Mud pies and lollipops: Election season has reached the point at which campaigns and dark-money camp followers tend to either throw everything at the opposition and hope something sticks, or smile big for the cameras and try to convince voters their candidate is just plain folks.
The gubernatorial campaign includes a good deal of the former.
Last week, the camps of incumbent Kevin Stitt and Democratic opponent Joy Hofmeister got into a brief exchange of mud pies over their absences from candidate forums sponsored by agricultural organizations that have endorsed one or the other.
The Farm Bureau and Cattleman’s Association, which has endorsed Stitt, had its forum in Lawton. Hofmeister said she was too busy with a tour of rural Oklahoma to attend.
American Farmers and Ranchers, formerly known as the Farmers Union and a Hofmeister endorser, were to have a similar event on Wednesday in Tulsa, but Stitt’s team said the timing didn’t work for him.
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The AFR event was subsequently cancelled, citing scheduling conflicts for both candidates.
Stitt’s team also shopped a story from the Washington Examiner — a pro-Republican web site — that Hofmeister’s biography page on the Oklahoma State Department of Education web site illegally included links to her campaign social media. Those had been removed by the time most reporters could look for them.
While Hofmeister campaigns mostly on her own, Stitt has rounded up some well-known names to help. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin are appearing with him this week, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former Trump aide in line to become governor of Arkansas, has endorsed him.
Cruz is scheduled to appear at a Stitt rally in Oklahoma City on Wednesday, and Youngkin is booked for one the same day in Tulsa, at 5:15 p.m. at the Renaissance Hotel, 6808 S. 107th E. Ave.
Meanwhile, a barrage of negative television, internet and mail advertisements cast just about every kind of aspersion imaginable on Stitt and Hofmeister.
At the other end of the spectrum, some candidates are running ad campaigns intended to make swing voters forget how partisan they’ve sounded as recently as August.
U.S. Sen. James Lankford’s current ads talk about the importance of “We” in American society, beginning with the first word of the U.S. Constitution.
Ads for 2nd District Congressman and Republican U.S. Senate nominee Markwayne Mullin — who reportedly has campaigned for Republicans in other states but has been seen in public here very little — feature his family and folksiness. Mentioned little if at all is his loyalty to former President Donald Trump and his insistence that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen,” a claim for which no real evidence has ever been produced.
Dark money: More than $1 million in independent expenditures for the general election had been reported to the Oklahoma Ethics Commission as of Friday.
Almost all of that came from what could be termed dark — or at least gray — money; that is, the ultimate source is hazy to completely opaque.
The biggest included Conservative Voice of America, a publicity-shy nonprofit being used to hide contributions to an independent expenditure campaign against Gov. Kevin Stitt.
CVOA reported spending $336,500 on digital ads last week. It was also responsible for ads attacking Stitt late last year, and it was the conduit for $400,000 spent against Attorney General John O’Connor in last summer’s Republican primary.
The source of the funds is unknown.
American Energy Action Fund, which is affiliated with the wind energy industry and has spent more than $325,000 in the past few weeks to support 15 Oklahoma candidates of both parties. Beneficiaries include Republican corporation commissioner nominee Kim David.
Not much guessing is necessary to figure out how Imagine This Oklahoma spent $143,000. The PAC, whose name is a riff on the Stitt administration’s new state marketing slogan, is helping Democrat Joy Hofmeister.
Complete independent expenditure reports are due Monday.
Tribal vote: Hofmeister was featured Thursday at a United Indian Tribes of Oklahoma get out the vote rally in Oklahoma City.
About 300 people attended, according to a news release.
The event was part of the National Congress of American Indians’ Every Native Vote Counts initiative.
Election trivia: Since 1970, when Oklahoma first allowed governors to serve consecutive terms, six have attempted to do so.
The last four — George Nigh, Frank Keating, Brad Henry and Mary Fallin — were successful, and by wide margins.
Republican Dewey Bartlett Sr. suffered a shocking loss to Democrat David Hall, the Tulsa County attorney, in 1970. Hall won by only 2,181 votes and 0.3%, both the slimmest margins in state history.
Four years later the scandal-plagued Hall finished third in the Democratic primary. David Boren, a young Democratic backbencher in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, defeated 2nd District Congressman Clem McSpadden in a runoff and Republican state Sen. Jim Inhofe in the general election.
Bartlett recovered from his defeat and was elected to the U.S. Senate two years later. Hall soon went to prison on a corruption conviction and spent most of his remaining life in California.
Rather than a second term as governor, Boren ran for the U.S. Senate in 1978 and succeeded Bartlett, who retired with terminal cancer.
Inhofe became Tulsa mayor and eventually 1st District congressman. This winter, he retires from the U.S. Senate after almost 60 years in public office.
Meetings and events: O’Connor and a holiday bake sale will highlight the Republican Women’s Club of Tulsa County monthly meeting, 11:30 a.m. Nov. 8 at Tulsa Country Club, 701 N. Union Ave.
Bottom lines: State Rep. Rande Worthen, R-Lawton, signaled his intent to seek stiffer penalties for shoplifting. … Stitt joined other Republican governors in opposition to a Biden administration policy that would require collective bargaining on projects of $35 million or more.
— Randy Krehbiel, Tulsa World
The longtime Oklahoma Republican is expected to announce his retirement soon. Tulsa World Editor Jason Collington looks back at Jim Inhofe as Tulsa mayor and other noteworthy events in his political career with veteran Tulsa World political reporter Randy Krehbiel. Find the Tulsa World Newsroom podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
