"Flashpoint will be having Randy Terrill and Harry Coates on this Sunday. If anyone wants to give Mike some fodder, please send to me." Susan Turpen

"In fact I think we should get together with Harry [Sen. Coates] if he has time and discuss not even really getting into a debate with Randy but merely pointing to the need to move more cautiously."

"I suppose lastly I might ask him [Terrill] about his family tree"

Tom Price Jr. - Sr. VP Chesapeake Energy Corporation

"Am I crazy, it is 10:30 and I have had lots of wine but I really like this argument!" Otie Ann Fried - Fried Kilpatrick Guinn Consulting

Click here to read entire emails.

What does the bumbling senate architect of the sagging HB 1804 repeal effort, an arrogant and insulting flunky to the Chesapeake CEO and his tipsy lobbyist, the wife of a goofy fat lawyer/co-host of a fading television political talk show who has sponged millions of dollars in legal fees because of his ties to Attorney General Drew Edmondson have in common?

They and many more capitol regulars are exposed as major conspirators in a clumsy, dishonest and incompetent conspiracy to repeal Oklahoma’s landmark 2007 immigration reform bill, HB 1804.

In part 1 today, the Oklahoma Political News Service reveals a coordinated effort by the plotters to stack the March 30th Flashpoint program, which hosted guests Randy Terrill, HB 1804 author, and Sen. Harry Coates, chief opponent of HB 1804.

Shockingly, a review of the program indicates that Turpen did not declare at any point in the program that he works for Chesapeake, a glaring conflict-of-interest that viewers are entitled to know under any journalistic standard. “If KFOR management knew but chose not inform their viewers, this revelation will kill the program,” one media observer tells OKPNS. “But if Turpen withheld the information, he’s got to be removed immediately if there is any hope of salvaging the program’s reputation.”

The station’s management has not returned OKPNS calls regarding this explosive revelation, but OKPNS is told that it is common knowledge that Turpen works for Chesapeake.

To his credit, the other Flashpoint panelist, Oklahoma City businessman and former Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphries did declare his ties to repeal efforts by virtue of his leadership positions in the city chamber of commerce.

A review of the program reveals Turpen continually engaging Terrill with questions our documents reveal to be concocted from the repeal group, which appears to be headed by Chesapeake employee Tom Price. Price, who observers tell OKPNS group is arrogant and rude but has been unmasked this session as none too bright when it comes to political strategy, at one point insultingly writes that Terrill’s “family tree” ought to be subject of questions. “The man is basically all hat, no cowboy, and his screw-up’s are really hurting Chesapeake’s reputation,” a capitol insider recently told OKPNS a few days ago before these damaging revelations.

Ironically, Terrill is a regular panelist on News9’s Thursday Your Vote Counts program, which has far more viewers than Flashpoint. Time after time the anti-1804 panelists tried to trip up Terrill with trick questions, only to be frustrated. Turpen in particular appears to be very frustrated, particularly when Terrill turned the tables ands asked the rotund lawyer questions he was unable to answer.

The documents reveal late night e-mail exchanges between another Chesapeake lobbyist Otie Ann Fried, who suggests a strategy to Price and then says “Am I crazy, it’s 10:30 (PM) and I’ve had lots of wine…” Price apparently agreed with the wine and exhaustion strategy as Turpen and Sen. Coates utilized the advice on the March 30th Flashpoint.

Other delicious nuggets gleaned from the documents include Turpen’s wife Susan interjecting herself in the process, imploring the group to send her questions that she will pass along to Turpen, who apparently cannot think of questions on his own.

The documents reveal other players in the loop include a former partner in Congressman Tom Cole’s old consulting firm, Deby Snodgrass, now another Chesapeake employee, lobbyist Pat Hall, Patricia Fennell, executive director of the Latino Community Development Agency, a private non-profit organization in Oklahoma City and Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs President Hopper Smith, a former legislator. The Fried e-mail does not indicate whether or not Smith favors immigration reform repeal, but the documents suggest he was at a meeting with Fried and told a story of his days in the legislature which was apparently the inspiration for the late night wine-filled brain storm that she passed on to Price.

The document also reveals that the group is resigned to abandoning engagement with Terrill, which they have avoided for over a year. When reminded of that on Flashpoint on March 30th, Turpen, frantically, almost spastically interrupts repeatedly that “they will’ at some point actually talk to Terrill about the issue, which is clearly contradicted by the obtained documents.

Some strategy not actually fueled by booze does creep into the discussions, which clearly proves our post from April 3rd is correct: that the repeal effort has been quietly dropped, and instead the group is instead attempting to delay implementation instead.

Developing...

Related:

RedState.com: Erick Erickson's "Under the Radar" column (3rd story)

Labels: HB 1804, Mike Turpin, Rep. Randy Terrill, Sen. Harry "Turn" Coates

Posted at 4/08/2008 06:00:00 PM |

Labels: AG, Drew Edmondson, Mike Turpin, Poultry Lawsuit

Posted at 1/14/2008 11:53:00 AM |

In the post below, we excerpted and linked to an Arkansas newspaper article that detailed Drew Edmondson using fake FBI agents to serve a summons to a local chicken farmer. Later, we received this email from the editor of the paper. We're taking bets that someone from the AG's office contacted this editor and told her we were using their "copyrighted" material. Iran's president Ahmadinejab would be proud Drew! From: jlindsey@arkansasonline.com Sent: Fri 11/16/07 7:46 PM To: okpns_editor@hotmail.com Cc: jlindsey@arkansasonline.com The story on your site at the following URL is copyrighted by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock Arkansas and cannot be used online for any reason. The maximum linkable text to our copyrighted text is one sentence and one headline. Please remove our copyrighted material from your site and contact me at jlindsey@arkansasonline.com or 501-399-3664 for details. If I do not receive an email or call by Wednesday and if this content is not removed, it will be assumed you are refusing to honor our copyright, We will proceed to defend our copyrighted material by other legal means. Please contact me as soon as possible. http://www.okpns.com/2007/11/ag-edmondson-using-henchman-to.html Thank you, Jeff Lindsey News Editor ArkansasOnline 501-399-3664 jlindsey@arkansasonline.com Related: WSJ Online: Oklahoma's Most Wanted

Labels: AG, Drew Edmondson, Mike Turpin, Poultry Lawsuit

Posted at 11/19/2007 09:15:00 AM |

By Rob Luke Edmondson is so intent on wringing a multi-million dollar ruling for the state and its lawyers against the country's biggest chicken producers that he's passing up a winnable shot at the U.S. Senate, we report today. Good news for the lawyers who could reap a bonanza if Edmondson's suit against 14 major chicken producers succeeds, we've already noted. Bad news for Oklahoma business. The attorney general started pursuing Arkansas-based Big Chicken-owned producers six years ago. Now, after key legal victories, he no doubt smells blood. Higher office can wait - Big Chicken, charged with polluting popular waterways in Oklahoma's northeast, looks ripe for the final kill, he appears to have decided. The suit's biggest winners so far are the lawyers Edmondson hired on a contingency basis to represent the state against Big Chicken. Miller & Keffer; Riggs, Abney, Neal, Turpen, Orbison & Lewis; and Motley Rice now stand to collect up to one-third of any financial award the state wins in the suit after a recent ruling. Read more...

Labels: AG, Drew Edmondson, Mike Turpin, Poultry Lawsuit

Posted at 9/18/2007 07:51:00 AM |

Sources tell OKPNS that Burns Hargis to Oklahoma State University is a done deal. The sources say mega-bucks OSU Godfather T. Boone Pickens has signed off on the deal and Hargis will indeed become OSU's next President as soon as he is eligible. The former regent must wait for a period of one year before he is technically eligible to be the president. So what happens to KFOR's Flashpoint program? Hargis has been the rock on which the program was built, always having to pull fat pant-load Mike Turpin along. Hargis is always entertaining, but Turpin is one of the most disliked television personalities in Oklahoma history. While the show could easily withstand Turpin's exit, it will be much harder to find an entertaining replacement for Hargis: there are no good television-ready Republican replacements currently living in Oklahoma. The program failed in Tulsa, and the cheap New York Times company, which has put KFOR up for sale, has been losing money on the show for years. It's not even the most watched political show in Oklahoma: KWTV's "Your Vote Counts" segment, which is faster and more entertaining, draws twice as many viewers. So enjoy the current format: whether or not KFOR tries to save the show or not, it's curtains for either entertainment or Flashpoint altogether.

Labels: Burns Hargis, Mike Turpin

Posted at 7/13/2007 02:52:00 PM |