The Assimilation Begins: Oklahoma's New Legislators Face Their First Test

A November 21st Oklahoma City fundraising event represents the start of the assimilation process that, for most new lawmakers, will prove "resistance is futile."

It was always a source of optimism for me—and a highlight of each new legislative term—to become acquainted with the incoming freshman representatives.

Watching these often-idealistic individuals enter the Capitol as ordinary people, and replacing their frequently co-opted predecessors who had long acquiesced to the big-government status quo, gave me hope.

I believed the second generation of majority Republicans, unlike many of their first-generation predecessors, would no longer need to fear the big-government Democrat leftists who had thrived under the state's old political order.

In the past, numerous swing districts had tormented their Republican conservative-minded officeholders who constantly faced defeat in general elections. Now, with the state rapidly realigning politically, Republicans were defeating Democrats everywhere, and there were ever fewer swing districts. Essentially, a Republican could hold office, remain an actual conservative, without compromising their values, and still win re-election.

So, I was extremely bullish on the second generation of majority Republican officeholders. The state's new political climate would allow them to take and build on our government reform efforts—such as transparency of government, downsizing of government, and tax reduction—to the next level.

Once the many and varied pressures of an intrusive, wasteful, expensive government were removed from the people of Oklahoma, there would be innumerable benefits, and a much healthier society would be the outcome.

I had good reason for this optimism. The new representatives were often well-motivated, regular people, not yet hardened politicians. Rarely did I conclude that a new freshman representative was anything less than an improvement over their predecessor.

That optimism peaked with the onboarding of the 2010 and 2012 legislative classes and in ensuing years, subsequently faded away.

I watched as the monied special interests, the big government bureaucracies, and the constant vote trading/vote compromising absolutely ripped the values, innovation, ideas for reform, and even desire for reform right out of new member after new member until, almost to a person, they were helpless tools of a system that was too big for them.

In short, the Republican revolution had come too late. The Democrat-built big-government monster was self-perpetuating, unstoppable, and devouring almost all who dared attempt to slay it.

After some time, even the reform-minded new representatives, who had held out for months, or maybe even a few years, would acquiesce, giving in to the temptation to simply play the game and coast through a bad system, a system that had sucked out their spirit.

Perhaps one way to think of it is as a political lobotomization. It absolutely changes people—sometimes, depending on circumstances, at a different rate and pace—but it gets almost all of them. Of note, those most prone to noticing this are the representative's clear-thinking family members, those family members who are far enough removed from the day-to-day, but who can, from a distance, take note of how their family member is forever changed.

I personally thought of this process as assimilation, specifically the type of assimilation conducted by the Borg as featured in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

This analogy was only reinforced during the later years of my legislative time, as my optimism for the second generation faded and when, funded by the values-betraying debt and bond issuance that conservatives had tried so hard to stop, massive scaffolds appeared around the Capitol building, creating the alarmingly not-so-coincidental visual similarity to a Borg Cube—a visual that constantly reminded me that it was my duty to not be assimilated. To enter the Capitol, and to spend a day there, was not unlike being trapped on a Borg Cube.

That visual was enhanced when, in an inexplicable display of bad judgment, state officials in the Fallin administration developed a strange affinity for and surrounded the Capitol with the Third Legislature's less-than-creative and unfortunately designed 46-star flag. It had only taken the state officials of the past a few years to abandoned that flag after the public took note of visual similarity between the 46-star flag and anarchist/communist imagery—an awareness that apparently wasn't passed on to the Fallin administration or to today's Stitt administration, which is imprinting it on state license plates—a story for another day.

In my final years of being a representative, I was challenged to remain optimistic. A day in the House consisted of walking into the Borg Cube, garnished by the state's communist-imagery flag, where I would observe the ongoing assimilation/lobotomization of so many regular, good-hearted new representatives. I rather tended to content myself with insisting that I could only control what I could control and determined that I, myself, would not be assimilated. I also found great contentment in taking note of the very few others who had also set themselves up to escape the Borg with their souls and spirits intact. It's a small number, but it's been present ever since.

And, for anyone that's ever seen the members of the Federation trying to survive on a Borg Cube, it's comforting to realize, that just as in the Oklahoma Capitol, the non-assimilated are always in the vast minority, but they still always come out on top by the end of the episode, unless it is a two-parter, but either way, it will work out in the end.

Those observations have carried with me throughout the ensuing years and to this day, when approached by an enthusiastic new candidate for state House, these observations guide my response to them.

Unless that candidate is willing to draw some very clear lines, I am not inclined to support them in any substantive fashion, especially if they are great people. Why would I do that to them? I know what is going to happen to them—and, by proxy, to their families too.

So, I usually, unabashedly, do my best to provide them with the following service—a service they aren't going to find almost anywhere else: I let them know that, "if you are going to do this, you must, before you start, draw some clear rules and have a process for benchmarking and knowing if you are being assimilated."

The first and foremost of those rules is: "Don't take money from the lobbyists/special interest groups. Don't let them fund the big-city social life for you, and don't let them fund your campaign fund."

As you might imagine, there are very few who are willing to make this commitment and stand by it after the election. But, without a doubt, those who have made it have had a 100% success rate in avoiding assimilation.

Those who are unwilling to make this commitment will have two masters: the monied special interests, the vast majority of which derive financial benefit from big government; and the voters who elected the candidate under the assumption that the candidate shared the voters' conservative values and would rein in big government.

As we all know, a man can't serve two masters. It just doesn't work. That's why nearly everyone who tries to play this game becomes assimilated.

As the writer of this Substack, I've determined to do my part to provide the information, tools, and resources to those who are: willing to run for office after drawing some firm lines that they will not cross, including rejecting monied special interest money, so as to avoid assimilation; or aren't running for office but do want to serve their community by keeping their state representative free from assimilation for as long as possible.

In that regard, for the benefit of the first group, I intend to provide a comprehensive guide containing the long-thought-through rules and best practices I would recommend to a new lawmaker who desires to survive assimilation.

For the second group, I intend to use this Substack to educate, to provide the tools to analyze and understand the assimilation that's occurring right now to your new state representatives, starting with the freshman class of 2024. We can, together, watch and learn as the assimilation takes hold.

Here's the first part of that analysis.

Last week, the local independent media/commentators on X.com took note of one of the very first substantive steps of the assimilation of the 2024 class.

It was a fundraiser invitation from the House member who believes he will be the next Speaker of the House because he was designated as such by a previous Republican caucus, whose decision, by custom, is thought to be binding on the next legislature. That's a custom that needs to go away, but back to the invitation: with a couple of notable exceptions, the invitation listed the names of the new incoming freshmen, and informed the reader that the event would be coordinated by one of the state's most well-connected fundraising groups—a group known to raise money for many of the state's most prominent officeholders.

No doubt many of these grassroots commentators rightly wonder why, just a few days after the 2024 election, the new lawmakers are already fundraising in Oklahoma City, far away from their home districts.

Essentially, this is the event that kicks off the assimilation.

Here the freshmen will likely meet their new financiers. These are the special interests whose ongoing financial support will provide the freshman member with his security blanket, an insurance plan: a well-funded campaign war chest to guard against the freshmen's now already quickly materializing—and perhaps greatest—fear: a credible challenge in the 2026 election cycle.

With this security blanket, the freshmen won't have to worry about losing the support of their conservative grassroots voters—who just elected them—but who will soon feel betrayed by the many compromising votes and betrayals of values the freshmen will almost certainly make.

The new legislators will soon be forced to make these votes as part of the Capitol game to not offend the powerful House Speaker, who tightly controls the House from behind the closed doors of the corner office. The legislators must keep the favor of the Speaker in order to jockey for their own power in the Legislature; thus, they will be constantly compromising their stated and declared values, which might not be a problem, unless the conservative voters back home figure out the game and rightly learn about just how much they are being betrayed.

But, even if that happens, it's still not a problem if the freshman lawmaker has his security blanket: a lobbyist-funded campaign war chest.

That's because no viable, credible candidate will be foolish enough step up to challenge the now-entrenched incumbent who sports a large a war chest and can access the many endorsements and contacts of the powerful of the business and government worlds who will ensure that the new lawmakers, now clearly playing the game, never have to worry about having a competitive election, much less losing one.

This is the game.

And, for this year's class of freshmen, the game will start in earnest once they show up at the Capitol View Event Center on Thursday, the 21st of November, and start making connections with the lobbyists who represent the most intriguing and powerful of the state's economic, political, and government classes.

It's a heady experience and will start to forever transition those fresh-faced, idealistic individuals from normal people, into a special political class of assimilated elites.

If you've found that one of your freshman representatives is in this group, then it's your responsibility to stay as close to them as possible. Attend their events back in the district, keep in contact, and closely follow this and other grassroots-minded publications so that you will know and recognize both the symptoms of assimilation, the bad votes, and the even worse explanations that try to justify those votes.

If your representative does become assimilated—which, if they haven't drawn some firm lines such as refusing lobbyist funds, they most certainly will—you will need to be strongly positioned to hold your own and expose their bad, values-betraying votes. That's a tough lift, especially if you are living a normal life and don't have time to follow the nuances of the day-to-day Capitol world. The assimilated politicians depend on this fact to keep you in the dark and supporting them long after they have been assimilated, so you will need to be:

1. Informed and able to see through the politician's deceptive explanation.

2. Ready and willing to work against that person in the next election cycle, even if you supported them in the last cycle; and, most importantly,

3. Set to prove that, resistance is, not in fact, futile.

In the upcoming few months, as their first session gets underway, The Oklahoma State Capital Substack will be here to assist you in this mission.

If you've yet to subscribe, visit OklahomaStateCapital.com/substack to sign up. And if you are a subscriber, please share this with your contacts and social media so that together we can reach a wide enough audience to make a real difference as soon as the next election cycle.

Until next time.