Oklahoma voters can finally be trusted... for now.
In what will go down as a historic day for change and progress across Oklahoma, the political pendulum officially started to swing the other way on Tuesday as a record-breaking count of voters overwhelmingly approved medical marijuana, rejected the big-money evangelical candidate for Governor, and kicked to the curb anti-tax incumbents who valued flawed right-wing ideologies over the needs of Oklahoma teachers, students and people.
Now that the dust has settled like a crowning scoop of kief over a loaded bowl of weed, I thought it would be fun to take a quick look at what happened.
The biggest story of the night was that a hedonistic group of lowlife degenerates and deadbeats known as Oklahoma voters rebelled against the authoritarian, bible-thumping ruling class that controls the state and overwhelmingly approved SQ 788, which will legalize medical use of the deadly, dangerous and life destroying gateway drug know as "Marijuana."
The passage of SQ 788 was such a big deal that Colbert sang a song about it:
Although SQ 788 passed by a large margin, don't order your indoor grow kit just yet. The law now goes to the dark and disturbing place called the Oklahoma Capitol to be either fine tuned or ripped apart. In fact, Mary Fallin is already dreaming of ways to screw it up:
Alarm bells should always be triggered whenever Mary Fallin gets involved in something. But fortunately, she's a historically unpopular governor with little to no clout at the capitol. Do you think any of the GOP lawmakers who live in dark green districts on this map really want to cross the will of the people in an election year and follow Mary off the moralist cliff?
In an election night interview on News 9, House Majority Leader Jon Echols suggested that SQ 788, for the most part, will be left alone. He did, however, mention that there may be some tweaks on home growing operations and / or a cap on the number of dispensaries. Basically, if lawmakers do make changes, they're going to rig the system to benefit the people with money who were against. It's kind of funny how things work around here.
SQ 788 was the big story of the night, but the most surprising story was the fall of Lt. Governor Todd Lamb. He finished a close and disappointing third in the governor's race behind Mick Cornett and Kevin Stitt, failing to make the GOP runoff for governor in August.
Todd was the polling favorite and had a massive campaign war chest filled with oil overlord dollars, but he could never free himself from the thick chains and cement blocks that Mary Fallin had botoxed around his leg. He lost to second place finisher Kevin Stitt by only 2,451 votes.
Lamb tried to handle the defeat with grace and class, but you could tell it rattled him. In a press conference following his concession speech, he claimed that he never got tired of answering questions from Oklahomans. That's kind of odd, because unlike Cornett and Stitt, he didn't participate in our Q&A.
I know Todd was an awful candidate and it's good he lost, but you have to feel a tiny bit sorry for him. He had the money, the backing of oil overlords, and the support of the bible thumping evangelical community that goes to church every Sunday morning. I guess being a key player in a disastrous administration that's failed the state is what did him in. Hopefully he can rebound when he runs for US Senate in a couple of years. The Oil Overlords have already invested a few million in him, so I doubt they'll cut their losses quite yet.
Another election night was surprise was that Joe Exotic – the crooning, weed smoking, gun loving, tiger zoo operator from Wynnewood – finished a distant and disappointing third in the Libertarian primary. Here's his concession speech:
We ranked Joe number one in our recent rankings of Gubernatorial candidates because we felt Oklahoma had finally reached the point where only a gay tiger zoo owner could save us. I still feel that way, but the anti-tiger Libertarians disagreed and voted for Chris Powell and Rex Lawhorn instead. I guess that means libertarian voters are into bears.
I hope Joe runs for office again, but maybe next time he should target Lt. Governor. The office is more obtainable, and Joe could run on a platform to bring tiger cubs to every groundbreaking and ribbon cutting.
Here are some other random election night notes:
• The OKC - Tulsa rivalry will kick into very expensive high-gear this summer as Mick Cornett and Kevin Stitt face each other in the runoff election. They should schedule their first debate at the midway McDonald's near Stroud.
• As everyone expected, Drew Edmondson easily defeated Connie Johnson for the Democratic nomination for governor. It was such a no-doubter that Drew was able to get home in his pajamas by his 8pm bedtime.
• Teachers are still exacting their revenge on Oklahoma lawmakers. According to The Oklahoman, 9 of the 17 Derplahoman lawmakers who voted against teacher pay raises were either voted our of office or face a runoff. The other eight live in areas that are apparently populated by idiots.
• Mike Hunter and Gentner Doppler will face each other, again, in a runoff election in August. That's bad news for the sanity of local tv viewers, but good news for local ad salesmen.
• Jason Harris – that weird dude with the mustache who was vying to be a state rep in HD 27 – finished third in his primary election and missed the runoff. I guess that means I'm not going to be able to have a sarsaparilla with him:
Anyway, I guess that includes this recap of what was a historic election night in Oklahoma. I have to get back to researching how to open a dispensary. I'll close with this deep thought that apparently resonated with the Twitter folk:
