Jason Murphey's 2026 Republican Primary Ballot

By request, here’s how — and why — I am voting on June 16.

By request: what follows is my ballot for the June 16, 2026, Republican primary ballot for statewide office, along with a leading fact or two explaining why I am making these decisions.

I have included the foremost reason for each of my votes, with a little more explanation in the governor’s race than in the others. In many cases, there are much deeper and more in-depth reasons for these votes, based on my personal knowledge, observations, and experiences. But that would make for a very long read. Since I anticipate this being just a voter guide — one among many, no doubt, that readers will use to research and guide their opinions — I understand that brevity will be helpful to its overall utility (yes, there is a first time to everything.) For that reason, I will keep my explanations limited to one or two leading reasons for each vote.

Regular readers of these articles will know that one of the most important factors in casting a vote — whether as a lawmaker representing the views of others, the voters, or as a regular voter trying to honor the great responsibility that so many have sacrificed so much to preserve for us — is this: removing the human feelings of friendship and personal loyalty from the vote calculation.

Money is the most powerful co-opting factor. Pride and power are the second. Personal relationships are the third. And those relationships compromise the regular voter just as they compromise politicians.

Those who vote based on personal relationships, instead of striving for a truly emotionless, logical analysis, do a great disservice to their responsibility as voters — just as lawmakers regularly betray our values due to their proximity to friends, special interests, and lobbyists who are experts at manipulating through personal influence.

In fact, personal relationships are one of the tools by which many good-hearted, otherwise spot-on conservatives — both policymakers and regular voters — are co-opted on the cheap. Not with money, but by co-opters spending just enough time to build a relationship, manipulating the human emotions of the co-optee into supporting someone they would never otherwise support if their decision had been made in a Spock-like, logical manner.

I say that to say this: I will be applying this important guidance as I cast my vote this year. These choices are not based on who I consider to be personal friends, some of those I am not picking, I do, or on any other reason of personal loyalty. In other words, if you are one of those individuals, don’t take too much offense.

Additionally, the reader will notice a common theme: I believe the voter should endeavor never to be fooled twice. You know the saying.

If a candidate has campaigned as a conservative and then betrayed those values as an officeholder, then, as a basic rule, he has disqualified himself from my personal consideration. It is a strategy I would advise other voters to follow: don’t be fooled twice, or you will have only yourself to blame for the next betrayal.

Finally, with the exception of the governor’s race, these votes should not be considered the official endorsements of The Oklahoma State Capital. They are simply the choices I will be making on my own personal ballot, reluctantly published by me in response to multiple requests from friends and readers, barring the revelation of additional information in the next week.

Governor: Jake Merrick — Endorsement

Constitutionalists have long envisioned a day when a true constitutionalist would win the governor’s election in Oklahoma.

Merrick’s election would likely be the first, notwithstanding what Alffla Bill Murray would have you to think.

Merrick has done a great service to the state through his historic commitment to refusing lobbyist money, allowing, presumably for the first time, every Oklahoma Republican voter to vote for this concept. It is a nascent concept, one spreading across the state thanks to pioneering candidates like Merrick.

And make no mistake: it is the solution to “legalized” corruption — a corruption of such scale and scope that it is destroying the integrity of the government and those who play the game.

Even if he does not win, his impact in spreading the No Lobbyist Money message will be felt for years to come, and it is giving coattails to other No Lobbyist Money candidates across the state.

There has been exactly one reason not to vote for Merrick: if doing so would take enough votes away from the other Republican candidates, Mazzei or Keating, thus sending Drummond and McCall into the runoff.

That would be an absolute disaster for the Republican brand: two quintessential politicians on the runoff ballot, the type of which, in my view, would be just as comfortable under the Democratic brand were this a Democratic state.

But it is not. So it is up to Republican voters to have the wisdom to eliminate from their consideration those who have betrayed conservative values — such as McCall, who sacrificed his authority to represent the Republican Party when he repeatedly voted for and leveraged the power of his office for tax-increase packages, the scope and scale of which were without precedent; and Drummond, who has politicized the role of attorney general more than any other holder of that office in the modern era, doing a great indignity to the seriousness of that office.

Keating, on the other hand, is quite comfortable in the Republican brand. His willingness to bring up a subject one rarely hears about from Republican officeholders — the consolidation of administrative overhead — brings to mind the work of his father, who laid the foundation that the first-generation majority Republicans would build on as we consolidated government agencies and sought to lessen the size of government. That is something today’s Republican officeholders seem completely alien to.

However, Keating’s willingness to support the rapidly evolving surveillance-state technologies disqualifies him from the first-round support of any serious-minded conservative keen to avoid Orwell.

This might be the most important subject facing the next governor: will Oklahoma surrender to the all-encompassing tentacles of an AI-driven police and surveillance state? Or will we, even if every other state goes down that path, remain a jurisdiction of personal responsibility and freedom, where one’s immediate safety is adjudicated by the sovereignty of the individual, not AI?

My recollection of Mazzei’s role as a senator was that I perceived him to be a middle-of-the-road senator — comfortably Republican, but not someone I ever thought of as the courageous type who could hold his own when the time came to stand behind consistent principle in the face of the special interests.

When the National Popular Vote crowd invaded Oklahoma, deploying an array of Republican lobbyists to co-opt Republican officeholders in what I believe to be the greatest political conspiracy of this century to forever transform the country, Mazzei bought in.

That said, Mazzei has touched a chord with his calls for property-tax reform. It is the number one issue of the Republican electorate, and he had the courage to hear that call. I think that is why he surged in the polls, and it is good that he did, because for so long, with Drummond and McCall as the frontrunners, the Republican brand was in real trouble.

Which brings us back to Merrick.

He is principled, and he is stubborn. Unlike the weak Mazzei, I do not think you will ever need to fear Merrick caving to the special interests so long as there is a conservative principle at stake.

For those who supported Randy Brogdon in the 2010 election cycle, you will be very happy with Merrick. He is very much in the Brogdon lane.

And with Trump’s endorsement of Mazzei and the collapse of McCall’s poll numbers, the only reason for not voting for Merrick — avoiding a Drummond v. McCall runoff — has seemingly been removed from the objection docket.

So, absent a late surge by McCall in the next few days, the vote for Merrick is a true constitutionalist conservative’s mandate.

Lieutenant Governor: Justin “JJ” Humphrey

As I described here, the lieutenant governor has exactly one job: presiding over the Senate.

Unless he is committed to doing that job whenever that institution is in session, then he most certainly needs to return his paycheck, and that office should be eliminated from the taxpayer-funded payroll.

Humphrey is the only candidate of whom I am aware who has made this commitment.

His election would be transformative, taking power away from the agent of the state’s monied establishment — Senate Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton — and returning that chamber to its constitutionally compliant status.

Attorney General: Jeff Starling

This race presents a candidate, Starling, who is largely unknown in an office-holding sense, with no prior votes for us to grade, but who is well qualified for the job in a technical and professional sense.

On the other side is Jon Echols, a candidate who is very well known from his time in office — and not in a good way. Like McCall, Echols played a key role in ramming through the largest tax hikes in size and scope, while posting a low score on the Conservative Index during his last nine years in office. In one year, he actually scored just a 10. Nor is he the least bit qualified for the job in a technical and professional sense.

Those whose decisions are guided by measurable standards, such as Conservative Index scores, or by a candidate’s association with the establishment consulting industry, including CAMP, should be outraged by the method by which Echols and his IE group have conducted one of the most deceptive campaigns of this election cycle. CAMP’s conduct this year has earned it a status I would not have assigned before: for the first time, I now believe it is fair to judge a candidate by his willingness to employ them or to stand by as they sling sleeze from one’s IE group.

They have labeled Starling by a standard that, if applied consistently to just about anyone who has worked for a large employer, would probably disqualify even you, the reader, from consideration by conservative voters.

It is despicable and reprehensible, and it demonstrates exactly why Starling’s campaign has correctly described Echols as the ultimate swamp creature.

This is a subject for our next article.

Stay tuned.

Treasurer: Cindy Byrd

It is hard to listen to Cindy Byrd and not be inspired by the professionalism and pride she brings to her work. Even after eight years in office, her enthusiasm is still evident.

By contrast, recent missteps by Todd Russ, as he has been thrust into the arena of the Invest in Oklahoma Board, are a warning sign. The board represents an open and dangerous invitation to a form of legalized corruption by policymakers that Oklahoma is only beginning to understand.

If the state treasurer is going to be involved in investing taxpayer money into Oklahoma businesses — a sure-fire invitation to corruption — then the standard for who fills that role must be exceptionally high. Byrd’s body of work suggests she is best suited for that role. She will have the requisite knowledge of purchasing law, safeguards, and ethics that are essential in this new role, and that should allow her to avoid the mistakes Russ has already made.

Here’s hoping the first thing she does is reverse Russ’s unfortunate decision to hire a contract lobbyist — and not just any contract lobbyist, but one I best remember as the former “super woke” legislator who appointed himself as the gender police. He was a liberal Democrat who continually took to the House floor to harass members who did not use enough “shes” in their hypothetical descriptions of people affected by proposed legislation.

It should offend every conservative voter that Russ has put this individual on the public dole.

That aside, I believe Byrd will be the only member of that board unwilling to simply play the legalized-corruption game. Instead, she will ask the right questions and insist on ethical conduct.

Thus, this is one of the more important items on this year’s ballot.

Superintendent of Public Instruction: James Taylor

Taylor is well known in grassroots circles for his willingness to represent the values of the people, and in past elections he bravely challenged the ensconced, big-spending, Coburn-legacy-destroying, earmarking congressman, Tom Cole, in Congressional District 4. Stepping up to give the voters an alternative to Cole was a vital service to those voters.

Now, I greatly appreciate Taylor for giving me, a constitutionalist conservative, an option on the superintendent ticket, as he is the only leading candidate who can even remotely be considered likeminded.

Commissioner of Labor: Kevin West

In my experience, a representative’s freshman year in the House will usually be his most conservative, as the system is designed to crush an officeholder’s values. The longer they stay in office, the worse they usually get.

West is a fascinating study in Oklahoma politics because he was one of the few who managed to scramble back after a tough first year. In his second year, he stood up to the McCall/Echols tax-increase machine, largely joining with the conservative members and becoming one of the few not to be pushed from office by the infamous dark-money purge of 2018.

In the ensuing years, working within the system, time and again, it was West who authored the keynote grassroots legislation of the year.

Today, when you hear legislators from that time period trying to take credit for policy by saying they “fought” for some given component of social policy, the odds are high that what they mean by “fought” is that they eventually gave in to the overwhelming pressure of the grassroots and voted for a Kevin West-authored bill.

One can only imagine how West must feel time and again when he turns on the TV or opens his mailbox to witness some sleazy politician running on the Kevin West platform, as if it were his own all along.

As labor commissioner, West would likely be one of the few statewide officeholders to still have strongly held conservative principles. As such, he would be on the farm team for future, more high-profile statewide elections, a vital necessity for conservatives everywhere.

Insurance Commissioner: Undervote

Unlike Kevin West, the perceived frontrunner for insurance commissioner, Marty Quinn — a former state senator — caved to the tax-hike pressures of 2018, a career-defining vote and an epic betrayal of conservatism and Republican values when it counted most. He is thus eliminated under my important “don’t be fooled twice” rule.

Of the three alternatives, based on my research, I can’t find a candidate whom I believe to be worthy of my vote. So, the winner here is: Undervote.

Just leave it blank.

Go, undervote!

Corporation Commissioner: Justin Hornback

Brad Boles, the perceived frontrunner, like Quinn, betrayed Republican values with tax-increase plans and largely propped up the McCall/Echols machine in the House, which did so much harm to that institution over the years.

In the last few months, Boles seems to have recognized the importance of the grassroots. But there should be no doubt that, once safely ensconced in his new office, he will almost certainly be a complete pushover for the big rate-hiking utility concerns, just as he was for the McCall/Echols machine in the House.

Hornback is the regular-person candidate. As such, a vote for him is a gamble, but it is a significantly safer choice than the alternative.

U.S. Senate: Gary “TY” England

Kevin Hern has long been Oklahoma’s second-best member of Congress, and he will be an improvement over Markwayne Mullin, so this is already a big win for the people. But constitutional conservatives know that it is usually not best practice to jump on a consensus runaway train too quickly, and the self-described “Limbaugh baby,” Ty England, would be even better.

Congressional District One: Jackson Lahmeyer

Lahmeyer’s election would be a huge win for constitutionalists, perhaps the biggest of the election cycle.

Congressional District Two: Josh Brecheen

Brecheen holds the distinction of being Oklahoma’s only member of Congress who deserves re-election.

Congressional District Three: Wade Burleson

Congressional District Four: Marcie Everhart

Congressional District Five: No Challenger

Perhaps some articulate, true conservative will step up, sooner than later, for the 2028 election cycle as, after CD1, this presents the best possible pick up seat for constitutionalists.

State House

Three No Lobbyist Money incumbents are being challenged. Their election is key to continuing the progress being made toward returning the House of the people to the people. They are Rick West, District 3; Tom Gann, District 8; and Molly Jenkins, District 33.

Additionally, The Oklahoma State Capital People’s Audit suggests that House District 32’s Jim Shaw and House District 98’s Gabe Woolley should be re-elected.

Numerous other House incumbents are being challenged by No Lobbyist Money challengers. In every case, the right vote is the No Lobbyist Money vote. If there is a No Lobbyist Money candidate in your district, then you have an amazing opportunity to represent the values of your district and put it on the leading edge of ethics by voting for that candidate. These are the defining races of the election cycle.

If you don’t have a No Lobbyist Money candidate in your district, then resolve that next time, even if you must step up yourself, you will do so. It is still not too late to be a pioneer in the movement that is set to transform the Oklahoma government.

State Senate

The state’s “upper” house provides constitutionalists their very best opportunity to get a big win in state government. By unelecting the “Swampy Seven” senators who are preserving the monied establishment’s hold on that chamber, the people can put a cork in the ability of the institutionalists to grow government at the unfettered pace at which it currently expands.

Nearly all of the “Swampy Seven” are being challenged by No Lobbyist Money candidates. Their victory would give the No Lobbyist Money movement a foothold in that chamber, too, something that is badly needed.

Important Senate races and the name of the grassroots candidates are; Senate District 2, Payton Pepin; Senate District 4, Kenny Smith; Senate District 10, Jadan Terrazas; Senate District 12, William Stump; Senate District 20, Mark LeMarr; Senate District 28, Robert Trimble; and, Senate District 42, Malana Bracht.

Additionally, it is vital for voters to re-elect Senate District 32’s Dusty Deevers. He is likely the number one target of the establishment forces due to his outspoken role as a leader of the constitutionalist-minded Freedom Caucus group.

Beyond that, voters are right to ask their Senate candidate whom they will be supporting for president pro tempore. If that candidate supports the current leadership, then he should be rejected.

State Question

No!