Perhaps nothing demonstrates the sudden turbulence rocking the Oklahoma Republican Party more than the predicaments in which state Reps. Sean Roberts, R-Hominy, and Mike Ritze, R-Broken Arrow, find themselves.
After years of little to no opposition, both are in Aug. 28 runoff elections they could easily lose.
Ritze has received late endorsements from U.S. Sen. James Lankford, who rarely gets involved in such races, and former U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn. But he managed just 36.5 percent of the vote and ran second — a truly ominous sign for an incumbent — to firefighter Stan May in the June 26 House District 80 Republican primary.
No Oklahoma legislator has won a runoff after finishing second in the primary in more than 20 years.
Roberts finished 52 votes ahead of former newspaper publisher Louise Redcorn in a five-way HD 36 GOP primary but received just 33 percent of the vote, the lowest of the 10 GOP incumbents forced into runoffs and lower than five of the six who lost outright in primaries.
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It’s been quite a change for Ritze and Roberts.
Ritze had not seen an opponent of any kind since winning his first term in the 2008 House District 80 Republican primary. Roberts has had only one real test, a 2012 Republican primary, since winning his first term in 2010.
Neither had an opponent in 2016.
But the political climate changed and changed quickly. Ritze, speaking to a Republican group shortly after the primary, seemed a little bewildered by the reversal of fortune.
For decades he’d been near the front of the Oklahoma Republican Party’s march to the right. Now he was under fire in the Republican primary in large part because he wouldn’t vote for a tax increase to pay for teachers’ raises and other services.
“I voted for the teacher raise,” Ritze said. “But the taxes, I felt like that was overkill. We had the money for the raises. Some cuts could have been made.”
The pay raises were authorized in one bill, the money to pay for them in several others. Ritze and Roberts were among several House members who voted for the authorization bill but not the others.
Many of those representatives were voted out in primaries or are in runoffs.
The 69-year-old Ritze said Oklahoma does need to pay teachers more, but he said Highway Patrol troopers should get raises, too.
“They work 12 months a year,” he said.
Ritze told his audience he had it on good authority that some of the people who packed the Capitol for two weeks last spring were “probably not teachers” and had been paid by George Soros.
He reminded listeners that he was “on the front lines against Obamacare” and said, “There is a big battle between good and evil, more than any time I can remember.”
There does seem to be a battle of some kind in the Republican Party. Mailers and radio ads paid for through a series of federal political action committees and dark money non-profits in the weeks before the primary attacked both Ritze and Roberts.
The PACs appear affiliated in some way with Republican clients, but they do not have to file with the Oklahoma State Ethics Commission, and their reports to the Federal Election Commission don’t reveal the source of their funding or even how much was spent on those two races.
The reports list payments totaling about $40,000 to an Oklahoma City consulting firm called Advocacy Insight LLC, but it’s not clear whether it was involved in the Ritze and Roberts races.
May, Ritze’s runoff opponent, said he had planned to run in 2020, when Ritze would be term-limited, but was advised to get in this year because of dissatisfaction with the incumbent.
“Somebody was going to run. The feeling was if I didn’t run this time, I might not be in position to do it (in 2020),” he said.
May said conversations with Republicans in the district — and Republicans outnumber Democrats more than two-to-one in HD 80 — “always seem to roll back to education.”
He is depending on continued help from teachers and others interested in education, who he said seem to understand that he’ll need them in the primary.
“I’ve not gotten the feeling they’ve relaxed,” May said. “They want to see changes.”
That said, May senses that many in the district are wary of the tax increases passed by this year’s Legislature.
“Taxes come up quite a bit,” he said. “They seem to be willing to put up with the tax increase we have. … They’re tolerating the one that passed.”
May, who turns 59 two days before the runoff, is the public information officer for the Tulsa Fire Department. He said that job exposed him to the workings of government.
One complaint common to Ritze and Roberts the past several years is that they have not always been very accessible to constituents — especially those with opposing views.
That’s particularly the case with Roberts, who did not return phone calls for this story.
“Our incumbent is one of the most inaccessible lawmakers I have ever seen,” said Redcorn, his runoff opponent.
Redcorn, 58, is a former Tulsa World reporter who for 15 years published the Bigheart Times until selling it this year. She previously reported for newspapers and wire services in the Midwest and South before meeting her husband, Raymond Redcorn, now assistant principal chief of the Osage Nation.
“I decided to run for the same reason I decided to become a reporter,” Redcorn said. “I wanted to do some good in the world.”
Redcorn said she particularly wants to establish “fiscal stability” in state government and is interested in education, health care and mental health care, corrections reform and economic development.
She’d also like to review the tax code to see if it can be revised to better fit the current economy.
“The perfect way (to raise revenue) is to expand the number of businesses and the number of people employed,” Redcorn said. “But without education, that’s difficult to do.”
Roberts, 44, is a former physical therapist whose legislative agenda has featured numerous gun bills and opposition to taxes. He also has attempted, without success, to limit federal authority over oil and gas production in Osage County.
Because mineral rights in the county are owned exclusively by the Osage Nation, the federal government — particularly through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Environmental Protection Agency — regulates oil and gas there.
Roberts’ wife, Amber Roberts, is a runoff candidate in Senate District 10.
There is no general election for HD 36, so the Aug. 28 runoff will decide the outcome.
The winner of the HD 80 runoff meets Democrat Janice Graham in the general election.
