The Conservative Beachhead Held: Kannady’s Final Purge Ends in Failure

It's the story no one is talking about, but they should be: As Chris Kannady leaves the building, he fails to replicate the 2018 purge of conservatives

But a funny thing happened this time. The establishment still had its Darth Vader, its stormtroopers, and its dark-money arsenal—but the voters refused to follow the script.

To the naive who don’t realize that much of the Capitol world is just one big smoke-and-mirrors show, it must have looked strange. The mastermind of the 2018 purge of conservatives from the House of Representatives—and “special counsel” to the powerful speaker of the House—Chris Kannady, perhaps rightly perceived as the “brain trust,” the power behind the chair, was clearly desperate to hold the line and ice out conservatives, keeping their bills bottled up and potentially setting the state for the institutionalist challengers to re-claim their seats for the establishment.

Even when the legislation had been requested by the popular Oklahoma Second Amendment Association (OK2A), and even when it meant he had to do the dirty work himself, literally showing up in committee to argue and/or vote against legislation because apparently, a panicky, weak committee chairman was clearly struggling to hold the line and “ice out” the upstarts, determined to have the voice of the people heard.

What was really going on?

To the perceptive, it was clear: an impending purge of the upstart conservative grouping in the House of Representatives was being attempted, and this one, perhaps, was even more sinister than the 2018 purge that had defined and haunted the institution for nearly a decade.

As early as the spring of 2025, it was clear that House leaders, witnessing an independent streak emerge in the House after the 2024 victory of conservative icon Jim Shaw over powerful House Appropriations Chairman Kevin Wallace, were attempting to keep Shaw from so much as receiving a hearing on his legislation. By 2026, it was becoming clear that the kibosh had also potentially been extended to Shaw’s ally, House District 33 Representative Molly Jenkins.

Shaw and Jenkins anchored a group of legislative freshmen who had proved especially resistant to leadership’s traditional efforts to assimilate the freshman class into a moneyed-establishment status quo in which lobbyists and bureaucrats run the show, with an occasional token vote for conservatism—just enough to give the consultant class a set of bullet points, spammed without end to the mailboxes of the gullible of the electorate, keeping voters in the dark about the regime of legalized plunder that dominates much of the House’s actual day-to-day activity.

And by putting these two on ice, along, perhaps, with other conservative leaders such as House District 8’s Tom Gann, the table was set to once again exterminate those pesky ideals of honest, constitutionally minded representation—and the new generation of leaders who attempted to vote according to the principles on which they campaigned—just as the monied establishment had done in 2018.

Indeed, as tracked by the Capitol Conformity Tracker, the mindless “yes” voting, by which members simply rubbers stamp what legislative gate keepers had pre-vetted, had dropped from 94% where it had held steady for several years, to 90%, a significant drop, and a no doubt worrying sign of a house that was becoming more open, and deliberative. And, much of that drop was due to the new generation of freshmen, almost every one, to a man, was voting better than his predecessor.

Now, to be clear, while there were less targets then there had been in 2018, mostly because the population of constitutionalists in the House has not returned to pre-2019 levels, the effort to exterminate conservative leaders was perhaps even more dastardly. There had clearly been considerable forethought and planning, to the point that the tools of the institution itself seemed tuned to keep the conservatives on ice and unable to pass legislation.

The game became especially clear when one committee chairman—clearly not well suited to playing it because he represents a largely principled district, boasting a large number of voters who can see the game for what it is, and facing a challenger who was helping bring the status quo to light—began to give in and hear bills from both Shaw and Jenkins.

Under that pressure, Kannady himself had to appear in committee meetings, cast votes, and throw enough confusion against the wall to stop the bills from moving forward.

To the observant, it was clear: yet another dastardly purge of the conservatives was underway, and its architect? It was very likely the mastermind himself, the term-limited Chris Kannady, set to leave the House in his own image: in full control of the monied special interests, institutionalists, and mindless lemmings.

Indeed, as Kannady and crew struggled to hold the line in the Legislature, the professional consultants and dark-money groups—including the massive, government-subsidized green-energy wind industry and a bizarre new dark-money machine headed by Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt’s special adviser, Dustin Hillary—were already working the districts, attacking the conservatives and clearing the path for their challengers. Those challengers seemed all too happy to benefit from playing stormtrooper to Kannady and the establishment’s Darth Vader in what was clearly intended to be the sequel: The Empire Strikes Back.

But a funny thing happened this time. The establishment still had its Darth Vader, its stormtroopers, and its dark-money arsenal—but the voters refused to follow the script.

The constituencies of House Districts 8, 32, and 33 not only withstood wave after wave of dark-money attacks, but stood by their constitutionalist incumbents by significant margins.

In House District 8, Tom Gann—the conservative leader whose willingness to stand on principle has placed him at the center of the “Gann was right” meme, giving him the well-deserved air of a prognosticator—defeated a well-orchestrated attempt to reclaim the district by the old Democratic machine that once dominated Oklahoma politics.

The State Chamber-endorsed “Republican” son of a former Democratic majority leader, ran on a platform of government-subsidized industry and the unfortunate slogan “Not Just Standards, but Results”—a clear swipe at the principled Gann, whose campaign motto, “Raising the Standard,” has since become the motto of the no-lobbyist movement as it has spread statewide.

For the now-term-limited Gann, who began his involvement in state-level politics with a 1990s-era campaign in which he gave a prominent Democratic senator all he could handle in deep-blue Little Dixie, it was a fitting final election as he stopped the resurgent remnants of that same old corrupt machine from co-opting the Republican Party in his district.

In House District 32, Jim Shaw absolutely demolished his challenger, winning all but a single precinct. The result proved that a principled constituency will stand behind its leader regardless of the circumstances and sent a strong message to Kannady, Hilbert, and every committee chairman who took on so much risk by trying to bottle up Shaw: You wasted your time. We are voting on principle, not politics.

Shaw didn’t have to pass a single bill. He simply had to vote against the many bad bills introduced by other lawmakers, keep a strong consistent voice, show fight and leadership, and his constituency would stand behind him, no matter how strong a ringer the establishment recruited against him.

This victory now enshrines Shaw’s profile as a future leader of constitutionalist principle in the state and positions him as a next-level candidate. This was the establishment’s one opportunity to stop Shaw before he arrived on the statewide scene. They took their shot, and they failed.

It also demonstrates the value of first establishing a base of support before attempting to compete on the statewide political stage. During his first term, even while facing significant adversity in the House, Shaw used social media to remain close to his base and stayed prominent in the district where he was known to attend and speak at grassroots events. I’ve observed that often, those with the most potential in the conservative world, attempt to hit the statewide stage too quickly, without first securing a local base, making them very vulnerable in their first re-election campaign. These election results suggest that Shaw didn’t make this mistake.

And then there’s House District 33 and Molly Jenkins.

I think the establishment forces falsely believed Jenkins was an easy target. She proved them very wrong.

Jenkins won all but four precincts, defeating the state’s leading consulting firm, CAMP—the same firm that, in the last election cycle, brought down the incoming Senate president pro tempore. But it could not bring down Molly Jenkins.

That is a resume booster few political figures can boast of, and something everyone involved in Jenkins’s amazing victory should put on their list of life accomplishments. That includes everyone on that team, from those who worked behind the scenes, delivering valuable, on-the-ground insights and giving Jenkins the intelligence necessary to deploy quickly and meet the challenge, to the amazing election day volunteers who stood beside the road on Election Day, waving Jenkins’s “No Lobbyist Money” signs.

They beat CAMP.

This, this was a historic campaign.

The Gann and Jenkins campaigns now become Exhibit A—case studies in how elected officials can turn down thousands of dollars in lobbyist money and still survive even the most determined opponents, backed by all the resources the establishment can command.

Those campaigns experienced it all, from the twists and turns of the Inola aluminum-smelter issue that highlighted the Gann campaign to the zombie campaign-money funneling that poured funds into the campaign of Jenkins’s opponent (it’s a story you will want to hear). There is much to analyze and preserve as we prepare for the wave of 2028 candidates who will step forward to do their part and follow these examples.

So as much of the online grassroots world currently obsesses over the ins and outs of the Senate races, and although some may misread the results and become discouraged, they should not (See the next OSC article, headed your way posthaste;) as first, it is important to realize that the more important side of the Capitol—the people’s House—just sent Darth Vader, the Gene Stipe of the Republican Party, Chris Kannady, out the door without allowing him to put the frosting on the cake of his legacy: wielding his power to drive the beachhead back into the sea, to eliminate the small group of budding, courageous, independent voices that had the nerve to stand for honesty, openness, and actually representing the constitutionalist and conservative platforms on which they campaigned.