Engineer and school choice advocate Chuck Strohm defeated Jenks school board member Melissa Abdo on Tuesday to win a Republican runoff for the vacant House District 69 seat.
Abdo finished first in the three-way June primary with 46 percent of the vote, to just 31 percent from Strohm.
On Tuesday, Strohm received 52 percent of the 2,635 votes cast to defeat Abdo by 119 votes. He has no general election opponent.
A political newcomer, Strohm benefited from a $30,000 ad campaign against Abdo by a Washington D.C.-based group that promotes state-funded scholarships and vouchers to private schools.
Abdo, as a member of the Jenks School Board, had been party to a lawsuit seeking to invalidate a state-funded scholarship program for special needs students. Jenks and other suburban school districts opposed the way the program was funded.
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Strohm, 49, made no public statement about the third-party attack on Abdo, but his campaign website includes an endorsement of both higher teacher pay and school vouchers. Strohm has one child in Jenks Public Schools and one in private school.
Also Tuesday, James Leewright of Bristow edged Dani Thompson-Fields, also of Bristow, in the Republican primary to succeed Skye McNiel in HD 29. Leewright, 42, defeated Thompson-Fields by 70 votes out of 1,834 cast. The district is mostly in Creek County but includes western-most Tulsa County.
After beating the 24-year-old Thompson-Fields, Leewright now meets 83-year-old Depew Mayor Bob Talley in the general election.
In another area legislative runoff, Eufaula Mayor Selina Jayne-Dornan, 57, easily defeated Gary Clason, 47, of Henryetta for the Democratic nomination in Senate District 8. The district stretches from McIntosh County in the south to the Tulsa-Okmulgee county line in the north.
Jayne-Dornan is opposed by Republican Roger Thompson of Okemah in the general election.
The closest legislative race of the night occurred in Oklahoma City’s House District 88 Democratic runoff, where Jason Dunnington edged Paul Sophia by 22 votes out of 1,958 cast.
Sophia, who is trying to become the first transgender candidate in the nation elected to a state Legislature, said she will request a recount. The runoff winner has no general election opponent.
