TRANSCRIPT
Dick Pryor: This is Capitol Insider - taking you inside politics, policy, government and elections in Oklahoma. I'm Dick Pryor with Quorum call publisher Shawn Ashley. The general election is on Tuesday. Statewide, voters will be voting on president, judicial retention, two state questions, and Congress except in District three, where Frank Lucas has already been reelected. What do legislative races look like, Shawn?
Shawn Ashley: All 101 seats in the House and 26 seats in the Senate were up for election this year. But just 44 races are on the general election ballot and those are scattered throughout the state. The remainder of the races were decided when only one candidate filed for the seat in April or during the primary and primary runoff elections in June and August.
Dick Pryor: A little history. Twenty years ago, Republicans became the majority in the state House of Representatives. Two years later, Republicans gained a split in the Senate, and two years after that, they took outright control of the Senate. So, except for 2006 when Democrats won eight of nine statewide offices, Oklahoma has been dominated by the Republican Party ever since 2004. And voter registration shows that, too. It appears the Republican Party's hold on the legislature could grow even stronger after Tuesday's vote.
Shawn Ashley: Yes, we already know Republicans will be the majority in each chamber. The question is just how big those majorities will be. The Senate likely will remain 40-8 in favor Republicans. In the House, there are up to three seats that could move from Democratic to Republican control. Two are in so-called purple districts, where registration is pretty equally split among the two parties, and those districts have a tendency to switch their representative from one party to the other from time to time. Republicans currently have an 81 to 20 mega-majority in the House. But let's go back a little further in history. At the start of the 35th legislature in 1975, 50 years ago, the situation was nearly reversed. There were 77 Democrats and 24 Republicans in the Oklahoma House.
Dick Pryor: Shawn, you see this as a monumental election in Oklahoma. Why?
Shawn Ashley: Because monumental changes are taking place in the legislature. There will be a new House Speaker for the first time since 2017 and a new President Pro Tem for the Senate for the first time since 2019. That means there will also be new floor leaders who will decide which bills get heard on the floor. Some committee chairs are going to change, and even the committee structure, particularly in the House, which currently has 29 different committees, could be revised. And then there's the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency’s oversight committee. That joint committee was created in 2019 by legislation authored by the outgoing House Speaker and Senate President Pro Tem. The office provides an in-depth analysis of state agency programs and spending, and it's losing both of its chairs: Representative Kevin Wallace, who lost his bid for reelection, and Senator Roger Thompson, who resigned effective Friday. They were the oversight committee’s inaugural and only chairs and set the direction of the committee as we know it today.
Dick Pryor: And LOFT just released its report on concerns about spending at the state Department of Education. What did they recommend?
Shawn Ashley: Well, the report found no malfeasance by Superintendent Ryan Walters or the department, but it did show the agency failed to communicate properly with school districts, the legislature and even internally. Now, the office recommended, among other things, that the legislature require the State Department of Education to publish an initial plan for implementation of new programs or legislative mandates. And it also recommended that the legislature specify in budget limit bills any funds that have the flexibility to be used by the State Department of Education to fund other specific statutory obligations. And it also made a series of recommendations for how the Department of Education could improve its communications with the legislature, with school districts, internally, and with the attorney general's office.
Dick Pryor: All right. We'll end it right there. Thanks, Shawn.
Shawn Ashley: You're very welcome.
Dick Pryor: For more information, go to quorumcall.online. You can find audio and transcripts at kgou.org. And look for Capitol Insider where you get podcasts. Until next time, with Shawn Ashley, I'm Dick Pryor.
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