Those on high alert may have felt a slight shudder pass through state politics on Tuesday, something that may have been a tremor caused by Republicans and Democrats pulling in opposite directions.
After two election cycles in which the Republican majority trended toward moderation and the Democratic minority’s opposition became more low-key, a handful of results in Tuesday’s primary elections hinted the parties might be headed the other way.
Primary results can be tricky. Turnout is lower than in general elections, and those who do vote tend to be more ideologically driven.
“It’s hard to pull trends from primaries,” said Mike Crespin, director of the University of Oklahoma’s Carl Albert Center.
But a sprinkling of primary upsets in 2016 foreshadowed an unprecedented turnover in the Oklahoma Legislature in 2018 as Republican incumbents were shown the door by primary voters or left of their own accord.
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The overall effect was a shift to the center.
Tuesday, four incumbents were defeated and three more were forced into runoffs. Two of the three winning Republican challengers are considered further to the right than the incumbents they defeated.
In the case of the one Democratic incumbent to lose, the opposite is true. Challenger Mauree Turner ran to the left of incumbent Rep. Jason Dunnington of Oklahoma City.
All four winning challengers — three in the House and one in the Senate — have general election opponents, but all four will be favored.
“You could say the Democrats went further left and the Republicans went further right,” said House Majority Leader Jon Echols, R-Oklahoma City. “Is it out of a rejection of working together? I don’t think it is.”
After years of difficult and sometimes acrimonious legislative sessions, the two resulting from the 2018 election have been relatively calm. There are probably several reasons for that, but Echols likes to say one is that members have gotten along better, both across parties and within the large Republican majority.
Wendi Stearman, who lives north of Collinsville in Washington County, was able to tap into the small-government small-l libertarian strain of Republicanism to defeat first-term representative Derrel Fincher of Bartlesville in House District 11.
Stearman said she expects to vote more conservatively than Fincher but has no “particular pet project.”
In Tulsa, paving contractor Cody Rogers defeated anesthesiologist Chris Emerson in the Senate District 37 Republican primary by running to the right — and with some advertising that caused Emerson to sue Rogers for libel.
Rogers will be a heavy favorite against Democratic incumbent Allison Ikley-Freeman.
In House District 79, in southeast Tulsa, Republicans sent Clay Iiams and Margie Alfonso into a runoff to pick a candidate against Democrat incumbent Melissa Provenzano.
Provenzano, an educator, won in 2018 when Republicans went for the most conservative candidate in the field. They appear to be doing the same this year, with Iiams and Alfonso both coming across as more conservative than third-place finisher Maria Seidler.
That said, extreme right-wing positions did not fare well, on the whole. All but one of the abortion abolitionist candidates were eliminated, most by lop-sided votes.
Meanwhile, Turner, the lone Democrat, may well become the Legislature’s most liberal member. Certainly she will be its first Black gay Muslim woman.
That’s the only move to the left for the Democratics, but the vote on State Question 802 — Medicaid expansion — and the response to it highlights growing urban-rural as well as right-left divisions in state politics. The measure carried only seven of 77 counties but won decisively in the three largest and five of the top seven.
House Minority Leader Emily Virgin thinks the passage of SQ 802, albeit by a narrow margin, bodes well for Democrats in November.
“We know the urban and suburban counties are becoming friendlier to Democrats,” she said.
That’s why so many people are watching the 5th Congressional District. Democrat Kendra Horn won it by only a few thousand votes in 2018 and Republicans are determined to take it back in November. Nine candidates entered the GOP primary.
Terry Neece, a 70-year-old businesswoman who ran a hard right campaign, finished first in that primary, 12 points ahead of state Sen. Stephanie Bice, who is positioned as more of a moderate.
Neese’s success was achieved with the help of Club for Growth and other conservative groups who spent almost $400,000 on advertising against Bice.
Meanwhile, however, Horn won a walkover Democratic primary in which more votes were cast than for all of the Republican candidates combined.
Oklahoma State University political science professor Matt Motta said a surprising campaign could also play out in the 1st Congressional District, where Republican Kevin Hern is opposed by Democrat Kojo Asamoa-Caesar.
“It’s a potentially interesting race,” Motta said. “Kojo has a lot of name recognition ... I don’t think Kevin Hern is in any danger, but it’s hard to know.”
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