Candidates in Oklahoma’s 2022 U.S. Senate election won’t be able to file for office for another 276 days, but GOP leaders are already choosing up sides.
That includes — in an unprecedented manner — state Republican Chairman John Bennett, who is backing a challenger to incumbent Sen. James Lankford.
Lankford, a conservative by any fair standard, is facing backlash for his vote to accept Electoral College votes after the Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol.
Perhaps to counter Bennett, Lankford recently put out a press release with an initial list of Republican endorsements, including Sen. Jim Inhofe, Gov. Kevin Stitt, all of the currently seated statewide elected officials, four of five Oklahomans in the U.S. House, the top leaders of both legislative chambers and dozens of Republican legislators.
Bennett says his endorsement of challenger Jackson Lahmeyer is not in his capacity as state GOP chairman, but that rings a little hollow to us: He is chairman 24 hours a day and as long as that is true, will always be identified as one of the leading faces of the party. He knows that or should know it.
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Lankford is correct when he says that a state chairman backing a candidate is unheard of.
Bennett is an American citizen and entitled to his views, but you have to wonder why he sought an office where he speaks for all Oklahoma Republicans if he planned to take steps that would divide the party internally.
It’s worth noting that the Oklahoma Republican Party, under the unifying leadership of Henry Bellmon, first captured the Oklahoma governor’s seat because the state’s Democrats were hopelessly divided into factions.
A greater danger for the party is that it become irrelevant. If Lankford wins re-election, it’s hard to imagine him having any motivation to be part of the party’s future efforts, so long as Bennett is the chairman. If the party becomes the sanctuary of extremists, successful candidates will run away from it rather than as part of it.
This editorial is not an endorsement of Lankford or anyone else. It’s too soon to make such a call. No one will have a chance to vote for any Oklahoma candidate for U.S. Senate until June 28, 2022.
But we hate to see the party of Bellmon torn apart by ill-considered, inappropriate factionalism.
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