Second District Congressman and Republican U.S. Senate nominee Markwayne Mullin says he puts 350 miles a day on his pickup as he crisscrosses the state campaigning.
“I talk to the people of Oklahoma every day,” he said during a brief conversation this week.
His Democratic opponent, Kendra Horn, says Mullin can’t be found anywhere, except maybe campaigning for Republicans in other states.
Mullin and Horn, plus Libertarian Robert Murphy and independent Ray Woods, are vying to serve the remaining four years of retiring Republican Jim Inhofe’s term.
“Until probably the last week or two (Mullin) hasn’t been out and about much,” Horn said this week. “He’s been out of the state, for the most part, from the runoff until recently. We know this because we’ve seem pictures of him all over the place.”
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That’s frustrating for Horn, who as a decided underdog would like head-to-head opportunities to win some votes from Mullin.
On the other hand, though, Mullin seems to be just playing the percentages.
No Republican U.S. Senate candidate has gotten less than 60% in Oklahoma since 2008, and no Democrat has gotten more than 40% since 2004.
No Democrat has actually won since 1990.
Not much in recent trends suggests a change. One survey does show Horn as close as 6 points, and she did win the 2018 5th Congressional District race against almost all expectations, but in a statewide race, Mullin holds most of the cards.
“She’s just trying to use us to get her attention,” Mullin recently told Tulsa’s Fox 23. “There’s no point in me just standing up there to give her a platform to attack us. We run a very clean and positive campaign. You’ve never seen a negative ad come from us. So what’s the upside of this?”
Mullin has not given many interviews to Oklahoma news organizations since his runoff victory over T.W. Shannon. His campaign did not respond to Tulsa World requests for an interview for this story. When asked about it at a recent rally for Gov. Kevin Stitt, Mullin said the World had been too critical of him.
Other news organizations say they’ve been unable to talk with him, too.
But he has appeared on some Oklahoma television stations and national outlets, such as Newsmaxx and Fox. He recently told Undaunted.Life: A Man’s Podcast that he’s campaigned for Republican candidates in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Georgia and New Hampshire.
“Oklahomans are noticing he’s not here,” Horn said. “It has not gone past people’s attention that he’s ignored all debate requests, that he’s refusing to answer questions.”
Whether many voters care is another matter. Mullin was very much in evidence during the Republican primary and runoff campaigns earlier in the year, and laid out a platform of business deregulation, just as it has been for the entirety of his 10 years in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Since the runoff, Mullin has somewhat moderated his rhetoric on the 2020 presidential election, which he has described as stolen from Republicans, and former U.S. President Donald Trump, who he and his family reportedly visited in Florida recently.
Publicly, Mullin derides all Democrats as extremists and socialists.
“There are no moderate Democrats in Washington, D.C.,” he said during the Stitt rally.
In Congress, though, Mullin has worked with Democrats to pass legislation beneficial to the 2nd District, which is poorer, more rural and more technologically isolated than most. Off the House floor, he was friends with then-Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, grandson of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
He has both revved up crowds with incendiary speeches about Democrats and calmed them down by saying disagreement is no reason for incivility.
Horn, meanwhile, says she just keeps trying to convince voters that a Democrat can represent them better than Mullin.
In terms of issues, Horn and Mullin probably most disagree on abortion rights. She is for them, to some degree at least. He opposes them in all or almost all circumstances.
Horn, though, talks about who is more likely to get things done for Oklahomans.
“My approach … has never changed,” she said. “Since the very beginning, I’ve been reaching Oklahomans where they are, having conversations on the real issues, and not just falling into this ‘us versus them’ and the stereotypical check-a-box for a party.”
Horn said she voted against party leadership more than just about anybody, Republican or Democrat, during her single term representing the 5th District. She is critical of extremism in both parties,
“We helped a lot of people,” Horn said. “That’s what my record shows. It doesn’t show somebody who was a rubber stamp.
“In contrast, Markwayne is more than happy to just point fingers at Democrats. And this is the problem I have with the way politics is talked about today. We’ve got to stop lumping everybody in with the most extreme voices on either side,” she said. “What we need are thoughtful, moderate, intentional leaders on both sides of the aisle.”
AP Explains: What to expect on election night.
Many races are won on election night, but it’s not uncommon for it to take a few days – an in rare instances, a few weeks – for the Associated Press to declare a winner. That is because each of the 50 states determines its own voting rules, laws and procedures, including when polls close and when mail-in ballots are tallied, which means counting doesn’t happen all at once. The Founding Fathers set up the Electoral College — a series of state elections to pick the president — to empower states in terms of their own elections processes. But they didn’t stand up a centralized entity to count every citizen’s vote. So every U.S. election night, The Associated Press counts the nation’s votes, tallying millions of ballots and determining which candidates have won their races. It’s been done that way since 1848, when the AP declared the election of Zachary Taylor as president. In 2020, the Associated Press was 99.9% accurate in calling U.S. races, and 100% accurate in calling the presidential and congressional races for each state. In the 2020 race, President Joe Biden was declared the winner four days after Election Day – at 11:26 a.m. ET on Saturday, Nov. 7. Stephen Ohlemacher, AP Election Decision Editor said he oversees and 60 analysts on election night, “and we declare the winners in about 7000 races across the U.S..” On election night, race callers in each state are equipped with detailed information from AP’s election research team, including demographics, the number of absentee ballots, and political issues that may affect the outcome of races they must call. For years, AP has employed a full-time elections research team that works year-round to ensure the vote count team, the decision desk and newsroom know as much as possible about what to expect once Election Day arrives. And can pass that on to member news organizations and customers. “In many years, it takes a long time in various states to find out who won different elections,” Ohlemacher said. “In the pandemic it did get more pronounced and that’s because the increase in mail ballots. It also became more pronounced in more states. Winners may have been called, and concessions may — or may not — have been made, but voting itself is over when polls close on Election Day. There’s still more work to do, as local election officials count and verify results through the canvass and certification process. That means that race calls are made before results are official. But the AP only declares a winner when it’s certain that the candidate who’s ahead in the count can’t be caught. “At the AP, we follow the numbers. We call races without fear or favor,” Ohlemacher said. “If the numbers say that a candidate has won and we can verify that the vote count is accurate, we declare a winner.”
