Accusations abound in Edmond House race
EDMOND — The two Republicans in the House District 39 race have been going at each other in a no-holds-barred political fight as brutal as any in the state.
The fight is playing out on social media and through campaign flyers sent to voters through the mail.
Rep. Ryan Martinez said his opponent, attorney Denecia Taylor-Cassil, is the one who went negative.
“I presume because she is not really a Republican in her values, she thinks it is the only way she can win,” Martinez, 33, told The Oklahoman on Thursday. “I believe it has backfired on her.”
Taylor-Cassil, 33, counters that voters have a right to know who Martinez truly is.
“The truth is the truth, and sometimes the truth is negative,” she said. “I felt like I was being lied to and my community was being lied to when I started researching him.”
Martinez is running for reelection for the first time. Taylor-Cassil is running for office for the first time.
Taylor-Cassil first criticized the incumbent for financing most of his campaign with donations from lobbyists and
PACs. “It is time to get rid of the politician who is bought and paid for by special intersts,” one mailer stated, misspelling “interests.”
She then accused him of being deceitful about his background. She alleged he only won in 2016 because he fooled voters into thinking he was a political outsider. She made her accusation through an eye-catching mailer depicting a fake book called “My Journey to Becoming a Career Politician: The Ryan Martinez Story.”
Her latest mailer focuses on a drunken driving incident that resulted in him having to blow into an ignition interlock device to operate his vehicle. It includes a picture of an alcoholic drink and a car key and another picture of a driver holding an open beer bottle. “After putting the families of this community in danger, how could we even consider re-electing Ryan Martinez?” it concludes.
Martinez called the accusation about his work experience comical. He wrote on Facebook that he has at least one and sometimes two or three jobs at a time since before he was old enough to drive.
About his DUI case, he told The Oklahoman, “My opponent falsely makes it seem as if it’s a current case in deceptive mailers.”
He acknowledged that he “made a mistake one night in my 20s when a car struck my vehicle, and regrettably, I had a few drinks.”
He was charged with a misdemeanor in Oklahoma County District Court in 2014 and was put on probation, The Oklahoman has learned. The case was later expunged from court records.
“There was no conviction, but certainly a conviction of the heart,” Martinez said. “God used it to teach me valuable lessons.”
In his mailers, Martinez has criticized his opponent for going negative, described her as a “liberal lawyer” and claimed she donated last September “to the Democratic National Committee that supports Nancy Pelosi.”
One mailer features an open letter and comments from his wife, Katie Martinez. “It is shameful for Mrs. Taylor-Cassil to attack my husband. Negative campaigners don’t win in Edmond,” she is quoted as saying.
Taylor-Cassil said she resents that Martinez attacked her profession.
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she said of her three years in law school. “I’m very proud to be a lawyer . ... I am not a liberal lawyer, and I am offended by that.”
About the accusation she supported Democrats last year, she explained she gave $10 to ActBlue through Facebook to support the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. She said she did not know ActBlue was tied to Democrats until the mailer came out.
In a news release, she said she is considering legal action over a “blatant lie” made during the campaign that she once was a Democrat. She said she always has been a Republican.
The intensity of the negativity in the House District 39 race has caught the attention of Rep. Jon Echols.
“Legitimate policy differences are fair game, but I saw two mailers against Ryan that were just flat-out character assassination,” Echols said. “That guy is probably the hardest working legislator at the Capitol.”
Echols, who is House floor majority leader, said, “It makes it hard for me to recruit candidates when they’ve got to deal with these extreme personal attacks . ... It gives all of us a bad name.”
The winner of the GOP primary election Tuesday will face a Democrat, Devyn Denton, and an independent, Richard Prawdzienski, in November.