by Don Baldwin
My wife and I moved to Bartlesville, Oklahoma in 2021, leaving behind the west coast where we had lived most of our lives and which we had thought was our home.
We quickly met some local Republicans and started working on making connections. Folks were friendly but one puzzling thing was the veiled and often insulting suggestion that we should avoid associating with the “wrong” kind of Republicans. Which kind of Republicans was the wrong kind? Let me offer some observations from the past couple years.
The ”wrong” kind of Republicans
The people we were urged to avoid, who I will call Grassroots party members, are very passionate about freedom (be it the right to Worship, gun rights and OK2A, preventing forced immunization, or parental rights). They take a hard line on protecting the unborn and insist on protecting families from attempts to indoctrinate or groom their children. They are also passionately against most taxes. It should be noted that these positions are in complete alignment with the Oklahoma GOP platform.
They insist on a bottom-up approach to politics, with voters controlling precincts, precincts controlling counties and counties controlling the state party. That flow of control exactly matches the state GOP rules…but not the way the party has actually been run.
These are the people I have befriended since we have been here. We do not always agree but disagreement tends to be respectful and healthy. And cordial disagreement is crucial to maintaining a civil society.
The “right” kind of Republicans
The other type of Republicans we encounter here, who I will describe as the Establishment GOP is lukewarm on promoting the actual Republican platform and tends to be antagonistic towards Republicans holding those views. Their priority is fundraising and a continual and often preemptive capitulation to the left, while attempting to rationalize that capitulation as some kind of “victory”. Their approach seems designed to ensure a continual flow of funds into the party, which will perpetually ALMOST stop those pesky Democrats. The Establishment GOP prefers top-down control of the party, thereby opposing the state party’s own rules as well as its platform.
The Establishment GOP talks a lot about “unity” but only unity with them in control. They have long been in control here in Washington County. When Grassroots candidates gained control of the County Committee (which the state GOP platform describes as the supreme Republican party authority of the county) in early 2023, the Establishment’s interest in “unity” completely evaporated.
- Armed guards were hired for unpublicized meetings and attempts made to provoke confrontations by illegitimately preventing guests from entering.
- At the County Convention, an Excel spreadsheet used to calculate votes for county chairman and vice chair “accidentally” failed to count some votes, creating incorrect election results and an attempt was briefly made to brush aside conflicting, accurate tallies.
- That spreadsheet was eventually turned over but did not retain a history of edits… the Establishment members of the county GOP find this funny. (Along with questions about catering for the County Convention going 200% over budget).
- If that election just described raises concerns about voting integrity in the state, it should. The Establishment vice chair sent her own nomination to the state election board in conflict with the chairman’s nomination. When the County Committee announced a meeting to discuss removing that Vice Chair, she tried to block said meeting with a Temporary Restraining Order.
- Since then, the Establishment has attempted to mire down every meeting and prevent discussion. They also have Bartlesville news sources repeating their every statement on demand.
These months of tantrums and juvenile attempts at manipulative behavior would be disappointing during normal times but then normal times have been gone in our country for several years. We do not have a functioning Southern border and authorities are seemingly intent on causing as much economic, energy and food supply chaos as possible.
The allegedly conservative Bartlesville City Council responded to concerns about drag queens performing for kids by illegitimately negotiating a deal with LGBT activists to protect their “right” to twerk for children, despite receiving contrary feedback from a couple thousand voters. Our Republican state Senator has sponsored a bill to make abortion MORE common and seems incapable of discussing its details honestly with constituents.
Oklahoma is technically a red state but it will not be a truly conservative state until we resolve legitimate concerns about election integrity…and the state GOP is forced by its members to adhere to its own platform and rules.
Editor’s note: Don Baldwin currently serves as vice-chairman of his precinct in Washington County in Oklahoma.
Original post shared via OKGrassroots