Statewide Losses: Ernest Istook for Governor, Todd Hiett for Lieutenant Governor, Gary Jones for State Auditor and Inspector, James Dunn for Attorney General, Howard Barnett for State Treasurer, Bill Crozier for Superintendent of Public Instruction, Brenda Reneau for Commissioner of Labor, Bill Case for Insurance Commissioner. The 2006 electoral defeats might come as a shock to those in “Red State Oklahoma” where just two years ago George W. Bush had won all 77 of our Sooner State’s counties (the only state in the nation where every single county had voted to reelect the president). This year, Republicans at the state and federal level could almost do no right. The question is, why? Are Oklahoma voters moving to the left? Has Brad Henry’s centrist Democrat vision won over the electorate so much that Oklahoma will be awarding it’s seven electoral votes to Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Barack Obama or, dare we think it, even Brad Henry himself? As some of the GOP's most loyal are now considering a run for state chairman, a number of questions are swirling. Did the Oklahoma Republican Party under Tom Daxon, fracture so divisively that it was unable to compete in this election at the statewide level? Is failure Tom Daxon’s living legacy to Republicans across the state? Considering that it took Mr. Daxon more than two months just to appoint a single staff member to his failed Victory effort, it’s more likely the bloodbath that was the 2006 elections for Republicans in Oklahoma rests more with the party than any significant ideological shift among the electorate. Consider this: both the state House and state Senate campaign committees vocally split away from the State GOP to fund and operate their own grassroots victory efforts. In turn, the Republicans kept their majority in the state House, losing just one seat statewide. Furthermore, Oklahoma was one of only two states in the nation to make gains in the state Senate in 2006—gains that national party leadership has publicly credited to state Senate leaders and their campaign teams. Among the more egregious errors and missteps made by the Oklahoma Republican Party this election cycle that no-doubt impacted the viability of statewide Republican candidates by failing to turnout the vote (a core job of every state party) were: Challenges surrounding “Victory 2006”

• $36,500 for the printing and design of door hangers to Door Dingers, Inc. Information was not available at the time this story published on how many additional thousands of dollars were spent in delivering the door dingers.
• The door hangers themselves caused great turmoil among GOP activists for their negative nature. Some activists have said they were actually responsible for suppressing Republican turnout. See scans above.

Challenges in fundraising

• In the most recent reporting period, Democrats fundraised $63,800.00 and had $56,466.74 cash on hand. Meanwhile, the Oklahoma Republican Party only raised $48,151.99 and had $31,915.03 on hand.

Challenges in staffing

• The Oklahoma Republican Party , hired Senator Carol Martin who resigned just weeks later, lost its communications director, and most recently Finance Director David Westin has resigned. This has left the party with an anemic staff: one political staffer, one secretary, and the chairman himself.

Even in Oklahoma, parties rise and fall like the tide. In 1976, four years before the election of Ronald Reagan as president and eighteen years before he would lead Republicans to power in Congress, Newt Gingrich wrote, “The Republican Party is in real danger of dying. The bunting and the banners around us could well be the flowers at our party’s funeral.” When sworn in as Speaker of the House nearly twenty years later, Gingrich was quoted in the New York Times, “The fact is, every Republican has much to learn from studying what the Democrats did right.” It remains to be seen if the GOP faithful hold Daxon accountable. Only a week has passed since the elections, but 2008 is now on the horizon. It is up to the Oklahoma GOP grassroots to determine whether tomorrow is brighter than yesterday. Posted at 11/14/2006 04:00:00 PM