Tuesday, February 13th, is the municipal election in Muskogee, featuring races for mayor and five of eight city council seats. While it's been a little difficult to access, I've compiled a little bit of information on the candidates, which you will find in this post, along with a city ward map.
OKLAHOMA CITY, OK (January 11, 2023) Oklahoma State Auditor & Inspector Cindy Byrd today announced her support of Oklahoma Attorney General, Gentner Drummond, as he moves forward in the prosecutions against the former management at Epic Charter Schools. Based on the results of the SAI’s 2020 audit, Epic founders Ben Harris and David Chaney, and their CFO Josh Brock, now face felony charges of embezzlement and racketeering.
After taking hits from pro-Hofmeister dark money groups for over a year, Governor Stitt's reelection campaign is going on the offensive:
October 26, 2022 (Oklahoma City, Okla.) – The Stitt for Governor 2022 campaign launched today a new statewide television ad highlighting how Democrat State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister is bought by special interests who have spent at least $25 million to date in the election cycle to cover up her record of closing classrooms, leading the nation in public schools with plummeting test scores, and advocating for a laundry list of tax hikes.
Oklahoma has seen a huge amount of dark (and gray-ish) money hit the mailboxes and airwaves this election cycle, but no race has had more spent - and more one-sided - than the race for Oklahoma Governor.
In some excellent reporting from The Frontier's Reese Gorman, we now know that dark money groups have spent in excess of $12.5 MILLION against Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) and for Joy Hofmeister (D).
Some excerpts from Gorman's article:
A lack of transparency surrounding spending from outside groups makes it difficult for voters to discern who is behind the political ads.
The Corruption Belt: How Dark Money Is Making It Hard for Oklahomans to Elect Conservatives
Were you inundated with political campaign mailers leading up to the June and August primary elections? Did the plethora of push cards explode in your mailbox prior to the primary runoffs? Have you noticed trends and similarities in literature coming from supposedly different campaign organizations?
If you answered YES to any or ALL of these questions, then you need to be at Tulsa 9.12 Project on Thursday, September 8th when Jenni White will unveil and explain just how deep the corruption goes and how dark the money is that funds it. Like a detective following the clues with Scooby Doo, Jenni will reveal who is behind these dastardly and malicious campaign attacks.
Dark money has become a scourge in Oklahoma politics.
Clay Staires, candidate for State House District 66, is one of the conservatives being opposed by big-money, Chamber-style, establishment dark money groups. Watch this 2-minute video he put out talking about the DC-based dark money attacking him (and other conservative candidates):
There's some funny business going on in the House District 21 runoff down in Bryan and Marshall counties. A dark money group operated by the Choctaw Nation is funneling huge amounts of last-minute money -- all on behalf of an individual who is not on the ballot. It appears that this may be an attempt to circumvent ethics rules on behalf of one of the runoff candidates.
Former two-term Oklahoma State Auditor Gary Jones will be speaking at today's Muskogee Republican lunch on the topic of political dark money and the need for ethics reform in Oklahoma.
The weekly, informal lunch gathering takes place on Fridays at noon at Mahylon's Barbecue, located at 3301 Chandler Rd, Muskogee, OK 74403.
If you're in Muskogee today, you won't want to miss this!
The lies of dark money have been hitting conservative candidates across the state. These attacks include accusations that truly conservative candidates have ties to groups like BLM and other left-wing movements.
This leads us to the latest attacks against conservative 2nd District Congressional candidate Josh Brecheen, a man with one of the most conservative records during his two terms in the State Senate.
DURANT (June 20th) – A self-term limited former State Senator, Josh Brecheen is running for Oklahoma's 2nd District Congressional seat and says he's not surprised at the news of an extremely well-financed radio attack ad by out-of-state political interests. Brecheen said, "This is proof that we are doing well in the polls. The Establishment knows we are a threat to the status quo."
There's some phenomenal reporting this morning from the Tulsa World's Randy Krehbiel on the State Auditor's race: Dark money campaign hits state auditor race. You simply have to read the whole thing.
Oklahoma has a political swamp, a deep state, that controls a lot of what goes on politically. There are interconnected fingers between dark money, consultants, campaigns, and elected officials. And now the knives are out for State Auditor Cindy Byrd, who must be removed before she does them more damage.
Answer: unfortunately, yes. The power-hungry corporate and political establishment in this state thrives on the secrecy, ambiguity, and deniability of "dark money". It's how they win campaigns now, putting in squishy moderates and ousting staunchly conservative legislators.
Freshman GOP State Senator Jake Merrick (one of the most conservative members in the Legislature) poses this question in a recent column, after outlandishly false attacks on him triggered by his vote against the "school choice" bill, SB 1647, earlier this year. As I've posted previously, the homeschool community in particular had great concerns with the legislation, and some legislative conservatives concurred.
Perhaps of note, Merrick is one of the few members of the legislature that is an abortion abolitionist, believing that abortion should totally and completely abolished in all forms, not merely regulated... extra reason for the political establishment to hate him.
What is "Dark Money"?
