Conservative Duo in Oklahoma Blazes Trail to GOP’s Right Frontier

If there were one state in the country that one would expect to be governed conservatively, it would be Oklahoma.

But despite the fact that Republicans control every lever of power in the Sooner State, members of the Oklahoma Freedom Caucus, formed in 2024, claim the state’s politicians are more Republican on paper than they are conservative in practice.

“We are a supermajority red state on paper. All 77 counties of Oklahoma voted for Trump,” Oklahoma state Rep. Gabe Woolley told The Daily Signal at a recent State Freedom Caucus summit in Irving, Texas. “The problem is, in the legislature, specifically, we have a lot of registered Republicans, but not conservatives.”

Assembled at the summit were lawmakers from across the country who are working to move Republicans in their respective state capitols in a more fiscally and socially conservative direction. Woolley told The Daily Signal that he is often in legislative fights with fellow Republicans.

“When we put their feet to the fire with a bill, they just don’t let it into committee or on the floor,” he said.

He continued, “When we try to run a bill or file an amendment simply to track how many tax dollars are going towards illegal immigration and education, the Republicans stand up and fight it and get it killed, or when I try to run a bill that requires the history and reality of communism to be taught in grades six through 12 … it was the Republicans that got it killed.”

Joining Woolley was state Rep. Jim Shaw, who ousted longtime Republican state Rep. Kevin Wallace in a primary campaign in which he focused on green energy projects—a major issue in an oil-dependent state such as Oklahoma.

“In my primary race, I launched into it primarily because there was a wind project being proposed near my home property,” he told The Daily Signal.

“The guy I went up against was the chair of the Appropriations and Budget Committee in the House and had been there for 10 years … which obviously led to a whole lot of money pouring into that race to try to keep his seat.”

Shaw is encouraging cutting off taxpayer funding of the green energy industry.

“There was about a 10-year state subsidy program that’s set to run out at the end of next year, but we’re still paying about $14 million per year in state-level subsidies,” he said. “The wind lobby has been very, very powerful for a long time … . I believe there’s probably some consensus that that’s not going to get extended, but they have done everything in their power to kill any kind of resistance or regulation on that industry. We virtually had zero regulation in place for industrial solar.”

Shaw explained that he is working on forcing Republicans in the Oklahoma Capitol to make promises on priorities he considers to be important to conservatives.

“I just launched what I branded the Save Oklahoma plan. It’s a list of seven policy items that are extremely important to everybody in Oklahoma,” he said. “If we win the issues—and I believe we win the issues on these seven items—we can honestly change the culture in the building and across the state.”

Shaw has gotten a number of Oklahoma conservative organizations to sign on to the plan, which calls on Republicans to fight taxpayer-funded green energy projects, criminalize foreign ownership of land, require E-Verify for businesses for hiring in order to forbid illegal immigrant labor, and prevent discrimination based on vaccination status.

Shaw and Woolley acknowledge they are in the minority as members of the Freedom Caucus faction of the House, but say their power is growing.

“What’s wrong with our political landscape in Oklahoma at the moment is the bad guys are not afraid of grassroots pressure, but we’re seeing that start to change, and grassroots is starting to assimilate and get more powerful,” Shaw said.