Your Vote Could Decide an Election
Lawton is a city where your vote really counts.
Yesterday, early voting started in Oklahoma, and citizens from across the state are lining up to do their due diligence. While much hullabaloo has been made of the Presidential election, we here in Oklahoma will have very little say over who actually becomes President. We are a red state, and our citizens will almost certainly be voting for Donald Trump.
While it’s tempting to give into political nihilism and decide not to turn out, many of us have a vote that will really count. A third of Oklahomans live in districts with contested elections to determine who will become their state representative. As per Article I Section 8 of the United States Constitution and the Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, states have a great deal of power in the American system of governance, and the Supreme Court has been steadily returning many powers to the states, including the ability to legislate their own abortion laws. This is no mere consolation prize: states are the beating heart of American experiment, the laboratories of democracy.
Those politicians who we send to Oklahoma City will have a great deal of influence, and your vote could make the difference in your local election. Lawton is a particularly contested area this election, with three of our four state house seats being up for grabs. Local Democrats have been bullish, sinking a lot of time and money into campaigning for Lawtonians’ votes. Here’s what you should know about your local elections for representative.12
House District 62 - Daniel Pae v. Allison Offield
Democrats in Oklahoma have long had their eyes on House District 62. Encompassing the suburbs of Lawton west of 38th street, HD-62 is an extremely light shade of red, if it’s red at all. In the 2020 Presidential election, Donald Trump and Joe Biden practically tied in this district. Since 2018, it has been represented by Representative Daniel Pae, a moderate Republican who has sought to distance himself from his party in his campaign materials, which lack any mention of conservative, red meat issues.
Accordingly, the conservative Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs (OCPA) has given Representative Pae a lukewarm 51% lifetime conservative rating for his votes over the course of his tenure. He often abstains from voting on particularly contentious bills. During the most recent legislative session, he abstained from voting on the anti-immigration HB 4156. In previous sessions, he opted not to vote on bills that would prohibit gender reassignment surgery for minors, require individuals to use bathrooms matching their assigned sex, and ban the sale of property in Oklahoma to non-Americans.
The last time Representative Pae faced an opponent in 2020, he won by a slim margin: just over 1,000 votes. In his first campaign in 2018, he won by 42 votes. This year, he is running on his record. In his time in office, he has successfully shepherded the “Pae-Way” bill through the Oklahoma State House, which raised the speed limit on the Lawton-OKC stretch of I-44 to 80 MPH. He has also passed bills involving the rights of renters and the labeling of Kratom products.
Representative Pae is facing a challenge from Democrat Allison Offield. Offield has won her kudos in the community as a local actress. She has strong ties to the arts and culture scene of the city, and she was the leader of an initiative to get Lawton designated as a film-friendly community. Like Pae, she’s running on moderation. She’s a committed bipartisan, and her main issues are public education, investing in healthcare— especially mental healthcare— and supporting a woman’s right to seek an abortion. She believes that, as a woman, she has a unique perspective on the problems that face Oklahomans today, and she laments Republican dominance of every branch of Oklahoma’s elected government.
If she wants to win the coming election, she’s going to need to shore up support in Lawton’s purple suburbs. While HD-62 swung in favor of Biden in 2020, Pae overperformed Trump by five points. Pae appeals to moderate, ticket-splitting pragmatists. Pae is able to win in District 62 because he wins voters that Trump cannot.
While the district has changed shape since 2020, the fundamentals of the race have stayed the same. This election will come down to whether Offield is able to capture that chunk of politically moderate suburbanites who voted for Biden and Pae in 2020. Whoever wins those Biden-Pae voters will certainly win the race.
HD 64 - Rande Worthen v. Tom Sutherlin
Like HD-62, House District 64 has long been a Democratic target. Encompassing downtown central Lawton, the district juts far into the rural extremities of Comanche County, far past city limits. Republican Representative Rande Worthen has represented this large, diverse district since 2016, though he’s always had a challenger. In the past four elections, he’s faced six challenges from famous local Democrats and eccentric writers alike.
This district is not a particularly safe seat for Republicans, and it’s unclear whether redistricting helped Worthen, given that he still holds a large swath of downtown Lawton. In the last election, the anti-Worthen vote was split between the Democrats and a left-wing independent candidate that significantly cut into Democratic margins in downtown Lawton, weakening their overall showing at the polls. This time, it’s a one v. one race, and Democrat Tom Sutherlin has stepped up to the plate.
While Daniel Pae is running a moderate campaign focused on local issues and the bills he has passed, Rande Worthen is taking a contrasting approach. His election priorities are national: inflation, illegal immigration, and law enforcement. The former District Attorney is clearly running from the right, and his reputation with the conservative movement reflects this, scoring a 69% lifetime conservative rating from the OCPA. While Pae’s campaign website lists specific bills that he has authored, Worthen’s campaign website largely alludes to various popular bills that Worthen has voted on over the years.
Meanwhile, Tom Sutherlin is running on a center-left platform, pledging to support public schools, abortion rights, and access to affordable healthcare. A Vietnam veteran and a computer scientist who taught at Cameron University, he has criticized Oklahoma’s lack of funding for its public education system. In an interview with Justin Rose, he criticized Stitt’s handling of tribal relations and lambasted Republican complacency in addressing Ryan Walters’ increasingly controversial education regime.
Worthen has won his re-election bids by an average of less than ten points, and it would take less than 500 voters to change their mind for Sutherlin to flip the seat. While the district changed shape in 2020, it’s not clear that the new borders clearly favor either candidate more than before. If Sutherlin is to win, he’s going to need to run up the score in central Lawton and flip the city’s most urban precincts. Conversely, if Worthen is to win, he’s going to need to maintain his hold on Comanche County’s rural extremities, ideally making gains in on the east side to discourage future challengers. However, if the 2020 election is anything to go by, both of these candidates are tied to the fate of upballot elections, with Worthen’s support primarily deriving from straight-party voters.
House District 63 - Trey Caldwell v. Shykira Smith
Since redistricting in 2020, House District 63 has become significantly more rural and more Republican. Encompassing a small portion of southern Lawton, most of Fort Sill, and a swath of rural Oklahoma stretching from Texas to north of the refuge, the closest election this seat saw in the past ten years was in 2014, when the Republican candidate still prevailed by over twenty points. It is safe to say that Representative Trey Caldwell will maintain his seat.
Nonetheless, for a Democrat, voting still counts for something in this seat. Political upsets are, of course, always possible. Even if Shykira Smith merely performs better than expected, it may encourage the Democrats to invest more in flipping this seat in the future.
House District 65 - Toni Hasenbeck won by default
House District 65— which taps on a small corner of Lawton northwest of the I-44-Rogers interchange before stretching north to Caddo County— will not be having an election this November. Representative Toni Hasenbeck won a close primary earlier this year against a right-wing challenger, and no Democrat stepped up to face her for the general election.
For my two cents, I don’t believe that Democrats should be so bearish in this district. It was just ten years ago that Hasenbeck ran as a Democrat and came within a few hundred votes of flipping the seat. If that same election had been held today with the new district, a Democratic Toni Hasenbeck would have won the seat. Even as recently as 2018, a Democrat was able to win Caddo County outright and win over 40% of the vote overall. While not as obviously flippable as Lawton’s more urban seats, the right candidate in the right election cycle could give Hasenbeck a real run for her money.
Conclusion
While it’s easy to become disillusioned living in a state that is deeply inclined to support a given political party in a Presidential election, it is important to remember that America is decentralized like few other countries are. States have extensive leeway to make their own laws, and the reigns have become yet looser in recent years.
As it stands, the Republicans hold a veto-proof majority in the state House of Representatives meaning that, if the governor vetos a law and the Republican Party disagrees with him, they can always override his veto: Democrats need not apply. Democrats, in this state, have been forcibly reduced from legislators to speech-makers, wielding very little control over the state legislative process.
Lawton is of essential importance for state-level Republicans, as they attempt to hold onto their supermajority in an increasingly urban state, and Democrats, as they attempt to overcome it. We have a voice.
If you support the Republican-dominated status quo and all that entails, then you should vote to protect it. If not, then there is hope yet. The last Democrat to have represented Lawton only left office in 2019. It is not only concievable that there will be another Lawtonian Democratic politician in the next decade, but likely. As I’ve described here, two elections this very year may come down to a coin flip.
In Lawton, Oklahoma, your vote counts. Use it.
DISCLAIMER: I am heavily involved in Lawtonian politics, and I have worked for Allison Offield, Daniel Pae, and Tom Sutherlin in some capacity. I am also personally acquainted with every incumbent candidate discussed. I do not feel that this disqualifies me from commenting on these elections or these campaigns. If anything, my work on both sides of the aisle and in the Oklahoma State Capitol gives me a unique perspective on the importance of these elections. While I sought to avoid expressing partisan views in this article, it would be dishonest if I were not forthright about my relationship with the subjects of this piece.
Sources for the election results can be found on these spreadsheets.