With Republicans needing to pick up only 20 seats in November to regain a majority of the U.S. House of Representatives, it is no surprise that much national focus is on the 5th Congressional District race in Oklahoma, which covers most of Oklahoma County (in which Oklahoma City is located) and all of neighboring Seminole and Pottawatomie counties.
In 2018, Democrat Kendra Horn surprisingly won the seat — the first time that a Democrat who had won the 5th Congressional District since John Jarman in 1974 — by ousting Republican Steve Russell. Because of this, and the fact that the contest in the midterm was so close (Horn captured 121,149 votes to 117, 811 for Russell), this is a district that Republicans absolutely have to win in order to have a chance to regain control of the House.
The chances are good that will happen in 2020. Russell ran a rather lackadaisical campaign in 2018, and it is usual for the party that occupies the White House to lose some seats in the midterm following a presidential election. This is because many mistakenly become relaxed and complacent, satisfied that their guy is the president. Conversely, the party out of power is slightly more energized. For example, Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party lost the House in 1994, George W. Bush’s Republicans lost the House in 2006, and Barack Obama’s Democrats lost the House in 2010. This 2020 election, in contrast to a midterm, will have a huge turn-out of energized supporters of President Donald Trump in a state that has not given a single county to a Democrat candidate for president since 2000. The presence of Republican Senator Jim Inhofe on the ballot should also help the Republican nominee.
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Challenging Horn is state Senator Stephanie Bice (shown), the Republican nominee from Oklahoma City. Bice graduated from Oklahoma State, then went to work in her family’s technology business.
While in the State Senate, Bice has received an A rating from the National Rifle Association and has voted in favor of 12 of 14 pro-life bills. During her six years in the Oklahoma Senate, Bice has compiled a 56-percent cumulative Conservative Index score from the Oklahoma Constitution newspaper.
During the 2020 legislative session, she voted for an anti-red flag law, which would preempt all current or future proposed red flag laws coming from Washington, D.C., and make them null, void, and of no effect in Oklahoma. Red flag laws allow an individual’s firearms to be confiscated following nothing more than an anonymous accusation from either a family member or a law-enforcement officer.
Bice is an assistant majority floor leader in the Senate. She became the Republican nominee by running second in the Republican primary, then winning the run-off primary in August.
While Bice is not as strong a conservative as many activists would like, this race is more about switching control of the U.S. House of Representatives, and this makes the central focus defeating the incumbent, Kendra Horn.
Whereas Bice would be fairly classified as a moderate conservative, Horn’s voting record places her in the far left of the Democratic Party, with a score on The New American’s Freedom Index, which rates members of Congress according to their fidelity to the U.S. Constitution of a mere 10 percent — lower than that of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez!
A graduate of the University of Tulsa, Horn was the press secretary for First District Congressman Brad Carson, and she managed the gubernatorial campaign of fellow Democrat Joe Dorman in 2014. Upon taking office as a member of Congress, Horn joined the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of Democrats who cast themselves as more moderate.
But Horn’s voting record indicates that “moderate” is just an image she wants to project. She is certainly no “moderate.” For example, she has publicly said that she believes healthcare workers should either perform elective abortions despite any moral, religious, or philosophical objections, or seek other employment.
Such a rabid pro-abortion stance is typical of her left-wing voting record. She voted against an amendment by Representative Justin Amash of Michigan to the National Defense Authorization Act to prohibit indefinite military detention of any person — including American citizens. The proposed amendment would have required the transfer of the person to civilian courts for due process as provided under the Constitution.
She voted for the so-called Equality Act, which would have allowed a person to use a restroom, locker room, or dressing room in accordance with that person’s gender identity. That means a man who identifies as a woman could take showers with girls — and there was no religious exemption to this insane proposal.
Horn voted to prohibit the use of federal funds to accomplish U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change. She also supported legislation that would have mandated universal background checks on gun purchases, and would have essentially banned all private firearm sales and would have created a federal registry of all gun owners in the United States.
Not surprisingly, Horn voted to impeach President Trump earlier this year.
Polls indicate this race as a toss-up.
Photo: AP Images
Steve Byas is a university instructor in history and government and the author of History’s Greatest Libels. He may be contacted at [email protected].
