On our podcast Friday, May 17th, Michael Grande and I took election data that had been provided by former HD31 candidate Karmin Grider, and went through it on air – live. It wasn’t pretty, I can assure you, but you can see the full video for yourself on our Rumble and YouTube channels. If you’ve ever wanted to see how to look up candidates on the Oklahoma Ethics website, you can forward to 1:11:20 on the live video where I walk you through the process.
We began our video with state Senator Jessica Garvin. She was elected to SD43 in 2020. This year, Senator Garvin is being challenged by McClain County Assessor, Kendal Sacchieri. We interviewed her about school financing April 3rd of this year and it was a fascinating interview – if not frustrating as a taxpayer.
Senator Garvin has some very low contribution stats when it comes to donations from her district. So where DOES her money come from if it isn’t coming from people who would elect her in her district? Here is the YouTube link to this short.
We talked briefly about Senator Greg McCortney as well, though we’ve talked about him with Karmin before in February of 2024. McCortney is being challenged this year by fellow Republican Jonathan Wingard.
The Senator was voted Pro Temp by the Senate Caucus in February after a 501C4-funded campaign.
This video is a bit over 2 minutes, but it’s very well worth the watch to see who funds Greg McCortney’s Senate campaigns – very instructive.
Now let’s jump to the Oklahoma House.
We’ll start with Oklahoma Representative Kevin Wallace. Representative Wallace has been in his HD32 chair in the legislature since 2014. He is the head of the Appropriations and Budget Committee in the House – a very important assignment. So important in fact, that over the course of his 10 years in the House, he’s run almost ONE MILLION dollars through his campaigns.
This year he is being challenged by Lincoln County resident Jim Shaw, whom we interviewed on our podcast when we spoke to Jeff and Robbie McCommas about the engineered buy up of private land for wind turbines.
From there, let’s talk about Representative Mark McBride. He was elected to the Oklahoma Legislature HD53 in 2012. In Oklahoma, Representatives are only allowed to serve 12 years (thank goodness!), so Representative McBride will not return to session in 2025. Four candidates are running for that seat – all Republicans: KATHREN STEHNO (who ran against McBride last term), JASON BLAIR, NICK POKORNY and HEATHER BOSS. HD53 will need to do their DUE DILIGENCE on each candidate.
It might be interesting to know who funded Mark McBride’s campaigns over the course of a dozen years in the legislature because it surely wasn’t people in his district.
Our next House member is John Talley from HD33, who was elected in 2018. Talley has been challenged by fellow Republican Brice Chaffin twice and this year, former ROPE Board member Molly Jenkins is running to take his seat.
Only 1.2% of Talley’s campaign financing comes from INSIDE his own district. Maybe that’s why Jenkin’s campaign motto is NO LOBBYIST MONEY? Find the ROPE Report Short here on YouTube.
Next, we’ll talk about Cynthia Roe from HD42, elected in 2018. Hers is one of the lowest funded campaigns from inside her district. Roe couldn’t even garner a tenth of one percent of her campaign finances from her own district. Why? Maybe the answer explains why she has two challengers this year – Matt Huggins and Tony Bowen.
Find the YouTube link here.
The last House District member we profiled in our Friday’s ROPE Report Live podcast, was Representative John Pfeiffer from HD38, elected in 2014. Representative Pfeiffer had absolutely the worst rating of all the legislators we reviewed for Friday’s podcast for in-district donations. In fact, according to data assimilated by Karmin Grider from Oklahoma Ethics Commission data,
John Pfeiffer had only NINE PEOPLE IN HIS DISTRICT DONATE TO HIS CAMPAIGN OVER 10 YEARS
Who in the world could John Pfeiffer serve if for over 10 years, only 9 people financially supported his campaigns?
Interestingly, part of Pfeiffer’s district happens to be Blackwell, a town which our V1SUT Vantage Substack author and podcast regular has hammered numerous times in numerous different articles from allowing drag queens to perform in a public park and associated issues with their city council and city attorney, to GIVING Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower to a group of what look to be BitCoin scammers.
This year, Pfeiffer does have a CHALLENGER in Marven Goodman. If you are in the district, look him up. It would certainly appear that HD38 could use a Representative of the PEOPLE and not the corporate.
If you’d like to share the direct YouTube link, click here.
In closing, I’d like to point out – for those who think it’s really no big deal that these elected officials are bought and paid for by corporatists – how the election cycle actually works and how the educated voter gets screwed.
Here’s how it very often works: Campaign consultants (or legislators themselves), find people in districts who they believe can win an election because they have some kind of name recognition – usually they own a business. The candidate then raises money through his/her candidate campaign and their consultant may tap into a direct network of PAC’s funded in great part by 501C4’s (dark money) to buy items like mailers – sometimes two a week at approximately $6 thousand a pop – push polling through text messages, Facebook/social media ads and, if possible, radio and TV.
Because they know that most people have no idea where to get information on voters (even though the thing in their hand they use to watch incessant cat videos on social media uses Google and could pull up a candidate’s website with a basic search) and because they know that most people believe something they read due to personal confirmation biases, they know that putting together slick mailers and ads that stick to specific talking points and misuse, or misinform readers about candidates, will win votes.
So yes, people in their district may elect candidates, but the process is highly suspect and works only because people remain (willfully?) ignorant of how to vet candidates.
So what is the answer to getting representation in the state capitol that care about their district and not their corporate sponsors?
SHARE THE INFORMATION YOU GATHER ABOUT CANDIDATES WITH OTHERS; neighbors and friends are more willing to believe you than an ad. SET THEM STRAIGHT. Post to social media, call, stop by – whatever works. This is really the only way. We’re never going to beat these people with money – they’ll always have more than us. The only way to beat the game is by waking up others and getting information directly to them that they can use to vote – and in turn influence others on their own.
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