ALTUS - Farmer/rancher, political recruiter, telephone company “bean counter,” and a public servant who is not easily deterred – Gary Jones has had a multifaceted career.
ALTUS - Farmer/rancher, political recruiter, telephone company “bean counter,” and a public servant who is not easily deterred – Gary Jones has had a multifaceted career.
The son of an Army soldier, Jones lived in several places but considers Lawton his hometown. He graduated from Lawton Eisenhower High School in 1972, then enrolled at Cameron University. A lucrative job offer from Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. (now AT&T) lured him to Oklahoma City, where he worked on cost studies for a decade, 1973-83.
During that time, he enrolled in night classes at Central State University (now the University of Central Oklahoma) in Edmond, studying business courses. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Cameron, earning a major in business and a minor in accounting. Then he sat for and passed, the exam required to become a Certified Public Accountant.
Jones was elected to the Comanche County Board of Commissioners in 1994 and served one term, January 1995 to January 1999, but was defeated when he ran for re-election.
Jones ran for State Auditor & Inspector in 2002 after long-time politico Clifton Scott vacated the office, but lost to Jeff McMahan in the general election.
Next, Jones served as the state chairman of the Republican Party from January 2003 to June 2006, when he resigned to challenge incumbent State Auditor & Inspector Jeff McMahan once again. Jones lost for a second time. However, McMahan and his wife were indicted by a federal grand jury and both were convicted in June 2008 on one count of conspiracy and two counts of violating the Travel Act, prohibiting interstate travel in support of racketeering. (They entered prison in March 2009; Lori McMahan was released in 2014 and Jeff McMahan was released in 2016.)
Jones returned to his post as GOP State Chairman in March 2007 and remained there for three more years.
During his tenure as chief executive officer of the Oklahoma Republican Party, the GOP gained a majority in the Oklahoma House of Representatives in the 2004 general election after almost a century of Democratic Party control, and achieved majority control of the Oklahoma Senate in the 2008 general election. Jones’s recruits included former State Rep. Don Armes of Faxon, former House Speaker T.W. Shannon of Lawton, and former state Sen. Don Barrington of Lawton.
In 2010 Jones mounted a third campaign for State Auditor & Inspector and won, defeating a Republican opponent in the primary and a Democrat in the general election. In 2014 he was unopposed in his bid for re-election.
Last year he placed fifth among 10 Republican candidates for Governor after he was constitutionally “termed out” as State Auditor.
Another campaign for a statewide office is “not in my plans,” he said recently. “I had an offer to do consulting work in Houston, but I’m not ready to hit the road and be away from my family for that long. I would have had to travel all over Texas and across the country.”
Jones and his wife, Mary Jane, have been married 42 years. She taught school for 36 years – six years in Lawton and 30 years at Cache – but has been retired since 2011. Their son, Chris Jones, works in Lawton, and their daughter, Kelly Gilland, is a schoolteacher at Chattanooga.
On the farm the Joneses have owned for almost 41 years, he raises about 60 cows and 50 to 60 calves. His son and a grandson help him tend to his livestock. Jones owns and leases about 560 acres in Comanche County.