{"id":29013,"date":"2020-06-13T11:20:52","date_gmt":"2020-06-13T16:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=29013"},"modified":"2020-06-13T11:20:52","modified_gmt":"2020-06-13T16:20:52","slug":"the-2020-senate-campaign-oklahoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/06\/13\/the-2020-senate-campaign-oklahoma\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2020 Senate Campaign: Oklahoma"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Incumbent Senator Inhofe (R-OK).<\/p><\/div>\n

I finally checked up on Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), and the 85-year old has filed papers for the Republican primary in order to be eligible for reelection to his current Senatorial seat<\/a>; in the post that kicked off this thread covering the various Senate seats this cycle, Inhofe had not yet filed papers or stated intentions.<\/p>\n

Inhofe has several primary challengers, but there’s little reason to think there’s a serious alternative. However, Dr. John Tompkins, a retired surgeon, is noteworthy:<\/p>\n

\n

Tompkins, 63, is a semi-retired orthopedic surgeon from Oklahoma City who says he never paid much attention to politics until he began winding down his practice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\u201cI became increasingly concerned about what\u2019s going on in this country. … I\u2019m extremely disappointed with our politicians,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

His particular beef with Inhofe, Tompkins said, began about a year ago when he began reading the senator\u2019s book, \u201cThe Greatest Hoax,\u201d which claims to debunk climate change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cI got through about 75% of it and said, \u2018This is garbage.\u2019 It\u2019s just nonsense. … It\u2019s poorly written and is only loosely related to any science whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Tompkins said he became further disenchanted by the nation\u2019s handling of the COVID-19 epidemic, and by what he says is a national fixation on \u201cthe craziest things … It\u2019s just driving me nuts!\u201d\u00a0[Tulsa World<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He sounds like one of those Republicans who still has some sanity about him. I don’t expect him to upend Inhofe, but just getting those issues out on the table is an important contribution to the public debate that must ensue during the primary campaign.<\/p>\n

None of the Democratic challengers in the primary appear to be a serious threat to Inhofe, so I still expect he’ll be reelected. The only question will be whether Inhofe once again wins by 40 points, or if there’s a large decline in his margin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finally checked up on Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), and the 85-year old has filed papers for the Republican primary in order to be eligible for reelection to his current Senatorial seat; in the post that kicked off this thread covering the various Senate seats this cycle, Inhofe had not \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29013"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29020,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29013\/revisions\/29020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}