, so this is already a big win for the people. But constitutional conservatives know that it is usually not best practice to jump on a consensus runaway train too quickly, and the self-described “Limbaugh baby,” Ty England, would be even better.

Congressional District One: Jackson Lahmeyer

Lahmeyer’s election would be a huge win for constitutionalists, perhaps the biggest of the election cycle.

Congressional District Two: Josh Brecheen

Brecheen holds the distinction of being Oklahoma’s only member of Congress who deserves re-election.

Congressional District Three: Wade Burleson

Congressional District Four: Marcie Everhart

Congressional District Five: No Challenger

Perhaps some articulate, true conservative will step up, sooner than later, for the 2028 election cycle as, after CD1, this presents the best possible pick up seat for constitutionalists.

State House

Three No Lobbyist Money incumbents are being challenged. Their election is key to continuing the progress being made toward returning the House of the people to the people. They are Rick West, District 3; Tom Gann, District 8; and Molly Jenkins, District 33.

Additionally, The Oklahoma State Capital People’s Audit suggests that House District 32’s Jim Shaw and House District 98’s Gabe Woolley should be re-elected.

Numerous other House incumbents are being challenged by No Lobbyist Money challengers. In every case, the right vote is the No Lobbyist Money vote. If there is a No Lobbyist Money candidate in your district, then you have an amazing opportunity to represent the values of your district and put it on the leading edge of ethics by voting for that candidate. These are the defining races of the election cycle.

If you don’t have a No Lobbyist Money candidate in your district, then resolve that next time, even if you must step up yourself, you will do so. It is still not too late to be a pioneer in the movement that is set to transform the Oklahoma government.

State Senate

The state’s “upper” house provides constitutionalists their very best opportunity to get a big win in state government. By unelecting the “Swampy Seven” senators who are preserving the monied establishment’s hold on that chamber, the people can put a cork in the ability of the institutionalists to grow government at the unfettered pace at which it currently expands.

Nearly all of the “Swampy Seven” are being challenged by No Lobbyist Money candidates. Their victory would give the No Lobbyist Money movement a foothold in that chamber, too, something that is badly needed.

Those races and challenger names are; Senate District 2, Payton Pepin; Senate District 4, Kenny Smith; Senate District 10, Jadan Terrazas; Senate District 12, William Stump; Senate District 20, Mark LeMarr; Senate District 28, Robert Trimble; and, Senate District 42, Malana Bracht.

Additionally, it is vital for voters to re-elect Senate District 32’s Dusty Deevers. He is likely the number one target of the establishment forces due to his outspoken role as a leader of the constitutionalist-minded Freedom Caucus group.

Beyond that, voters are right to ask their Senate candidate whom they will be supporting for president pro tempore. If that candidate supports the current leadership, then he should be rejected.

State Question

No!

Jason Murphey's 2026 Republican Primary Ballot
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




June 9, 2026 at 10:26PM - J Murphey

There, the viewer can scroll through the Association’s ads touting the “conservatism” of establishment candidates, while also, ironically enough, promoting the “strong Democrat” status of liberal Democrat Ellen Pogemiller — clearly an Association favorite.

The same universe of ads also points to Matt Echols, brother of current attorney general candidate Jon Echols, a clue that should not be ignored by anyone studying that ballot.

And then, mixed in with those public Association ads, the viewer finds OK Conservative Renewal’s anonymous attacks on conservatives from the right: Denise Hader branded a “Biden Republican,” current Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Olsen accused of having a public-safety record worse than Joe Biden’s, and many others brutalized in the same familiar style.

Thus, in one simple transparency portal, the entire scheme is exposed and visualized for all to see: the anonymous group, pretending to be conservative, attacking conservatives from the right, while the Association praises the establishment and promotes the “strong Democrat” status of a liberal Democrat while also praising the “conservativism” of the establishment Republicans, who are of course, in fact, likely anything but truly conservative.

It is all one big, deceptive game.

As it gears up, albeit a bit belatedly, to do its dirty, dirty work in the 2026 Republican primary, Oklahoma’s most vicious — and perhaps most sloppily executed — anonymous ad operation has crawled back out of the shadows to administer a new round of vicious beatings.

What I have yet to decide is this: Is their sloppiness accidental, the templated work product of a very overworked consulting firm that can’t keep up with the demand for dastardly attacks, or is it purposeful — a deliberate way of sending a message to both friend and foe: “You know who we are, and we call the shots, and we will destroy you if you do not comply.”

Stay tuned. But first for an important disclaimer: The following article contains my personal beliefs and observations. These have guided me as I have documented the role played by dark money and special-interest money in Oklahoma elections over the course of the past two and a half decades, including my own personal experience in this regard in 2004 as a first-time candidate for state house.

I believe that while there may never be true justice for those who have done so much to coarsen our society and injure so many well-meaning, patriotic, grassroots candidates for office, I can at least do my part: I can use the Oklahoma State Capital platform to investigate and tell the truth, whatever that truth may be. I believe the truth will expose, document, and preserve the facts of what happened — forever memorializing the shame of those who, more times than not, may have won the day, but whose actions should be studied, remembered, and avoided by future generations.

These are my opinions — my true beliefs — based on years of thoughtful observation. In some instances involving the subject matter mentioned here, I have been very judicious in choosing when and whether to put these matters on the record, in some cases waiting years before discussing them publicly.

This research, dating back years, will guide the future articles of OSC, in a special category of reporting on the role of dark money in Oklahoma elections.

We can never allow ourselves to accept this conduct as normal. We cannot allow it to remain unexposed and uncondemned, nor can we permit the memory of these treacheries — and their wider impact on society, destroying faith and fueling cynicism — to simply fade away with each election cycle.

We cannot allow those who dart out from the shadows to vanish back into anonymity, only to reappear the next time a primary election rolls around and some naive, good-hearted candidate makes himself available for the beating.

At first, the new array of 2026-election-cycle dastardliness might seem discouraging to the good-hearted member of the public.

But it should not.

I think it is little more than a dated relic of a strategy from a bygone era, when dark money still had power, and a clumsy attempt to recreate the magic of its past success — specifically, the 2018 purge of conservative officeholders from the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

In that cycle, Republican-in-name-only candidates — institutionalists who first and foremost represented the institutions that benefit from an ever-growing government, not the people — filed against conservative officeholders, challenging them from the political left.

Then, a dark-money operation, also aligned with the interests of a growing government and fueled by anonymous funders of a size and scope that, in previous times, would have been hard to imagine, attacked not from the left, but from the right.

The purpose, in my view, was to demoralize and confuse the wider Republican electorate — voters who did not want to support the institutionalists, but who became unable to tell the difference, to know the truth, and to identify which candidate was the institutional candidate and which was the people’s candidate.

They won the day, in an election that was gleefully interpreted by the political left as a rejection of the old conservative, small-government line of thought previously thought to dominate Oklahoma politics. Though importantly, that wasn’t so much the case. The media, as it often does, buried the lead: the role of big, anonymous money in confusing the electorate, by pretending to be something that it wasn’t.

This scheme, this model, is a primary means by which leftists continue to infiltrate and govern our government. To this day, they largely control the House of Representatives and maintain marginal control of the State Senate, though that control remains shaky at best. It is a deceptive, corrupt house of cards; it struggles to survive, doing so only through trickery and treachery.

A current-day example of this type of attack can be found in Oklahoma’s Senate District 42, where one of the now-notorious Swampy Seven, Brenda Stanley, faces impending defeat to grassroots challenger Malana Bracht.

Stanley’s vote-liability portfolio reads like a catalog of Republican apostasies — the sort of record that would normally doom a Republican incumbent in a conservative primary, surviving only by means of a dark-money operation muddying the waters by confusing and demoralizing the voters who so hope that, in Bracht, they have found someone who will not betray them.

Without that help, Stanley’s support base would likely be mostly limited to self-described Republican-in-name-only voters whose Republican registration status exists only by virtue of their desire to have a leftist voice in the majority-Republican primary election and, of course, the Eastern Oklahoma County institutionalists.

You name the policy betrayal, and you will likely find a Stanley vote to match.

First and foremost were her multiple votes for illegal-alien driver’s licenses, including her 2023 committee vote — the deciding vote to get that bill out of committee long after the grassroots had already engaged on the issue, following its 2022 passage off the Senate floor.

Essentially, Stanley was not the sort of establishment officeholder who simply made one bad vote before the grassroots were paying attention. She kept her hand on the hot stove until the very end, casting the deciding vote to keep the bill alive well into that year’s session, long after conservatives had sounded the alarm.

It was an ultimate betrayal — not just of her voters, but of the nation’s future — arriving just as Joe Biden’s sanctioned foreign invasion was kicking into full gear.

Three years later, as Stanley faces a potential reckoning for that betrayal, an anonymous dark money group has fully engaged.

The tactic is all too familiar: attacking not from the left by defending the leftist and mocking the challenger as being too “right wing;” but, from the right by de-contextualizing Bracht’s Facebook posts from more than six years ago to paint a picture of Bracht that simply does not reflect reality.

Notably, the group never actually shows the posts. It summarizes them. It strips them of context. It twists them into something new.

This is the dark art of impugning conservatives: take some small piece of fact or content, tear it from its original setting, and rebuild it into a new reality that bears no resemblance to the truth. But at its core, when viewed through the lens of the world’s most confused ignoramus, it may contain just enough of a technical connection to the original material to keep the anonymous attackers free from legal liability, even if the victim is somehow able to identify the anonymous attackers in the first place.

That is because these operations hide behind an array of commingled devices: LLCs, 501(c)(4)s, virtual mailing addresses, a website that’s simply a single-page, a WordPress template and a submission form, and a phone number that is never answered.

In one case, in 2022, the victim simply gave up — initially filing a lawsuit before determining that he could not find his assailant.

Given all of this, one could be forgiven for assuming that the attacker is desperate to remain anonymous, all to keep his true identity and motivations hidden.

But I do not believe this is always the case. I believe in one high-profile case, the attacker is actually quite keen for pretty much everyone who is in the know to know its identity.

After all, what good is it to remain anonymous if the decision-makers — the officeholders who take on the liability for advancing an unpopular agenda, or for stopping popular grassroots principles that are an affront to that agenda — do not know who is keeping them in power?

No, that dark money, all too often, is not really so dark. It is just opaque enough to keep the general public from figuring out what is really going on, and to put up a thin veil to delay those who want to vindicate themselves with legal action, but not so opaque that Capitol insiders are prevented from knowing the exact identity of the bully swinging the big stick — a stick designed to intimidate and frighten those who would stand in the way, while the Capitol insider plays the role of good guy, “I don’t know who those masked attackers are. I don’t have anything to do with it.”

It’s a game so deceptive that it forever changes what is perhaps its real victim: The Capitol insider.

When they become weak and squirrelly, when their personality changes, when they devolve into a completely different person than they were when they first took office, it is because they have been put through a humanity-destroying process. They have been co-opted by this very game: bullied and controlled into submission, allowed to continue playing the VIP Oklahoma City Capitol-world game, but expected to kill that part of their humanity — their conscience — that continually informs them of the wrongness of deceiving their true employers: the voters.

As an aside, if you are one of these politicians, please know that posts like these, and indeed the very challenges from the grassroots candidate you fear so much, are not your enemy. This challenge to your incumbency is the system, running according to providential rules, attempting to self-correct. As with much that is providential, it is not a fatal indictment so much as a warning sign, yet another indicator of the need to course-correct.

And if you are not capable of reversing course and governing consistent with the principles your consultant touts when sending those never-ending bullet points to the electorate’s mailbox, then you must get out. Find an excuse to get back to the real world straight away. It is not going to get better, and living the lie will forever change who you are, to your great detriment.

But to make my greater point, let’s consider the actions of the highest-profile dark-money fiend of this election cycle: a group calling itself 2026 Conservative Victory, LLC.

Today, as I write this, that organization celebrates its two-week birthday, having been filed in the not-so-Oklahoma-adjacent state of Delaware on May 22.

Last week, the newly birthed group dropped a set of ten despicable, humanity-destroying, reality-bending Facebook reels, victimizing and smearing an array of grassroots conservatives.

You name the conservative hero, and the odds are high that he or she is on the receiving end of “Conservative” Victory’s attack — attacks now running endlessly through the feeds of boomer grandmas scrolling The Facebook, looking for the dopamine hit of the newest cute-baby meme, only to be ambushed by dastardly, shocking allegations against that nice candidate whose support they had pledged just days earlier, when the candidate knocked on their door.

That group thoughtfully publishes the address of its worldwide headquarters: a Staples store in Yukon, where it appears to maintain a virtual postal box.

One imagines the process from there: an outraged citizen mails a complaint, an overworked Staples employee scans the missive into PDF form, and somewhere, in some undisclosed location, a dark-money drone opens the file just long enough to hit “delete.”

And, while presumably performing the “we have a real mailing address” charade for the technical purpose of meeting the state’s ethics requirements — not that they matter so much anymore in this new world of character assassinations fueled by unlimited dark money — the group was not so forthcoming about the filing status of the “LLC.”

For you see, that is not an Oklahoma LLC. For whatever reason, likely a model suggested by the professional dark-money industry that sets these things up, it is, unbeknownst to almost every viewer of the attack, a Delaware LLC, newly formed just a few days before the Facebook page that deployed the attacks.

In my opinion, the timing, targets, ad patterns, and public ad-library evidence point toward the Oklahoma State Medical Association’s political ecosystem as a likely source or beneficiary of these attacks.

And make no mistake: if it seemed strange that the Oklahoma State Senate, in what appeared to be pure desperation, simply stopped showing up for work in the final days of session — an unprecedented action and such a violation of its duty to the people that it was hard to understand — now, perhaps, we can better understand just why they did what they did.

After all, the Senate had been pushed to the point of panic by its own Freedom Caucus asking for one simple thing: a vote on exposing health-care fraud involving illegal aliens.

After all, that proposal was universally popular among “Republican” senators, at least if we are to believe their public pronouncements and what was a clearly staged procedural vote designed to allow those Senators to claim that they supported that bill, that is, until a second procedural motion forced them to truly pick sides, when they had to show their true colors.

If, as I believe the public evidence suggests, 2026 Conservative Victory is part of the same political ecosystem serving the Association’s interests, it is not about advancing “conservatism” in any meaningful form. It is, I believe, about ensuring that the officeholders will twist themselves into pretzels — even to the point of effectively shutting down their own institution — when

The Anonymous Attack Machine That Isn't So Anonymous
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




June 8, 2026 at 11:18AM - J Murphey

Attached to this special update, you will find the release of The Oklahoma State Capital’s 2026 Capitol Conformity Tracker.

Is your state representative a mindless lemming whose job mostly consists of showing up to vote — and then enabling the corrupt establishment, the system of smoke and mirrors, and the corresponding legalized corruption — by tapping that green “yes” button more than 90% of the time?

Or are they one of the “mediocrities,” those who occasionally find their independence and vote no, but 80% of the time or more can still be found in the ranks of the compliant?

Or do they read the bills, vote according to conservative criteria, and identify and vote against those bills that violate their campaign platforms and their contracts with their employers — the voters? Such a system necessitates voting no at least 20% of the time, due to the fact that so many bills are written either by the special interests that benefit from big government, or by the bureaucracies that do the same.

If your Republican state representative is in the latter group, congratulations. You reside in one of just seven districts, out of the 81 Republican districts, that passed the test.

If your representative is one of the 17 mediocrities, and they do not have an opponent in the upcoming election cycle, then it is time to reach out to them and encourage them to become stronger — and to let them know that their willingness to stand strong will be noted and appreciated. If they do have an opponent, this may be your opportunity to make a change, and join the elite seven, the districts which are actually represented by a representative who deserves the title of “representative.”

And if your representative is one of the 57 lemmings, then take comfort in the fact that the vast majority of “Republican” districts are in your same position: regularly betrayed by a state representative who campaigns as a small-government Republican, but votes anything but.

You will find the report here:

https://www.oklahomastatecapital.com/documents/69d33165-f872-4032-8eb7-014c271byt7s/capitol-conformity-report-2026

In addition to showing the level of compliance voting, the report also details the number of missed votes. If your representative has a high missed-vote rate, then he is likely not taking the job seriously — or has a habit of “walking the vote,” a system of ducking out when controversial votes land on the floor.

It should be seen as no coincidence that those who fare best on the report, in terms of voting “no,” also do well in terms of missed votes. This shows who the true representatives are: those who know that actually voting — and voting the right way — is the most important part of their job.

I hope this report is a help to you as we work together to return the voice of the people to the State House of Representatives.

Please do not hesitate to reply to this update with your thoughts and questions.

And please feel free to share it.

If you have found this resource helpful, and want to support this work, to hold the system accountable, and if you have not yet done so, then consider upgrading to a paid subscription. And spread this document far and wide as educating the wider electorate will be key to our effort to return our government to a constitutionally compliant, small government that’s deserving of the people it’s supposed to represent.

Just Released: Your State Capitol Conformity Tracker Report Is here
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog




June 4, 2026 at 05:52PM - J Murphey