TULSA, Okla. (AP) Oklahoma House Speaker T.W. Shannon has formally entered the GOP race for the open U.S. Senate seat in Oklahoma, while Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine said he won't be running for the position.
Bridenstine said Wednesday he wouldn't run for the Senate seat left open by Sen. Tom Coburn's resignation. The first-term congressman made his announcement moments before Shannon formally declared his candidacy at an event in Tulsa.
Shannon will join two-term U.S. Rep. James Lankford and two lesser-known Republicans in the race for the GOP nomination. A Democrat hasn't been elected to an open U.S. Senate seat in Oklahoma since David Boren in 1978, and Republicans are heavily favored to maintain it. No Democrats have formally announced.
I think that’s a wise move by Congressman Bridenstine, who has held elective office for only one year. If he keeps up his voting record for a few more terms, he’ll be unstoppable when he runs for governor or for Inhofe’s Senate seat (when Inhofe decides to retire) or whatever is his next challenge.
So unless there are any late entrants, the Senate race will be between conservative Speaker T.W. Shannon, moderate-to-conservative Congressman James Lankford, and one or two unknown Republicans (the article mentions two, but the only name I’ve seen is Jason Weger). I hope that conservatives don’t get fooled by Lankford’s Baptist connections and coalesce around Shannon, thus giving Shannon at least 50%+1 in the first round so as to avoid a run-off. Cutting into Lankford’s base in the OKC area will be key, since it holds such a large percentage of the state’s Republican primary voters.
T.W. Shannon will be a superstar in the U.S. Senate, and will help the conservative movement achieve things that seem impossible right now. He knows how to get stuff passed, and will be, along with Senator Tim Scott, a walking billboard advertising how the Republican Party is the true home for black (and in Shannon’s case, also Native American) voters. We don’t need to get a majority of the black vote, but just 25% will give us supermajorities in both houses of Congress and a lock on the presidency.