It’s the question I train voters to ask whenever a politician comes looking for their support.
Of all the questions I can give them, it may be the closest thing there is to a magic bullet:
“Let’s fast-forward several years beyond the end of your time in office. Looking back, what will be your criteria for determining whether your service was a success?”
It sounds simple.
It isn’t.
You would be amazed at how effectively this stumps the politician who is in the political world out of ambition, not principle. He will stumble all over himself trying to articulate what he thinks you want to hear—and, more likely than not, completely fail.
Now, I won’t give the perfect answer here. Stay tuned, though. In the future, it is my intent to offer these classes online for the paid subscribers of this publication. (We’ve got to weed out those establishment characters who lurk in the free subscription pool, you know.)
But, though it’s not exactly an apples-to-apples situation, a few days ago I posed a variation of this question to Jake Merrick as he visited Logan County, explaining and building support for his newest endeavor: The Colony.
You can read my write-up of his endeavors here.
I asked, “How will you judge the success or failure of your efforts?”
Without missing a beat, responding on pure instinct, Merrick replied: “When you ask the average conservative on the street, ‘Where do they go to get their information?’ They will say they go to The Colony.”
Merrick has given this a lot of thought. He knows what he wants to do.
And it’s an ambitious target. It’s going to be a very heavy lift. But having observed Merrick’s endeavors over the past five years, I’ve noticed that there’s something driving him—a sense of genuine purpose that’s at the heart of his actions.
It’s not about money.
It’s not about reputation.
It’s not about any of those deep, often dark, narcissistic psychological elements that so often drive the most colorful and interesting personalities into the public-policy arena.
I believe that, for Merrick, it’s really about a true calling.
And though I normally wouldn’t bet on the success of an effort to build a news network from the ground up, dependent on the engagement of contributors from all 77 counties, this could very well prove to be an exception.
Merrick is a believer—in the project, and in the concept that Oklahomans are ready for a people-driven news service that actually informs and educates all the way down to the local levels of government.
It’s a fascinating concept to think about. Could a network not driven by corporate advertising money, or polluted with the pro-institutional views of leftist-minded media personalities, get the word out and keep the public engaged in the policy debates? Could that informed electorate, in turn, give a potentially incoming Mike Mazzei administration the confidence to stand on principle, truly return the size of government to constitutionally compliant levels, and weather the storm of institutionalist resistance that would follow such dramatic reforms?
Keep an eye out for Merrick’s new rollout. It’s going to be an interesting follow.
Here is another interesting follow: Jim Shaw, fresh off his impressive and dramatic electoral defeat of the establishment forces who have fought him so hard, at every level, since his stunning 2024 upset of one of Oklahoma’s most powerful politicians, has taken his effort to the next level with an intriguing online series dubbed Transparency Throwdown.
Through the seven editions of these episodes, Shaw has done something unusual for a sitting state representative: publicly explain House procedures and practices that ordinarily receive little attention. His recent episodes have addressed unrecorded votes, public participation in committees, and the Legislature’s internal rules used to hide the politicians from accountability to their employers: the voters.
The reason this is so rare?
There’s a whole machine designed around funneling new state representatives into an awful system that’s built on trickery and deception, in a way that many of those representatives never understand or realize to begin with, much less have the ability to articulate.
Worse, for the few who have the intellectual power to understand how bad things really are, even fewer have the courage to articulate those observations in a public manner, because the system is built to punish those who do.
Jim Shaw is sending a message: he’s not going to change. While most new state representatives are well on the path to complete assimilation by their second term, Shaw is moving in the other direction.
His social media has become a must-watch resource for those who want to truly understand what’s going on in their state Legislature.
To the average politician, Shaw’s actions may look like political suicide: Telling the truth for everyone to hear? Who does that?
But it’s not. It may seem counterintuitive to the insiders, but it’s exactly what the people are asking for. Having now secured his home electoral base by thoroughly trouncing the forces of the establishment, Shaw joins a small class of those who hold the values of the people, whose public persona, actual words, and deeds actually match the campaign materials deployed by almost all candidates in this state but followed through on by only a few.
Shaw becomes one of just a handful of Oklahoma elected officials who have a promising future representing the true values of the people on a wider and bigger stage.
Both Jake Merrick and Jim Shaw are working to build something that lasts. Both seem to operate with a sense that the point of public life is not just to win the next election, but that the only way we are going to save our state and nation is through sharing the truth—and then believing that Oklahomans, once informed of the truth, the actual facts, will do the rest.
Stay tuned.
This state government is just starting to get interesting.
The Next Generation of Getting the Truth Out: Jake Merrick, Jim Shaw and Building Something That Lasts
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog
September 22, 2026 at 08:35AM - J Murphey
RSS Feed
