Mayor wins House seat
The mayor of Marlow cruised to victory Tuesday in a two-way race for the Oklahoma House, keeping the southwestern Oklahoma seat in Republican hands.
Brad Boles won the election by a 72-28 margin over Charles L. Murdock, a Democrat.
The seat was previously held by Republican Scott Biggs, who left office to take a job in the federal government. The House GOP now has 73 members to Democrats’ 28, which is still not enough to carry a solely partisan vote to raise revenue.
To pass any kind of a tax increase, lawmakers need to have at least 76 votes. So far, no coalition has formed that would allow the Legislature to raise the kind of significant revenue that the state’s political leaders have tried to negotiate.
Boles could not be reached for comment after the election, but he previously told The Oklahoman that he wants to be an agent of compromise.
“I think the Republican voters are tired of the bickering back and forth in the Legislature and they just want solutions,” Boles, 34, said. “They are tired of fingerpointing and the blame game.”
Boles was elected in 2014 as mayor of Marlow, a town of 4,500 about 70 miles southwest of Oklahoma City. He also works full time as president of Wilco Machine and Fab Inc.
Murdock is a retired educator and school administrator who ran against Biggs in 2016. He was outspent by Boles, who earned a war chest of more than $50,000 for his first legislative campaign.
District 51 includes parts of Grady and Stephens counties, stretching from the town of Velma to suburbs on Oklahoma City’s southwest side.
The election puts the Oklahoma House at full strength of 101 members for the first time since 2016, when former state Rep. Tom Newell abruptly resigned just weeks after winning re-election to take another job. Since then, the original membership of the 2016 Legislature has changed because of death, scandal and flight to the private sector.