A number of prominent business leaders have signed on to Oklahoma Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb’s new foundation to promote growth in the state economy.

“In good times and tough times, Oklahomans have always pulled together to emerge as winners but this requires thoughtful planning, new concepts, exceptional leaders and a passionate public,” Lamb said Monday.

“I’m convinced Oklahoma’s best days are ahead and the E Foundation is tapping into our greatest asset — our people — to chart a long-term course to prosperity for all of us. It’s not about politics; it’s about the policies that are best for the next generation.”

The “E” in the foundation stands for “education, energy, exporting, efficiency in government, entrepreneurship and enduring freedom.”

Lamb said the idea of running for governor in two years has been on his mind, but the foundation is separate from any future political plans.

Read the complete story on NewsOK.com

Oklahoma City to host Republican presidential candidates
by Randy Ellis

Nearly a dozen Republican presidential candidates will converge on Oklahoma in two weeks when the Southern Republican Leadership Conference comes to Oklahoma City.

There will be American business leaders, too, like T. Boone Pickens, a Texas energy industry entrepreneur and Oklahoma State University benefactor, who is planning to celebrate his 87th birthday at the conference, officials said.

“This is definitely a historic political event,” said Estela Hernandez, state vice chairperson for the Oklahoma Republican Party. “The eyes of the world will be on our state.”

The three-day event will be May 21-23 at the Cox Convention Center and downtown Renaissance Oklahoma City Convention Center Hotel. About 900 have registered for the event, and between 1,000 and 2,000 people are expected to attend, state Republican officials said.

Read the complete story on NewsOK.com

This past Saturday, the Oklahoma Republican Party met in Oklahoma City for its State Convention. While many items were on the agenda, the race for State Chairman was the main event.

The OKGOP had the most competitive three-way race for State Chair in almost ten years, when Gary Jones defeated incumbent Tom Daxon and Tulsan Jerry Buchanan.

In the first round of balloting, former State Senator Randy Brogdon garnered 47.45%, OFRW President Pam Pollard 29.11%, and current OKGOP Chairman Dave Weston came third place with 23.43%. On the second ballot, Brogdon prevailed in a close race with 53.35% in the runoff.

Many were shocked by the results, including the AP, who seemed flabbergasted that Chairman Weston could be defeated after the election successes of 2014. We aren’t so surprised.

What Southern State Chairs, in particular, have begun to learn is that their activist base now expects Republican wins. If you have an “R” in front of your name in the South, you got a good chance of winning. Activists now want more than just electing Republicans out of their State Parties. Fair or unfair, that is the reality.

A lot of people will point to the registration and credentialing delays on Saturday and say that hurt Weston. We don’t buy it. Activists showed up with their minds made up. Weston deserved reelection based on the Nov, 2014 election results. Unfortunately for him, activists want more than wins at the ballot box.

Which brings us to Randy Brogdon. There is no question about it: this is Brodgon’s last stand. After all the botched campaigns and gaffes, he somehow someway finds himself the Chairman of the most powerful and influential political party in Oklahoma. Very few people get a second chance to define their legacy. He knows it, and because of that fact, we believe he will play nicely in the sandbox. There will be bumps in the road — there always are in party politics — but this is his last chance and we don’t think he’ll blow it.

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

#okhouse Rep. Wesselhoft adjourns after saying Elections Cmte will be custodian of the bill & Denney can bring it back next year. (?)

— Michael Bates (@BatesLine) February 25, 2015

#okhouse Elections & Ethics: Rep. Denney saying that she wishes to lay HB 1813 over. "My purpose was to increase voter turnout."

— Michael Bates (@BatesLine) February 25, 2015

Politico.com
By Kenneth Vogel

A few hours after a certain former Florida governor took to Facebook last month to announce he was going to “actively explore” a presidential run, a political action committee called the Conservative Action Fund blasted out an email to thousands of recipients urging them to “help us stop Jeb Bush today.”

The email, signed by the PAC’s chairman, Shaun McCutcheon, pleaded, “If you are a conservative like me who is tired of the special interest, political elites like Jeb Bush running the GOP, then I need your immediate help to make it clear that American conservatives reject a Jeb Bush candidacy.”

Bush could be persuaded to stay out of the race, McCutcheon’s email asserted, if “hundreds of thousands of conservative, grassroots activists” signed petitions by Dec. 19 to be “hand delivered to Jeb Bush in a very public way” that would presumably shame him out of the race. “And after you sign the petition, please make a donation of $5, $15, $25 or more to help us get even more signatures?” the email concluded in underlined bold text embedded with a hyperlink that took readers to a petition landing page that asked for their emails and then their cash.

It was a slick and well-timed campaign, tapping into the angst of grass-roots conservatives who are as unhappy with GOP leaders like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House John Boehner as they are with President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats.

Read the full article at Politico.com.

In U.S., New Record 43% Are Political Independents

Gallup.com

By Jeffrey M. Jones

PRINCETON, N.J. — An average 43% of Americans identified politically as independents in 2014, establishing a new high in Gallup telephone poll trends back to 1988. In terms of national identification with the two major parties, Democrats continued to hold a modest edge over Republicans, 30% to 26%.

Since 2008, the percentage of political independents — those who identify as such before their leanings to the two major parties are taken into account — has steadily climbed from 35% to the current 43%, exceeding 40% each of the last four years. Prior to 2011, the high in independent identification was 39% in 1995 and 1999.

The recent rise in political independence has come at the expense of both parties, but more among Democrats than among Republicans. Over the last six years, Democratic identification has fallen from 36% — the highest in the last 25 years — to 30%. Meanwhile, Republican identification is down from 28% in 2008 to 26% last year.

Read the full article at Gallup.com

Ben Smith, BuzzFeed Staff

At some point in the next two years, the pollsters and ad makers who steer American presidential campaigns will be stumped: The nightly tracking polls are showing a dramatic swing in the opinions of the electorate, but neither of two typical factors — huge news or a major advertising buy — can explain it. They will, eventually, realize that the viral, mass conversation about politics on Facebook and other platforms has finally emerged as a third force in the core business of politics, mass persuasion.

Facebook is on the cusp — and I suspect 2016 will be the year this becomes clear — of replacing television advertising as the place where American elections are fought and won. The vast new network of some 185 million Americans opens the possibility, for instance, of a congressional candidate gaining traction without the expense of television, and of an inexpensive new viral populism. The way people share will shape the outcome of the presidential election. Even during the 2014 midterms, which most Americans ignored, Facebook says it saw 43 million unique individuals engage in the political conversation. Now a rawly powerful video may reach far more voters in a few hours than a multimillion-dollar ad buy; and it will reach them from trusted sources — their friends — not via suspect, one-way channels.

And so we at BuzzFeed News are deeply excited to have nearly exclusive access (it’s shared with a broadcast partner, ABC News) to a powerful new window into the largest political conversation in America. This data will be drawn from a Facebook project working in the tricky field of “sentiment analysis,” the attempt to analyze people’s feelings based on what they write, which we think may be the most important new source of political data in the 2016 elections. This project will allow BuzzFeed News reporters to ask Facebook for data on, for instance, how Iowans feel about Hillary Clinton, or which Republican candidate appears to be best liked by women.

The field of sentiment analysis is as famous for its pitfalls as for any successes. Sentiment analysis has been bad at detecting sarcasm, for instance. But there’s good reason to think that if anyone can pull this off, it will be Facebook. First, it has access to a far, far larger sample of natural language than any other social network. What’s more, that carries with it contextual data that can serve as a point of departure for sentiment analysis — the field, in particular, that allows people to include how they’re feeling or what they’re doing when they post status updates. And third, Facebook quite simply has some of the best data scientists in the world, and has built a company on a deep and comprehensive understanding of user data. We’re also comfortable with Facebook’s approach to its users’ privacy with this data, which is anonymous and aggregate, with no data available for groups of interactions under 1,000.

Read the complete story on buzzfeed.com

By David Platt

John Cox won a decisive victory in last week’s runoff election for the Democratic Party nomination for state superintendent of instruction, gaining 62.9 percent of the vote to defeat challenger Freda Deskin.

The problem is that turnout among registered Democrats in the superintendent race barely surpassed 10 percent. Turnout for the runoff race plunged 42.8 percent from the initial primary. Cox’s 60,377 votes represented about 1 out of 15 eligible Democratic voters.

Paltry turnout plagued the 16 primary runoff elections. Average turnout was 18.1 percent and in 11 of the 16 runoff races, less than 20 percent of registered voters went to the polls. Turnout dropped between the initial primary vote and the runoff in every race but one, with the average drop being 32.4 percent.

Unfortunately, there is nothing exceptional about this year’s Oklahoma runoffs. A recent study of primary runoffs in federal House and Senate elections from 1994 to 2012 found that turnout decreased 162 times out of 168 and by an average of more than one-third.

The main argument for runoff elections is they improve representation by allowing primary voters to select a candidate with broad popular support. However, the consistently steep drop in turnout in runoffs defeats that purpose. In addition to low turnout, runoff races drive up the cost of elections substantially for candidates and taxpayers.

There are a number of possible reforms to the runoff system. One is to lower the runoff threshold to 40 percent. Another is to adopt so-called jungle primaries, in which all candidates compete in a single primary election, with the two top candidates, regardless of party, advancing to the general election.

Read the full article at JournalRecord.com

‘CIRCUMSTANCES CAN CHANGE’: Mitt Romney On Whether He’ll Run In 2016

By Colin Campbell

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, said Tuesday that he would be interested in making a third White House bid — but only in the “one of a million” situation in which every other 2016 candidate coalesced around him.

Romney, who has repeatedly insisted that he will not run again, made the remarks in an interview with radio show host Hugh Hewitt. “I know this is hard for a lot of people to recognize, but frankly, I’d love to run for president. I loved running for president,” Romney said.

“I love the country enough to know that I’m not as good a candidate this time around as I think the other guys would be, because they’re new and not defined. I want the country to win. I do not want to see Hillary Clinton as our next president. So I stepped aside so someone who has a better shot will be able to step forward.”

Hewitt repeatedly pressed Romney on the 2016 question, setting up hypotheticals where the former Massachusetts governor was the only GOP candidate who could save the country from Clinton, the Democratic front-runner. Romney ultimately acknowledged that “circumstances can change” and that he could be compelled to run.

Read more the full article at BusinessInsider.com

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) dodged questions about his 2016 plans Wednesday but said he would be a big backer of Mitt Romney if he were to make another run for the White House.

“I’d drive his bus if he asked me to,” Ryan, who ran alongside Romney for vice president in 2012, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Ryan said that he believed that a lot of voters now had “buyer’s remorse” about giving Obama a second term.

“A lot of the things [Romney] said in the campaign, projections he made … were true,” he said.

The House GOP heavyweight sidestepped questions about whether he plans to mount his own presidential bid in 2016, saying, “I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do on that.”

Read the full article at TheHill.com.

Friend,

Friends and supporters have asked what my plans are for the future.  Much of the last decade of my life I served as an elected official and was dedicated to the restoration of our founding principles. Whether in elected office or not, these principles still matter deeply to me and I suspect they do to you as well. In fact, they have defined who I am and are the driving force behind what I intend to do with the remaining years God has for me.

Many believe that you have to be elected to public office to make a difference, but I disagree.  Some of the most influential people responsible for directing public policy in Oklahoma are private citizens.  I plan to join the fight with them.

I have started a new business RestoreLibertyOK.com.  I am working with grassroots leaders around the state to educate and train citizens, candidates and elected officials on the principles of liberty and how to apply those principles to public policy.

Restore LibertyOK will be a “conduit” of sorts for all of the grassroots organizations to help get their message out on specific issues through our extensive network.  Our email and social media contacts will be available to help spread their important message.

Restore LibertyOK will provide the answers and offer real solutions to the many problems we’re faced with today.  We will be offering “Liberty Boot Camps” where I and others will teach the Principles of Liberty from the Declaration of Independence and show how Oklahoma can lead the way in stopping the overreach Washington DC.

We will also be working with others around the state to nullify unconstitutional acts forced upon us like Obamacare, EPA actions, even the unconstitutional Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court.

I invite you to visit my website RestoreLibertyOK.com and sign up for training and to receive important updates on current issues.  Together we can Restore Liberty!

Dedicated to Liberty,

Randy Brogdon
http://www.restorelibertyok.com/

(RNS) The Republican National Committee on Friday (June 27) launched its first web-based effort to rally conservative believers behind the party, a sign of how crucial voter turnout will be in this fall’s close-fought midterm elections and an indication that the GOP cannot take its evangelical Christian base for granted.

“This shouldn’t be outreach, this should be who we are — it is who we are,” said Chad Connelly, director of faith engagement for the Republican National Committee and the force behind this new initiative, GOPfaith.com.

Evangelicals, Connelly said, “are our biggest, most reliable voting bloc.”

The problem, however, is that even though evangelicals identify more closely than ever with the GOP, they have not been turning out at the polls in sufficient numbers to carry Republican candidates to victory.

Connelly, a conservative Christian and former chairman of the Republican Party in South Carolina, said that as he traveled the country in 2012 working for the election of Mitt Romney, he found that “the faith vote was an afterthought in a lot of places.”

That came back to haunt the party, he said. He cited surveys showing that while 89 million Americans identify as evangelical Christians, just a third of them voted in the 2012 election — and more than a fifth of those voters pulled the lever for President Obama.

RNC chair Reince Priebus set up the RNC’s Faith Engagement group last year, its first-ever strategic initiative aimed exclusively at conservative faith-based voters. Priebus tapped Connelly to head it, and this new get-out-the-vote campaign — “an online home for all of our efforts, all around the country,” as he says in a video on the site.

Read the full article here.

By TAL KOPAN, Politico

Americans have never been more eager for a third party in American politics as the government shutdown continues to generate record levels of frustration, according to a new poll.

Sixty percent believe Democrats and Republicans are doing such a poor job a third party is needed, according to a Gallup poll out Friday, a record high in the 10 years Gallup has polled on the question. Similarly, a record-low number of Americans — 26 percent — said the current two major parties adequately represent Americans.

Read the full article at Politico.com

BY DAVID M. DRUCKER | AUGUST 28, 2013

The Republican Party aims to build a digital operation that surpasses the one President Obama built for the 2012 campaign. Time, and two upcoming elections, will show whether the GOP succeeds.

The effort, begun this summer, is largely the responsibility of 33-year-old former Facebook engineer Andy Barkett, the Republican National Committee’s chief technology officer. Barkett’s plan is to refine and advance the innovative technology harnessed by Obama’s campaign organization to identify and turn out voters.

But instead of reserving this digital network for a single presidential candidate, the RNC plans to share it with any Republican running for any office anywhere in the country.

“We’re going to do something even harder than what [Obama] did. Replicating what they did isn’t that hard,” Barkett told the Washington Examiner.

Read the complete story on washingtonexaminer.com

BOSTON – Republican officials are looking to promote a fresh group of diverse rising stars to help resolve their election woes, while frustrated party elders insist that all Republicans must offer more solutions for the nation’s most pressing issues.

The calls for change come nine months after a painful 2012 election in which the GOP lost the presidential race and a handful of close Senate contests. A tug of war over the Republican Party’s future is on display as conservative activists and party leaders from across the country gather in Boston this week for the Republican National Committee’s annual summer meeting.

“We have to get beyond being anti-Obama,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich declared at the gathering Wednesday, offering a particularly harsh critique of Republican strategy on health care.

Gingrich said congressional Republicans would have “zero answer” for how to replace the president’s health care overhaul when asked, despite their having voted repeatedly to repeal the measure.

Read the complete story from the AP.

by James Coburn, The Edmond Sun

EDMOND — Congressman James Lankford said he is having a hard time finding a Senate Republican in Congress who is not running for president.

“It’s amazing me. The Senate is going into chaos because there are so many senators right now who are Republicans running for president,” Lankford said Wednesday before the Edmond Rotary. “Every time one of them steps out and makes an announcement, the others run to the microphone and says, ‘Me, too.’”

Watching the Senate Republicans positioning themselves for a campaign is hard to watch, said Lankford, R-Edmond. With the 2016 election three years away, the potential candidates are trying to “one-up” each other, Lankford said.

“This quite frankly is a pet-peeve for me,” said Lankford, who will sometimes ask people what it means to them to be a conservative.

Read the complete story at edmondsun.com

by Al Hunt, August 11, 2013

As hundreds of U.S. lawmakers fan out to their home districts this month, there is a genuine political conundrum.

Approval ratings for Congress are at an all-time low, rivaling those of junkyard dogs. Republicans are seen as the main villains; the party’s standing with the public keeps falling.

So what’s the outlook today for next year’s congressional elections? Republicans will hold the U.S. House, conceivably even adding to their 233-to-200 majority. They seem certain to pick up U.S. Senate seats, with an outside chance to gain the half-dozen needed for control.

Read full article at Bloomberg.com