(This story was updated to change or add a photo.)
Roughly three decades ago, things were different.
At that time, a Republican governor and a Legislature controlled by Democrats worked together. They passed one of the biggest education reform packages in the history of the state: House Bill 1017.
The legislation was seen as a high-water mark for bipartisanship. The bill was the Democratic offspring of a Republican governor’s task force. It made dramatic changes in education policy and, at the same time, raised taxes to pay for those changes. And even though it took a while, the final version was supported by many lawmakers on both sides and signed by a Republican governor, Henry Bellmon.
Since then, times have changed.
Political extremists have pushed the centrists — the moderates like those who did the heavy lifting on HB 1017 — out of the political arena. The growth of right-wing media, uber-conservative groups and voter apathy, coupled with the rise of the Tea Party and later Donald Trump, upended the country’s political structure.
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Even the Oklahoma Legislature, considered the second-most conservative state legislature in the country, has pushed many of its moderate Republican politicians to the sidelines. Though the GOP has run the show in state government for the past two decades, its supermajority now faces relentless attacks from far-right caucuses in both the House and Senate.
Until recent years, that faction had little clout and effectiveness. This year, far-right members became more vocal with attacks on its party leaders. James Lankford, the state’s senior U.S. Republican senator, was censured by the Oklahoma County Republican Party for his work with Democrats on an immigration reform bill. Oklahoma Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treat was targeted by far-right members of his own caucus because he didn’t support a cut in the personal income tax.
Then in early September, the national Freedom Caucus — a far-right group created by some members of Congress — launched an affiliate in Oklahoma. The goal, state Chairman Sen. Shane Jett said, was to push Oklahoma’s Legislature even further right.
“We’re going to keep moving them to the right, to the right, so back home (the voters) will send us back here with a new mandate: Continue the good work we’re doing, because it reflects their values,” said Jett, a Republican from Shawnee.
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Leveraging a model of extreme rhetoric and disruption, the national Freedom Caucus has been busy waging policy wars and primary election fights. And while its new offshoot in Oklahoma won’t say how big it is, the group is expected to be visible during the next legislative session and the elections that will follow.
“There are a lot of good people in office right now who worry about drawing a primary opponent,” said outgoing House Majority Leader Jon Echols, a Republican from Oklahoma City. “Today, the big fights, the family fights, are in the primary election.”
Echols doesn’t have to look far for an example. This summer, four well-known members of the Oklahoma Legislature — Sens. Greg McCortney and Blake Cowboy Stephens and Reps. Kevin Wallace and Dean Davis — all conservative Republicans who could easily be labeled as center-right, were defeated by extremist challengers in primary election races.
The challengers had help, too. Dark money groups, such as one led by Chip Keating, the son of former Gov. Frank Keating, hammered McCortney, painting him as soft on crime and claiming he was trying to defund the police.
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In addition, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt joined the primary fights, campaigning against some incumbent Republicans while supporting others. His help was most often directed to the GOP’s right-wing. Stitt leveraged his connection with Donnell Harder, his former communication staffer who is now part of a political action committee known as 46Forward. The PAC, founded by several contributors to the governor, began raising money to fund challengers to some incumbent GOP lawmakers, including McCortney.
The issue grew so contentious that Treat warned Stitt to back off.
“We’ve heard from people who have been hit up from his operation to go after our members, and that’s not well received,” Treat said at the time. “It’s going to be very unwelcome if he tries to take out members of our caucus.”
In McCortney’s case, one of the reasons he was targeted was his vote against a plan to create a second law enforcement training facility that would have been located in Wallace’s district. The other training facility, operated by the Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training, operates in McCortney’s home of Ada.
“He was defending his district,” Echols said. “I don’t remember a time when a lawmaker got beat up for defending his home district.”
Oklahoma primary, redistricting systems drive polarization, experts say
Former state Treasurer Robert Butkin said recently it’s hard to pin down what, exactly, happened to Oklahoma’s centrists, but he said two issues have exacerbated fractures in today’s political climate: semi-closed primary races and redistricting.
“The primary system and the redistricting system seem to favor the more extreme candidates of both political parties in primaries,” Butkin, a Democrat, said.
Butkin was first elected as state treasurer in 1994. He was reelected without opposition in 1998 and again in 2002. He left office in 2005 to become dean of the University of Tulsa School of Law.
In legislative districts that lean heavily Republican, the primaries often decide who will get the legislative seat. Democrats and independents cannot vote in those races, meaning they could have no say in who represents them. In addition, many voters skip primary elections altogether, which can leave choosing a candidate up to activists.
Butkin said cultural war issues — quickly embraced by the public — play a role in deciding races, too. “It used to be in my time, when I ran for state treasurer, people were just asking who is best qualified to manage the state treasury,” he said. “We weren’t drawn into these hot-button national social issues. Now candidates are.”
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If candidates and office holders are always forced to address and react to national issues, there is much less room for compromise on the local level, he said.
“I do fault the national Republican Party primarily — though I think both parties are somewhat to blame — for seeing it as a sign of weakness to work toward consensus,” Butkin said.
Data from a 2022 study by Pew Center underscores this. According to the study, 38% of Oklahoma’s adult population identified as conservative and another 37% as moderate. Moving left, only 19% classified themselves as liberal. Six percent said they did not know.
Of those who considered themselves moderate, 78% identified as Christian, with a large share of that group — 48% — identifying as evangelical protestant. Those numbers, plus the fact that voter turnout remains low in Oklahoma, have made it easier for the extremists to push back against GOP leadership.
As an example, Butkin pointed to Lankford’s attempt earlier this year to address immigration reform, which drew criticism from far-right lawmakers in Oklahoma and beyond.
“Senator Lankford, who could be considered a very, very conservative faith-based Republican, led the charge in developing a bipartisan approach to immigration issues,” Butkin said. “And while it certainly would not have been a perfect solution, it would have made things better.”
But Lankford’s efforts, Butkin said, were sabotaged by Donald Trump, the Republican standard bearer.
Analyst: Voters become disenfranchised under Oklahoma primary system
Longtime political consultant Pat McFerron said even though Oklahoma has always been a conservative state, its current political system incentivizes “market share politics” over consensus building.
“I have access to polling data going back to 1982,” McFerron told The Oklahoman recently. “At that point, 70% of Oklahomans identified as being conservative. It’s about 68% today. I think what’s happened, with the advent of cable news accelerated by social media channels, is that Oklahomans are now able to place themselves more in a national context than a local contest.”
Many Oklahoma voters have become disinterested in state-level races, he said.
“I think they have left because they’re frustrated, and they don’t see the impact in their daily lives,” McFerron said. “They don’t think their vote matters, because the reality is in Oklahoma, in the general election, it really doesn’t.”
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As an example, McFerron said to look no further than races for county sheriff.
“We have 77 counties,” McFerron said. “But in only six of those counties do we have both a Republican and Democrat running. In those 71 (other) counties, those sheriffs never have to stand in front of all the voters. They just have to get a majority of the small number who vote in primaries.”
McFerron, long considered one of the country’s top political pollsters, said primary candidates often have few policy differences, meaning that voters have few choices about policy and ideas.
The basic line for a Republican in a Republican primary is now who can move furthest to the right, he said, and in Democratic primaries, it’s who can move furthest to the left.
“Many moderates,” MeFerron said, “don’t see anyone to vote for because of the extremists, and so they don’t vote.”
Even those who might want to vote can be left out by Oklahoma’s current system, McFerron said. For instance, a voter who is a registered Democrat in a city like Woodward would rarely get to vote on any state or local elections.
Of 168 offices that filed with the state Election Board in 2022, only seven of those races had an election of consequence decided in November, McFerron said.
“Only in those seven races,” he said, “did the November vote matter.”
Oklahoma Legislature’s push to the right started decades ago
Former Senate Pro Tempore Cal Hobson said he has strong memories of the moderates. He worked with many of them during his tenure in the Oklahoma Senate and the House of Representatives in the 1990s and early 2000s. Hobson said he’s not surprised by how important primary election have become.
He said the move to the right and the focus on primary races has been underway since 1989, when lawmakers began working on HB 1017, sparked by then-Gov. Bellmon’s Task Force 2000.
“In 1989, House Bill 1017 — an education reform bill that included a tax increase — started, and then it had to go on for months and months and finally passed in May of 1990,” he said.
Even though Bellmon supported the bill, Hobson said, Republican lawmakers “locked up against it” because it would raise taxes.
During the 1992 election cycle, Hobson said Democrats beat five Republicans who voted against the bill. As fallout from the bill, conservatives — including Bellmon — supported a state question for term limits for state legislators. A second state question required legislative supermajorities for future tax increases.
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Both passed, Hobson said, but a third state question, which would have overturned HB 1017, failed.
The situation helped spark a GOP litmus test for future candidates that hinged on their support for lower taxes and smaller government, as well as their religious ideologies, Hobson said.
“It was a combination of term limits and the hardening on both the left and the right on the national level that changed things,” he said.
Now, more than 30 years later, those elements have reduced voter turnout, limited voters’ choices and disenfranchised thousands.
And the moderates?
“They are around, but there isn’t any reward for moderates or Democrats if they wanted to be elected,” Hobson said.
A politician in rural Oklahoma has to move to the right to remain in office, he said.
Will moderates return to Oklahoma politics?
So how do policy makers and the politicians, themselves, bring back the moderates and convince them to engage again?
Both Hobson and McFerron agree changes in the primary system would encourage more centrists. At the same time, Hobson said, Oklahoma Democrats are seeing their base expand in urban areas as the population in the state’s larger cities increases. It still remains difficult to win as a centrist or a Democrat in rural parts of the state, he said.
And part of the problem, Hobson said, is that rural Oklahomans have forgotten their history.
“Back in the ’70s, I’d be campaigning door to door, and people would tell me they were a Democrat because in the ’30s President Roosevelt helped save their family,” he said. “Those people were the centrists. But as they died out, people forgot, and they began to vote against their own self interest.”
With efforts underway to change Oklahoma’s primary system and more pushback against extremist policy ideas on the national and state levels, Hobson said he remains hopeful that the pendulum will eventually swing toward the center.
Voters can play a role, too. Oklahomans who want a dependable state government need to pay attention to issues and go to the polls, Hobson said.
“People need to vote,” Hobson said. “It’s an important part of the process.”
Hobson said he also believes efforts to combat extreme political agendas can bring more centrists back into the political process.
“The moderates haven’t gone away, they are there,” he said. “The goal is to get them involved again and let them know they are needed.”
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Publish date : 2024-09-18 13:00:00
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