Southwest Ledger
OKLAHOMA CITY – In Oklahoma, there is no legislative session without problems.
The issues stem from the fact that people of all kinds come together during a very short amount of time to address a huge number of problems.
And at the State Capitol, party loyalty is a major concern.
Long before any issue is resolved, the elected ones look at party loyalty. Today, with its supermajority, the Republicans call the shots. But that doesn’t mean that all Republicans are alike.
In fact, Oklahoma Republicans paint themselves in many ways: as God-fearing, conservative, centrists or far-right wing Christian Nationalist warriors.
Those who raise questions about party loyalty are pushed aside and, more often than not, ignored.
And this year, the fights have risen to new heights.
The problems at Oklahoma’s State Capitol have become so large that the ongoing political warfare has begun to damage the image of the Union’s 46th state. The issues – serious problems faced by every resident in this state – are ugly and hard to solve.
And the fact that 2026 is an election year is making things even worse.
Consider last week
It’s not a secret that members of both the House and the Senate have wanted to end the Second Session of the 60th Oklahoma Legislature early. One of the main reasons: this year is an election year and the big, ugly primary election is set for June 16.
If lawmakers used the full amount of time allowed for the session, they wouldn’t adjourn until 5 p.m. May 29.
That doesn’t leave much time to campaign.
Still, even with that upcoming deadline, that doesn’t explain why the Senate’s Freedom Caucus has locked horns with the Senate’s leadership and the Freedom Caucus has tried to persuade House leaders that the Senate’s governing Republicans don’t know what they are doing.
Senate Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, said he believed the session, by far, has gone well. During his press conference on Wednesday, Paxton said overall he was pleased with the session.
“We’ve got some things done,” he said. “Obviously, we’ve had conflicts in session, just like every other Senate has had since 1907. It’s just part of the process. And sometimes we get issues that are going on that people are passionate about. They try really hard to get their stuff done. Sometimes that passion spills over on the floor. We really try to keep it under control and make sure that we have those deliberations.”
Because he believed a large majority of the Senate’s work was done, Paxton ended the legislative session for his chamber early.
But that move confused House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow, who had a couple of immigration bills he wanted moved out of the Legislature and sent to the governor’s office.
Following Paxton’s Wednesday press conference, Hilbert staged one of his own in the Capitol rotunda.
“I don’t fully understand the decision (to end the session early),” Hilbert said. “I mean, if you’re going to work an additional couple of days, then work those days this week, not next week, that would make more sense to me.”
What Hilbert didn’t talk about was a meeting he had earlier with the Freedom Caucus. In fact, it was the second meeting Hilbert had with the group. And while Paxton was informed about the first meeting, he wasn’t told about the second meeting until after it happened.
The meeting was part of a plan by the Freedom Caucus to revive some of Hilbert’s bills.
State Sen. Dusty Deevers, R-Elgin, the Vice Chair of the Freedom Caucus in the Senate, told one media outlet that Paxton’s move to end their chamber’s work early and avoid Hilbert’s bills was part of a strategy to kill truly Republican initiatives.
“We’ve seen Speaker Hilbert run good policy,” Deevers said. “We try to bring it to the floor because it’s being quashed by leadership, and they won’t take action on it.”
The end result was that the GOP Caucus leader wasn’t impressed with the legislation and like many leaders have before him, he set the bills aside. Paxton said he wasn’t trying to kill GOP initiatives. And the other claims, he said, were false.
Hilbert, for his part, has said little.
Friday erupted
The fight exploded after Paxton’s mid-week press conference. Not long after Paxton finished, the Freedom Caucus held their own media event.
Their goal was simple: demonize Paxton.
During the press conference, the Freedom Caucus claimed that Paxton and other Republican senators were trying to avoid taking votes that would potentially expose themselves as less-than-true conservatives.
The Freedom Caucus spent some time that afternoon, claiming that Republicans who control the Senate agenda were “more interested in representing lobbyist interests than their own constituents.”
“We are here to address the dereliction and the lack of attention to the people’s business here in the state Senate,” Freedom Caucus Chairman Shane Jett, a Republican senator from Shawnee, said.
That argument didn’t sit well with Paxton, who held a second press conference on Friday. The comments by the Freedom Caucus were both false and inflammatory. Paxton also shot back against claims by some that members of the Senate were coasting by and not getting their work done.
Paxton said the output of hours “was virtually equal.”
And when he analyzed the amount of time each bill was examined, Paxton said he found that members of the Senate spent more time on legislation than their House counterparts.
“When you look at the actual amount of time per bill, we spent two to three more times per bill,” he said. “In fact, when we get questioned about gaveling in and gaveling out, I’m curious one of those same questions didn’t go through the House of Representatives when they had a lot of their senior leadership take off for two days the week after spring break to go on a golfing trip. Nobody seemed to question that. We didn’t question that. We knew they were gone. We knew they were gambling in and gambling out those days. The Senate didn’t make a scene about it. That’s what they want to do. They want to. That’s the way they run their chamber, how they want to. Nobody that’s in every bill we took out, we didn’t say, well, ‘The House leadership’s out golfing this week, but we’re still here working.’”
What’s next?
For the record, don’t expect the Second Session of the 60th Oklahoma Legislature to end as positively as it began.
No member of the Freedom Caucus could be reached for comment.
As for Paxton, he said the goal is simple: do a good job as the Senate’s leader.
“No matter what I do, I am not Republican enough for the Freedom Caucus,” he said. “And actually, I would say they’re not Republican either. They are populists. They are attentionseeking populists. Yeah, that’s not conservatism. So, yeah, that no matter what I do, it will never be enough.”
The plan, he said, was simply to pass laws that solve problems and make Oklahoma better.
“We’re simply trying to do the right thing,” Paxton said. “That’s it.”