It was one race under unusual circumstances, but Democrat J.J. Dossett’s victory in last week’s state Senate District 34 special election hit Oklahoma Republicans like a bucket of ice water.
And it got Oklahoma Democrats thinking maybe they are a factor in state politics again.
Dossett, a 31-year-old teacher and coach, got 56 percent of the vote in a district that in recent years has voted 65 percent and 70 percent Republican. He received almost 2,200 votes, but only 1,300 Democrats (and 189 independents) cast ballots, meaning at least 700 Republicans crossed party lines.
The same thing happened last year in a Republican-heavy Oklahoma City House of Representatives special election. Cyndi Munson, a former Girl Scouts staffer, beat a much better funded and connected Republican for a seat held by the GOP since the House reorganized into districts in the 1960s.
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Those results, and a cascade of circumstances that include free-falling oil prices, budget failures, parents and teachers up in arms about school funding, and solidly Republican neighborhoods shaking to man-made earthquakes, have put the GOP in an unaccustomed spot.
“Right now, the Republicans are on the defensive,” said University of Oklahoma political science professor Keith Gaddie. “Their model isn’t working, and the voters know it.”
Republican leadership has, for the most part, dismissed the defeats as flukish results wrought from unusual circumstances. Some financial straits aside, the party has never been larger or stronger in Oklahoma.
Republican voter registrations continue to grow, while Democratic registrations shrink. The GOP still holds every statewide office and every congressional seat and enjoys huge legislative majorities that could easily be larger at the end of the 2016 general election.
In short, no one really expects the Republican fortress so carefully erected over the past 25 years to collapse anytime soon.
But at least one of the architects of the GOP juggernaut, political consultant Fount Holland, thinks the road ahead may be bumpier than Republicans are accustomed to.
Holland said “several factors were at play” in the special elections, including divisions within the party and the fact that the special election primaries did not have runoffs.
But, “frankly, we have some real challenges on the education issue and need to find solutions ... dysfunction eventually hurts the party in power,” he said.
“The Democrats, who have suffered in the wilderness, I think know how to run scrappy campaigns with quality candidates. They are no question emboldened, and certainly should be.”
Gaddie said new state Democratic Party Executive Director Russell Griffin, a Oklahoma native who has run campaigns all over the country, is very good at organizing the “ground game.”
“They’re going to build a proper campaign organization and they’re going to put candidates out there everywhere,” Gaddie said. “The Democrats have a tough row to hoe in this state, but this legislative session is going to be a complete train wreck. We have failing budgets and $28-a-barrel oil. Or $22. Who knows where the bottom is. We’re not going to come out of this (economic slump) before the end of the year.”
And that could mean disgruntled voters on Election Day.
Tulsa County Democratic Party Vice Chairman Greg Bledsoe said the special election upsets revealed a Republican vulnerability caused by divisions within the party and its failure to understand the importance of public schools to Oklahoma voters.
In Munson’s case, he said, anti-establishment Republicans stayed home on the day of the general election because their candidate lost to a chamber of commerce candidate in the primary.
Dossett, on the other hand, got crossover votes from traditional Republicans unwilling to vote for the anti-establishment primary winner, David McLain.
Bledsoe said the local party plans to contest as many solidly Republican districts as possible, on the theory that the GOP candidates furthest to the right generally win primaries and runoffs, and that traditional Republicans are now more willing to vote for Democrats they perceive as closer to their own views.
“The message we as Democrats are going to be sending is that (Dossett’s victory) puts in play every district in the state,” Bledsoe said. “In our opinion, attractive candidates who talk about education have a chance.”
As long as they don’t flash the “D” after their names.
None of Dossett’s campaign materials revealed his political party. Most of the rookie Democratic candidates getting into this year’s legislative races are saying little if anything about their affiliation.
“That’s true, and that’s for a reason,” said Bledsoe. “We believe people should look at the candidate and not their party.”
A year from now, though, the political balance in the Oklahoma Legislature is almost certain to depend much less on the number of Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate than on the makeup of the Republican caucuses, and whether the special-election defeats cause them to moderate.
“I hope leadership uses ... the decision by the people in Owasso as an example of what happens when you continue to overreach and rely on partisan rhetoric instead of good policy,” said Senate Democratic Leader John Sparks.
“I suspect what will happen is the growing number of Republican extremists will reject that and decide they need to push harder. I don’t know if the moderates will be able to convince them otherwise. They seem to have had a difficult time in the last few years doing so.”
