LAWTON — The night of the primary election, Josh Powers and his campaign team were watching several races across the state – including the District 3 race for the Comanche County Commission.
Powers, a business owner and former Lawton police detective, was running against current Commission Chairman Alvin Cargill for the District 3 seat. The two Republicans were the only candidates in the race, meaning whoever won the primary election would claim the seat.
“We had people stationed at each precinct in the Western District, so as soon as they were posting results on the door, they were calling it in,” Powers said Thursday. “But some of them didn’t post it for 45 minutes to an hour after … (the polls) had closed, which made me really antsy.”
Early results showed Powers was ahead of Cargill. And when all votes were in, Powers had won.
Southwest Ledger interviewed Powers about his reaction to winning, his goals for his first term in office and other topics. Here are questions and answers from the interview, edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: How did you learn about the results?
A: It was like 45 minutes of waiting. It’s like, “What’s going to happen?”
Slowly, they started coming in, and we were like, “I won this precinct. I won this precinct. I won this precinct.” And it got down to where I ended up only losing two precincts in all the Western District, and the ones that I did lose were by very small margins. The primary voters really came out and showed their support for me June 28, Election Day.
Q: What was your reaction when everything was in?
A: It honestly took me a couple of hours to accept it.
My first phone call that I received after it was Alvin, our current commissioner, conceding to me, wishing me luck. I thanked him for the job he’s done as commissioner and if he needed anything to let me know. I’m not going to be a stranger.
I didn’t run against Alvin because I had problems with Alvin. I ran because I wanted to be county commissioner. And since we live in America, I have the ability to do that.
Q: What was the conversation with Mr. Cargill like?
A: It was short but pleasant. I felt that we both did our best, as the candidates, to not run a smear campaign or be hostile toward each other.
Q: Now that you’ve had some time to take it all in, how are you feeling about being a commissioner-elect?
A: Now, I feel very excited. I’d start tomorrow if they’d let me.
Right now, what I’m doing, though, is I’m already learning about the job, the tasks that will be required of me and perfecting those skills.
Also, meeting with the normal people that deal regularly with the commissioners to find out how I can be an asset to them. I’ve had some other commissioners from other counties reach out to me that I’ll be able to speak with to get advice or answer the questions that I have in reference to the job.
I’m in training mode right now. Day One, I was in training.
I don’t believe in wasting time. If you’re wasting time, that’s time I could be doing something else and making it beneficial for myself or others.
I’m back to running my daily businesses and entered into learning about the commissioner’s job and all the fine details.
Q: What are some of your goals for your first term in office?
A: Well, I campaigned on making the county more transparent – the current government. So, I look forward to making the county government, its assets and its projects more easily viewed for social media versus websites, stuff like that.
I would also like to implement some type of webpage that people can go on and actually file their complaints. Based off their complaint is where that complaint goes to the department of the county that actually deals with that.
The City of Lawton currently has a system like that, and I think it’s very beneficial to the citizens having access to something where it’s so easy. You don’t have to worry about how many people are in line. You don’t have to get out and go drive.
People that are worried about COVID and all the other things that go on, that eliminates most of those fears by being able to file it on the internet.
If people aren’t reporting problems to me, I’ll never know about them. I can’t be everywhere.
People don’t like to hear that, but I’ll make sure that I’m in each community on a regular basis to talk with people to find out the issues that they have. But the easiest way would be some format that they could do without having to pick up a phone.
They could just go to their computer or cellphone and get on our webpage to file these complaints or just notify us of problems.
Q: Obviously, you can’t anticipate everything that’s going to come up during your first term, but what challenges do you anticipate, and what steps would you support to address them?
A: Budgetary items are always going to be a challenge.
Everybody in Oklahoma probably wants more than what we can afford, so making decisions that are unpopular because of lack of funding.
But the other side of that is if I can find funding elsewhere – the nontraditional routes – then I will pursue those. I’m not just going to write it off as, “Sorry, the budget can’t afford it.”
If somebody gives me ideas, I’m all for checking into them, especially if it seems like it’s a pretty good idea. There’s a lot of people that help counties out that, if we don’t go out to reach to them, we’re never going to have access to the additional help, which is what puts a lot of towns and counties ahead of us, because they utilize those resources. If we stay in the dark age where we do everything by paper and pen, we’re never going to find out and be able to compete with any county that does a decent job.
I’m hoping that I’ll be able to make some more connections on stuff. I like working with others, especially when the whole point of it is to benefit the people. That’s very enjoyable for me to spend the time doing that.