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The Supreme Court issued a highly anticipated decision earlier today that constrains the federal governments ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the six justices who make up the courts conservative supermajority set a disturbing precedent that could limit federal agencies ability to enact regulations. The decision is particularly concerning for the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, as it leads federal efforts to zero out the planet-warming emissions causing storms, drought, and sea-level rise around the world.

The Supreme Court did not arrive at this pivotal moment by chance. For decades, ultra-wealthy conservative donors, libertarian think tanks, and their allies within the Republican Party have orchestrated a campaign to thwart the federal governments efforts to regulate corporations including efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, which threaten the profits of the fossil fuel industry. Over the years, they have paid considerable attention to the judiciary, methodically installing conservative judges in anticipation of a case that could kneecap agencies they view as overstepping their authority.

Enter West Virginia v. EPA. The specifics of the case were convoluted, but the arguments at its heart were a direct shot at the EPA, at their ability to regulate, said Kert Davies, founder and director of the Climate Investigations Center. To say theyve been preparing for this moment for 50 years is not an exaggeration.

To understand this moment, its helpful to consider how we got here.

The 1970s marked the dawn of a new era of concern about the environment. Americans were growing increasingly alarmed by high pollution levels and environmental destruction. There had just been an enormous oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, the Cuyahoga River had caught fire in Cleveland, and a thick layer of smog regularly smothered cities like Los Angeles. Congress responded by drafting the countrys bedrock environmental laws: the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act all passed with bipartisan support.

The sudden expansion of federal powers galvanized a new, hard-line libertarian movement helmed by an oil executive named Charles Koch. Koch had inherited a handful of companies from his father in 1967, including a lucrative refinery in Minnesota and a network of pipelines, barges, and trucks that shipped oil across the country. Koch was an ardent believer in capitalism and opposed any government action that went beyond the protection of private property. As he built his business into the second largest privately-owned company in the country, he also began building a network of think tanks and nonprofits to infuse his fringe views into the mainstream.

According to investigative journalist Jane Mayers 2016 book Dark Money, which chronicles how conservative billionaires shaped the radical right, Charles Koch and his brother and business partner, David, have personally spent well over $100 million on advancing a libertarian agenda. But even more consequentially, they streamlined the efforts of a small group of like-minded elites towards building what one Koch operative called a fully integrated network that has influenced every aspect of the countrys political system.

The Federalist Society, a conservative group that has grown into the most powerful legal organization in the country, became a critical node in that network. In 1982, law students at the University of Chicago and Yale formed the group to promote a deeply conservative legal perspective. The organization received start-up funding from the conservative John M. Olin Foundation, began hosting annual symposia and opening chapters at prestigious law schools, and soon attracted large donations from the Kochs and their peers.

At first, the Federalist Society was an all-volunteer group geared mainly towards law students. In the early 1990s, it hired one of its first paid employees, Leonard Leo, who expanded the organization to include lawyers, judges, and others. From the early 2000s to 2020, Leo served as the groups executive vice president, overseeing a network of approximately 60,000 members. (All six conservative justices on the Supreme Court are associated with the organization.)

The Kochs network of conservative billionaires hasnt only focused on the judiciary. As they poured money into the Federalist Society, they were also pouring money into deregulation efforts, including many related to climate change. Through the years, Koch- and fossil fuel-backed groups like the Global Climate Coalition, American Energy Alliance, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and American Legislative Exchange Council have lobbied against climate legislation and funded research casting doubt on the science and highlighting the costs of taking action.

But it has long been clear to them that the judiciary would be crucial to eviscerating the governments ability to regulate corporations and to dismantling the administrative state the government agencies within the executive branch that create and enforce regulations.

The libertarian groups judicial efforts have been focused on usurping a 1984 Supreme Court precedent known as Chevron deference with a relatively new and controversial legal argument known as the major questions doctrine. Chevron deference says that if Congress has not clearly articulated its intention in a law, courts should defer to an agencys interpretation, as long as that interpretation is reasonable. The idea is that agencies possess expertise that Congress and the courts do not, and that agencies are indirectly accountable to the people through presidential elections.

To the libertarian movement, Chevron is anathema, said Lisa Graves, a former senior official for the Department of Justice who is now the executive director of True North Research. For decades now, they have been seeking ways to reverse this precedent, to minimize this precedent.

In its stead, conservatives have put forth the major questions doctrine, which says that in extraordinary cases that could have vast economic and political consequences, the court can ignore an agencys interpretation of a broad law and prevent it from enacting a regulation unless it receives clearer authority from Congress.

The Supreme Court decided West Virginia v. EPA based on this argument. In doing so, it has undermined agencies ability to enact regulations to respond to new threats to the environment or public health if they lack clear guidance from Congress which has failed to pass any serious climate legislation or any significant new environmental laws since it last amended the Clean Air Act more than 30 years ago.

Thats radical, said Patrick Parenteau, an environmental lawyer and professor at Vermont Law School. Thats going to have massive implications for environmental law across the board.

While libertarians have long despised administrative agencies ability to regulate corporations, it took a while for them to build up enough influence on federal courts to begin whittling it away. In 1991, President George H. W. Bush nominated Justice Clarence Thomas, a Federalist Society member who has repeatedly objected to Chevron deference, to the Supreme Court. About a decade and half later, President George W. Bush nominated Justice John Roberts, a former Federalist Society member, and Harriet Miers, who was a family friend but not a member. The organization mobilized against Miers, and eventually Bush nominated Justice Samuel Alito, who had long been affiliated with the Federalist Society, instead. Roberts wrote the majority opinion in West Virginia v. EPA, and both Thomas and Alito concurred.

Another major conservative victory came in the mid-2010s, when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a Republican from Kentucky and a Koch ally led a stunningly successful effort to prevent President Barack Obama from appointing federal judges and blocked Merrick Garlands nomination to the Supreme Court, which he called one of my proudest moments. This paved the way for President Donald Trump to install more than 200 federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices.

Guiding Trump was Leo, then the executive vice president of the Federalist Society. In March 2016, Leo met with Trump and Donald McGahn, a member of the Federalist Society who later served as President Trumps White House counsel. Leo later gave Trump several lists of potential Supreme Court nominees that the Federalist Society would support, including Justice Neil Gorsuch. The Trump campaign released the lists in an effort to court the Republican base, and in a July 2016 campaign rally in Iowa, Trump said: If you really like Donald Trump, thats great, but if you dont, you have to vote for me anyway. You know why? Supreme Court judges. About a year later, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett appeared on another list of Federalist Society recommendations.

Once Trump was elected, Leo shepherded the nominations of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett through the Senate. According to Internal Revenue Service filings compiled by True North Research, between 2014 and 2020, Leo and his allies raised more than $580 million for conservative nonprofits that do not have to disclose their donors. The network of nonprofits used much of that to hire conservative media relations firms to place opinion essays, schedule pundits on television shows, send speakers to rallies, and create online videos all to drum up public support and pressure senators to confirm Trumps picks.

Now, decades of coordinated efforts by ultra-wealthy conservative donors, libertarian think tanks, and the Republican Party are all coming to a head. While the Supreme Courts ruling in West Virginia v. EPA could have been even more restrictive, it is still a consequential win for fossil fuel interests and a blow to American efforts to address climate change. To Graves, the Supreme Courts new direction amounts to revival of the robber baron era, when courts put their thumb on the scale to strike down laws sought by people in our democracy in favor of corporations, she said. You have a Supreme Court that has been captured by special interests.

Things could soon get even more bleak. Republican state attorneys general are pushing several climate-related cases through the federal court system. The courts could use the major questions doctrine to hobble the governments ability to restrict tailpipe emissions or to consider the social cost of carbon when reviewing new infrastructure or environmental rules. Parenteau points out that a proposed rule requiring companies to publicly disclose climate risks is now vulnerable, too.

Congress could act to stem the damage. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has called on her colleagues to expand the court. I believe we need to get some confidence back in our court, and that means we need more justices on the United States Supreme Court, she told ABC News. Congress could pass legislation to add more justices, but so far Democratic leadership has not been keen on the idea.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, has argued that the Senate should impeach Gorsuch and Kavanaugh for misleading Congress about their views on Roe v. Wade, another radical ruling handed down by the court last week. They lied, she told NBC News. I believe lying under oath is an impeachable offense. Removing justices from the court would require a two-thirds majority in the Senate.

In a scathing dissent in West Virginia v. EPA, Justice Elena Kagan wrote: Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change. In its most recent decision, the Court appoints itself instead of Congress or the expert agency the decision-maker on climate policy. She concluded, I cannot think of many things more frightening.

Link:
Supreme Court EPA ruling: A brief history of how we got here - Grist

A libertarian political advocacy group is partnering with gas stations across the country to offer discount fuel.

WYOMING, Mich. For just a few hours, some motorists in West Michigan got to capitalize on gasoline priced at $2.38 a gallon.

A privately-owned Citgo gas station in Wyoming partnered up with Americans for Prosperity-Michigan, which is a libertarian political advocacy group.

From 10 a.m. to noon Thursday, the gas station offered up discounted gas on a first-come-first-serve basis. Hundreds of cars lined up for their chance to fill up.

The group chose $2.38 a gallon because that's what they say was the national average price of gas on the day that President Joe Biden took office.

Rep. Peter Meijer stopped by Thursday morning to take part in the event.

This short event mirrored similar discount gas events across the country to highlight the increasing costs of energy. According to AAA, the average price of gas for Americans sits around $4.86 per gallon.

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Wyoming gas station temporarily offered gas for $2.38 a gallon to shine light on inflation - WZZM13.com

The US right often appeals to liberty freedom from the state as a justification for its policies. But it also seems to oppose liberty in many key political issues, particularly when it comes to the private domain of sexual relations. This seeming contradiction flummoxes liberals how can the right both defend and attack individual liberty? But there is no contradiction. The right simply has a different conception of liberty, one that, contrary to that of liberals, isnt universal but applies only to a select few, the real citizens, argues Toby Buckle.

Liberals imagine that the US far-right is incoherent on the question of freedom. Nothing could be further from the truth; it has at its heart a vision of freedom that is ancient, coherent, and compelling.

From the perspective of mainstream American liberalism, conservative invocations of freedom seem caught in a mad confusion between its libertarian and authoritarian impulses: The right identifies itself with individual freedom, particularly freedom from the state, and yet will reliably cheer on the worst excesses of state violence from police. The family, it proclaims, is a private domain, yet a central part of its rhetoric is the demonization of those in non-heterosexual relationships. These demonised groups are claimed to be a sexual threat to children, one that requires state intervention to address, yet the right also pushes to make (heterosexual) child marriages more legally permissible. Mandatory masking was rejected as a disgraceful violation of bodily autonomy by the same people who are currently rejoicing that states can now force women to carry pregnancies under pain of criminal sanction. The contradictions seem obvious.

While morally grotesque, the values underlying these positions are not incoherent, rather they are simply not coherent with liberal values. Specifically, they are not compatible with the liberal value of universality the requirement laws and norms apply equally to all persons. Because this value is so ingrained in liberalism, the assertion of other, older, values appears to us as a contradiction, but its not. For the most part, the American right does not believe in liberal universality and, to be fair, it has never really pretended to.

Theres no discrepancy to be resolved in demanding libertarian protections for yourself and defending police violence against Black men if you think that law enforcement should enforce different standards on different groups. This view, while still obfuscated to some degree, is more or less explicit in much of what the right says: when the government enforced lockdown laws it was said that it was wrong to treat small business owners like criminals. The same protest was made by, and on behalf on, those arrested after the Capitol riots on January 6 that they were being treated like criminals.

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Supremacist liberty can be defined as follows: freedom consists in the group or groups within a state who constitute the true citizenry being unconstrained both in their own lives, and in their domination of the groups who are not.

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To the liberal it may seem puzzling to say we should not treat as criminals people who are, objectively, criminals. To the right however (as with freedom) the word simply means something different: criminal is not a person who commits a crime, but a category of person thats defined by other features. The purpose of the law is to protect the (innately good) true citizens and repress (innately bad) criminals.

These terms are heavily racialized, especially in the US. Criminal is coded as Back, small business owner as white. They also convey a much more visceral fear than is commonly understood. In his account of dehumanisation the philosopher David Livingstone Smith argues that it renders the other not just inferior, or even dangerous, but monstrous. Dehumanised persons are seen as representing both a physical and a metaphysical threat, an affront to both our safety and the natural order of things. Past ages might have used terms like demonic to express this, today criminal has a similar function.

At this point we run into challenges in naming the core values that animate this ideology. To call them far-right adds little and understates their spread and acceptance. To use which I have previously the ideological label of fascist risks derailing the conversation into extended historical comparisons. Taking an intersectional approach, and labelling it by vectors of oppression, results in inelegant formulations like cishetro racist capitalist patriarchy. Authoritarian can be misleading we conventionally place it at the other end of an ideological to freedom, and US conservatism is centrally (and sincerely) about freedom. Finally, hierarchy is better, but is possibly too general.

One of the core values animating the seemingly contradictory policy preferences of the right is a specific conception of freedom. One that can be defined, and distinguished from other conceptions, such as a republican conception, or a true libertarian conception. At the risk of adding one more piece of jargon to the conversation I propose that we can usefully term this supremacist liberty.

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Whereas a republican freedom demands that there is never someone with arbitrary power above you, supremacist freedom asks that there is always someone (and not just anyone) below you, subject to your power.

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Supremacist liberty can be defined as follows: freedom consists in the group or groups within a state who constitute the true citizenry being unconstrained both in their own lives, and in their domination of the groups who are not.

From this perspective, the rights claims that anti-racism, or feminism, are existential threats to its adherents way of life are not hyperbole or hysteria, but an obvious statement of social fact. The domination that social justice opposes is ineliminable from its vision of a free society. Whereas a republican freedom demands that there is never someone with arbitrary power above you, supremacist freedom asks that there is always someone (and not just anyone) below you, subject to your power.

It is this conception of freedom that Obamas election was seen to be taking from people. It was an example of the wrong kind of person ending up with power over true citizens, an inversion of the natural order of things. This is what was behind Trumps questioning of Obamas citizenship he was not, as they clearly saw, a true citizen. When he eventually became president, there was a spate of his supporters hurling racist abuse at service workers and declaring Trump is president now. It is this vision of freedom they were reclaiming.

Those advocating for supremacist freedom will often employ libertarian language claiming that what theyre against is state intervention. This is contingently adjacent to the concepts core, but isnt contradictory as such its a useful rhetoric for asserting the appropriate norms that should govern the superior group. Unlike liberalism however, or a true libertarianism, these norms are either implicitly or explicitly bounded (we should get the government off the back of hardworking citizens, or real Americans).

One might wonder how such a conception of freedom is to be achieved in a legal system premised on universality (equal treatment under the law, and so on). A little reflection however shows just how easily it already is actualised under nominal universality. For example, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favour of the right of citizens to conceal carry handguns. Nothing in the ruling limited it to certain groups. However America is also a country in which the Police Officer who killed Philando Castile, a 32 year old black man, after being told he (legally) had a concealed weapon, was acquitted of all charges. As political theorist Jacob T. Levy recently tweeted, this obviously isnt a universal right to concealed carry:

Instead, its a recipe for asymmetrically adding a lot more armed white people in public places, including some who will feel that much more emboldened to harass and confront people they consider suspicious.

Hence, while the law is nominally universal, the social reality is one of supremacist freedom. It is expected, indeed demanded, that law enforcement, and other instruments of state power, will distinguish between groups in this way.

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While the pro-life movement is certainly steeped in misogyny, the contours between the superior and inferior groups here are best understood not as man vs woman, but Christian vs non-Christian.

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With this conceptual sketch in mind it should be reasonably straightforward to disentangle the seeming contradictions of the rights account of bodily autonomy. Mandatory face mask policies applied to true citizens, a clear violation of supremacist freedom. To add insult to injury, they were usually applied universally. Hence real Americans were being treated like criminals (the reader should by now be able to do the appropriate decoding). More generally, COVID restrictions were at their most burdensome for a group that is at the centre of the true citizen ideal small business owners. To the supremacist this was a gross violation of a just natural order. It was hardly surprising then, that their resistance was so fierce.

The end of a constitutional right to bodily autonomy (in the form of abortion access) that occurred last week, conversely, is seen as the true citizens asserting themselves against the illegitimate, dangerous parts of society. While the pro-life movement is certainly steeped in misogyny, the contours between the superior and inferior groups here are best understood not as man vs woman, but Christian vs non-Christian. White evangelical Christianity is thoroughly fused with the Trump-right at this moment, and it openly desires supremacy over the political realm and all other section of society.

Compelling pregnancy and childbirth through state violence is a mechanism for maintaining domination over those who fall outside of the true Christian citizenry. The Christian right has long set itself against a society it sees as promiscuous, debauched, and sexually immoral. Forced pregnancy, as they keep telling us, creates earthy consequences for sexual sin.

As with the necessity of repressing criminals, there is both a satisfaction in the domination (people love putting women in their place), and a need for protection against a perceived threat. In this case an overtly supernatural one. Remember that conservative Christians do not see the US as a pluralist society of many groups; but as islands of believers who will go to heaven, surrounded by a sea of sinners who will go to hell. Given the belief in eternal torment, not as metaphor but concreate fact, it becomes quite rational to seek and use state power to save people from it.

While implicit and explicit appeals to supremacist liberty are becoming more mainstream, the conception itself is nothing new. The contours defining the superior group have changed over time, but something like it has existed as long as the concept of freedom has. It was, after all, invented in the slave societies of ancient Greece and Rome and championed by slaveholders. In the modern world its most famous and consequential evocations the American constitution and Declaration of Independence where likewise the work of men who owned slaves (and in the latters case, a man who enslaved his own children).

This seems like a contradiction to many, but, again, it is only a contradiction when viewed from within liberalism. A classic definition of a free person is someone who is not a slave. There is nothing about this that implies that a free person may not own slaves or rules out a view that his freedom will be enhanced by his doing so. After all, freedom is about choice, being self-directed, having control over things - your body, your mind, your property. Hence, having control of other human beings (according to this conception) makes you more free.

Far from being a relic of the dark but remote past, something like this idea is alive and well today. Supremacist freedom is attractive and compelling for reasons that the modern mind struggles to articulate, but the ancients and early moderns understood perfectly well on their own terms: We like the idea of getting special treatment. We enjoy punishing others, or seeing them punished. Our sense of self-worth is enhanced by knowing others are inferior to us.

And once you add in the belief that there are real demons out there, supremacist freedom doesnt just feel good, it becomes necessary. We the small business owners, the Christians, the hardworking, the straight, the White, the sexually pure, the real Americans require the freedom to deal with them the lazy, the gay, the trans, the criminals, the promiscuous, the sexually immoral, the immigrants, the illegals, the aliens, the traitors before they destroy us all.

There is much more to say on this topic having coined a term to describe a conception of freedom I should trace a history of it, anticipate and answer objections, consider its relation to other political concepts, give my own moral evaluation of it, and so on.

For now though, let me just close with this:

I have tried to give an account of supremacist liberty more or less on its own terms, not because I think it is a worthwhile conception, but because I think its worth understanding, given that its animating a large part of the American right. It is not, of course, the only conception of liberty. Liberty will always have competing conceptions, and it is worth our time and energy to ensure the better ones become ascendant. A great deal depends on it.

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Supremacy, Liberty and the Right | Toby Buckle - IAI

By Bennett Brinkman NonDoc.com

In addition to the Republican race for state superintendent of public instruction, three other primary elections for statewide office are heading to GOP runoffs Aug. 23. In the races for a Corporation Commission seat, commissioner of labor and state treasurer, no candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote.

All results posted by the Oklahoma State Election Board online are unofficial until they are certified by the board.

Two of the three races are for open seats, but the third has seen term-limited Rep. Sean Roberts (R-Hominy) push incumbent Commissioner of Labor Leslie Osborn into the runoff. Osborn received 47.82 percent of the vote, while Roberts (R-Hominy) gained 38.27 of the vote. (Keith Swinton finished third, with 13.91 percent of the vote.)

The winner between Osborn and Roberts will face Democrat Jack Henderson and Libertarian Will Daugherty in November.

Osborn has been the commissioner of labor since 2018. Before that, she represented House District 47 in Canadian and Grady counties. Roberts is the current representative for state House District 36 and has been endorsed by Gov. Kevin Stitt. He made headlines when he filed his campaign under the name Sean The Patriot Roberts. The state election board later struck The Patriot monicker from the ballot.

In the battle for an open seat on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, Sen. Kim David (R-Porter) finished in the lead Tuesday, with 41.07 percent of the Republican primary vote. For the Aug. 23 runoff, she will face second-place finisher Todd Thomsen, who brought in 25.99 percent of Tuesdays vote.

Finishing in third was Justin Hornback, a welder who works in the oil and gas industry. He brought in 20.35 percent of the vote. Harold Spradling finished fourth with 12.59 percent support.

The winner of the runoff between David and Thomsen will face Democrat Warigia Bowman and Independent Don Underwood in the general election on Nov. 8.

David is the current senator representing District 18 in the Oklahoma Legislature. She is term-limited for that seat. During her time in the Senate, she became the first female majority floor leader.

Thomsen formerly represented House District 25 from 2006 to 2018, and he is a former Oklahoma Fellowship of Christian Athletes leader. He was a football player at the University of Oklahoma and played on the national championship team in 1985, according to his website.

On June 7, NonDoc and News 9 hosted a Republican primary debate among candidates for the open Corporation Commission seat, which is being vacated by Dana Murphy owing to term limits.

In the race for state treasurer, Rep. Todd Russ (R-Cordell) took 48.5 percent of the Republican primary vote and will face former Sen. Clark Jolley, who garnered 33.87 percent of the vote, in the Aug. 23 runoff.

David Hooten, who recently resigned from his position as Oklahoma County Clerk amid allegations of sexual harassment, finished third with 17.62 percent of the vote.

The runoff winner will face Democrat Charles de Coune and Libertarian Greg Sadler in November.

Russ is the current representative from House District 55, which sits in western Oklahoma. According to his website, Russ has more than 30 years of banking experience in various parts of the state and was president and CEO of Washita State Bank.

Jolley is a former state Senator for District 41, which includes Edmond and northern Oklahoma City. He also formerly served as the state secretary of finance and chairman of the Oklahoma Tax Commission.

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Treasurer, labor and corporation commissioner elections head to GOP runoffs Daily Ardmoreite - Daily Ardmoreite

JoAnna Champlain claimed victory as Cherokee County treasurer in Tuesdays primary election, receiving an unofficial 57.84 percent of the votes in 29 precincts.

Champlain defeated Noel Hunter, who received 42.16 percent of the vote. Champlain and Hunter, both Democrats, didnt have a Republican opponent to challenge them in the November general election.

I would like to thank everyone in Cherokee County who supported and voted for me, Champlain said. I am very excited to begin this new journey as treasurer, and serve all of the residents of Cherokee County to the best of my ability. I look forward to the next four years with great anticipation, knowing I will continue to learn and grow, making our office the best it can be.

Hunter said she accepts the results as is, but wished the outcome was different. She addressed Champlain and wished her the best as she takes on her new position.

Current Treasurer Patsy Stafford declined to seek reelection.

Bobby Cub Whitewater, Democrat, will face off against Republican Mitch Sterling in November for the District 1 commissioner seat. Whitewater received 58.16 percent of the votes, while Randy Jones took 41.84 percent.

Jones thanked his supporters and all who helped during his campaign.

it was amazing, and I congratulate Bobby Whitewater on his win in this primary. I wish him well in November in the general election, said Jones.

Current Commissioner Doug Hubbard didnt run again.

In statewide and federal races, between 97 and 99 percent of precincts had reported as of 11 p.m.

Among Cherokee County voters, Republican Congressman Markwayne Mullin obtained 62.64 percent of the vote for U.S. Senate. However, he faces a runoff against former Speaker of the House T.W. Shannon. The winner will meet up in the November general election with Democrat Kendra Horn, a former member of Congress, along with Ray Woods, an independent, and Libertarian Robert Murphy. Competing against him in the Republican primary on Tuesday were: T.W. Shannon, Alex Gray, Nathan Dahm, Luke Holland, Adam Holley, Jessica Jean Garrison, Laura Moreno, Michael Coibion, Scott Pruitt, Paul Royse, John F. Tompkins, and Randy J. Grellner.

Both in Cherokee County and statewide, voters chose to keep Republican U.S. Sen. James Lankford, with 67.80 percent. He turned back challengers Jackson Lahmeyer, 26.42 percent, and Joan Farr, 5.78 percent, as of 10 p.m., Tuesday. Democrat Madison Horn won 36.92 percent of the vote against Jason Bollinger, 16.82 percent; Arya Azma, 7.02 percent; Brandon Wade, 12.29 percent; Dennis L. Baker, 13.88 percent; and Jo Glenn, 13.06 percent. Libertarian Kenneth D. Blevins and Michael L. Delaney, an independent, also will be on the November ballot.

Cherokee County resident Republican Wes Nofire scored 6.32 percent of the votes on his home turf for the congressional seat vacated by Mullin in District 2, but that wasn't enough to advance him to the primary runoff. Avery Frix and Josh Brecheen will meet up in that election on Aug. 23, having tallied 14.74 to 13.75 percent respectively.

Cherokee County resident Clint Johnson got 1.46 percent of votes in that race. He thanked his supporters for their trust and confidence they instilled in him.

There are a lot of good people in this race, and I wish them the best of luck. We will keep them to their campaign promises, said Johnson.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, Republican, defeated Mark Sherwood, Joel Kintsel, and Moira McCabe with 68.58 percent of the votes. Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister will challenge Stitt and Ervin Stone Yen, an independent, and Libertarian Natalie Bruno during the general election, as she received 64.16 percent of the votes against Connie Johnson, 35.84 percent.

Republican Todd Russ, 48.50 percent, and Clark Jolley, 33.87 percent, will meet in the runoff for state treasurer after defeating David B. Hooten, 17.62 percent. Gregory J. Sadler, Libertarian, and Democrat Charles De Coune will go head-to-head in Novembers election with either Jolley or Russ. Current Treasurer Randy McDaniel didnt seek reelection.

Current Attorney General John M. OConnor got 49.12 percent of the vote, apparently indicating he was ousted by fellow Republican Gentner F. Drummond, with 50.88 percent.

John Cox, April Grace, Ryan Walters, and William E. Crozier, all Republicans, sought the seat of superintendent of public instruction, with incumbent Hofmeister switching parties and running for governor. Cox, who is Peggs School superintendent, was able to get 24.15 percent of the votes. However, Walters took 41.46 percent, and the two are projected for a runoff. Grace got 30.63 percent, and Crozier, 3.76 percent. The runoff winner will be joined by Democrat Jena Nelson in the general election.

District 18 Sen. Kim David, Republican, snagged the most votes for corporation commissioner, 41.08 percent. She was joined by Justin Hornback, 20.35 percent; Harold D. Spradling, 12.59 percent; and Todd Thomsen, 25.99 percent. Democrat Margaret Warigia Bowman, and Don Underwood, independent, will challenge David in November.

Republican Cindy Byrd will remain seated as State Auditor and Inspector after beating Steven W. McQuillen, 29 percent.

Link:
CHAMPLAIN IS TREASURER: Whitewater to face Sterling in November; Brecheen, Frix head for D2 Congress runoff - Tahlequah Daily Press