FiveThirtyEight Blog Profiles #OK2014 Senate Race
A Conservative Showdown in Oklahoma
By HARRY ENTEN, FiveThirtyEight Blog
There’s another round of primaries Tuesday, and most of the attention will focus on Mississippi’s Republican Senate runoff (which we’ll look at in later story). But there are a number of other intriguing races, the most important of which is the Republican Senate primary in Oklahoma. Here’s what you should know about the face-off in the Sooner State.
THE CANDIDATES
Seven candidates are vying to replace Sen. Tom Coburn, who is retiring two years before his term is up. However, only two candidates will probably get more than 10 percent of the vote: U.S. Rep. James Lankford and former Oklahoma House of Representatives speaker and current state Rep. T.W. Shannon.
Both Lankford and Shannon are conservative. Still, that hasn’t stopped them from trying to distinguish themselves in style if not substance.
Before being elected in the tea party wave of 2010, Lankford was the camp director of the Falls Creek Baptist Conference Center. He rose to the fifth-highest position in the House leadership and is seen as the more establishment candidate in the race. Lankford compromised on the debt ceiling in 2011 and 2013, though not in 2014. He has the backing of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, among others.