Has Mullin’s broken pledge hurt him?
During a campaign event in Muskogee a few weeks back, some voters had a message for Jason Nichols, the Democratic candidate for Congress: You weren’t our first choice.
“I had two or three people tell me, ‘I’ve got to be honest, I was a Mullin person but the minute he backed away from that pledge, I was going to be for just about anybody else,’” Nichols said.
“We hear that pretty frequently, sometimes even from Republicans. We’ve been pretty surprised about
that too.”
Last year, on Independence Day, Rep. Markwayne Mullin announced he would seek a fourth term in the U.S. House, abandoning a pledge he made during his first campaign to serve only three terms.
His decision drew immediate outrage from his political right. Three primary challengers lined up to face him and former Sen. Tom Coburn, still a popular figure among eastern Oklahoma Republicans, vowed to help unseat him.
Yet, Mullin beatall challengers in June. He avoided a perilous runoff and is well positioned for a general election victory next month in a once-Democratic district that is now staunchly Republican.
Political observers have been left to wonder whether Mullin’s broken term limits pledge has done anything — or will do anything — to destabilize his political standing.
“In theory, it could,” said Keith Gaddie, a University of Oklahoma professor of political science. “Practically speaking, there’s not a lot of evidence breaking term limits pledges — self-imposed term limits pledges — ever hurt the congressmen in re-election.”
The primary
The 2nd District, which Mullin has represented since 2013, spans 24 counties, virtually all of eastern Oklahoma.
It’s an expansive region dotted with small towns where name recognition is crucial and doorto-door campaigning is arduous.
An incumbent congressman hasn’t lost there since Mike Synar did in 1994.
Mullin faced three opponents in the June 26 Republican primary: Jarrin Jackson, Brian Jackson and John McCarthy. He won 54 percent of the vote, avoiding a head-tohead runoff with Jarrin Jackson, his top Republican opponent.
“I think the people who pay attention definitely care about it, but I think the people who are just furious with the system, they don’t necessarily care,” Jarrin Jackson said of the broken term limits pledge. “What they care about is supporting Donald Trump and that’s the most important thing.”
“The fact is,” said Coburn, a Jackson supporter, “that message didn’t get out, there wasn’t enough money to do it. It also says, I guess, that Oklahomans don’t care about people keeping their word.”
Jackson believes he lost to medical marijuana — or, more specifically, the increased turnout it led to. In 2016, when he first faced Mullin, 31,645 people voted in the primary. In 2018, that number was 60,314, driven by interest in State Question 788. As a result, Jackson believes it’s erroneous to use the 2018 primary as a barometer for term limits.
Others, including Coburn, aren’t so sure. The election may be an accurate gauge of Mullin’s support — and proof that he was politically weakened by the broken pledge.
“For almost half of the district to vote against him, that in and of itself is somewhat unusual,” said Nick Tomboulides, executive director of U.S. Term Limits, an advocacy group. “It might already be hurting him but not enough to knock him out of office.”
The general
Nichols hopes Tomboulides is wrong. The Democratic mayor of Tahlequah has been driving around eastern Oklahoma in a crossover SUV, spreading the word about his plans for protecting Social Security and increasing infrastructure in the state’s poorest congressional district.
“On the term limits pledge, we never really bring it up,” Nichols said in a phone interview last week as he drove through the district’s southern counties. “We don’t make a concerted effort. It’s usually brought to our attention because the people that are upset about that, who really are genuine believers in term limits, are double angry and sometimes it seems like they can’t help themselves.”
Nichols is, in some ways, a poor fit to challenge Mulllin on that issue because he is not a proponent of term limits, though he says he will uphold all promises he makes to constituents.
The general election is a four-way race among Mullin, Nichols, Libertarian candidate Richard Castaldo and John Foreman, an independent. The nation’s top political analysts all consider the district safely Republican, and FiveThirtyEight, a statistical analysis website, predicts Mullin has a 99.8 percent chance of winning. Mullin’s internal polls show him with a comfortable lead, according to a campaign source.
“The people of the 2nd District are more interested in keeping a strong voice for President Trump than in the fact that Congressman Mullin had an honest change of opinion,” said Trebor Worthen, a general consultant to the Mullin campaign. “It shouldn’t surprise anyone that an anti-education, neverTrumper like Tom Coburn who spent 16 years in Congress would promote a narrative all his own.”
Whether Mullin will ever lose re-election due to his broken term limits pledge remains to be seen. Tomboulides said the pledge can be a consequential issue if Mullin’s opponents make it one. Jamison Faught, a conservative organizer and blogger in Muskogee, expects an electoral reckoning will come only from a well-funded challenger.
“I think the money is the top factor. If you don’t have the money to get the message out, you can’t make any headway with it,” said Faught, a Coburn acolyte and critic of the congressman. His father, George, lost a congressional election to Mullin in 2012.
In the meantime, Mullin has become one of Oklahoma’s most outspoken and unwavering supporters of Trump, a position that Jarrin Jackson expects will keep him popular in the 2nd District, even as Mullin remains unpopular with the district’s best-known Republican.
“He has to live with that,” Coburn said of the broken pledge. “To me, not keeping your word means you have no honor, and I have no respect for him because he doesn’t keep his word.”