SPR: ‘Fallin In Trouble’

Hastings Wyman
Southern Political Report

Gov. Mary Fallin (R-OK) has been rated a shoo-in for months and the race has been on nobody’s “watch” list, until the past several weeks, when voter survey after survey showed her in serious trouble with the Oklahoma electorate. Her favorability rating dropped from 73% last September to 52% in June, a 19-point drop, according to SoonerPoll.com.

Joe Dorman’s Voting Record: http://votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/46187/joe-dorman#.U-vMr2d0xjo

Moreover, despite being a state legislator with only 35% name ID, Fallin’s Democratic challenger, state Rep. Joe Dorman, is showing up surprisingly strong. In head-to-head polls released in recent weeks, Fallin consistently ran below 50%, a danger sign for incumbents. Fallin led Dorman by 45% to 40% in a Rasmussen Reports poll; 44% to 31%, according to Sooner Survey taken by Cole Hargrave Snodgrass and Associates (R); and led 49% to 40% in a CBS/New York Times poll, Fallin’s best showing, though it pushed “leaners” to make a decision, which may have helped Fallin. Moreover, Dorman’s 35% name ID suggests that as he becomes better known, he has room to improve.

Longtime Oklahoma commentator Mike McCarville says, “Fallin has been going through a pretty rough time,” but points out that Dorman “doesn’t have the base or the money” to defeat her. As of August 8, Dorman had $60,000 in his campaign fund to Fallin’s $1,547,000. Whether Fallin’s recent weakness in the opinion polls will bring money into Dorman’s campaign remains to be seen. He did start television ads last week, focusing on education issues, precisely where Fallin is weak, especially due to her vacillating stance on Common Core standards.

Sooner Poll’s Bill Shapard told the Tulsa World that Fallin’s education agenda, specifically her support for the Common Core education standards, changing to opposition, hurt her with Republicans. Common Core “had problems on the left and the right,” says University of Oklahoma Professor Keith Gaddie, “then somebody on the radio called it “Obamacore,” and that was the end of it.” Says McCarville, “She was for then against Common Core. It confused people.”

In the Republican Primary, the current Superintendent of Public Instruction Janet Barresi, who supported Common Core, was defeated by an overwhelming 57% to 21% by a foe of the national standards. Dorman “has been hanging Barresi around [Fallin’s] neck,” says one source. In his first TV ad, Dorman says, “Mary Fallin has flip flopped and failed on education.”  In addition, some of her vetoes on education issues have been overridden by the legislature, even though both chambers are more than 70% Republican, suggesting Fallin has problems working with lawmakers even from her own party.

Fallin, however, got good marks in crisis management when tornados ripped the state last year. But in the aftermath, she declined to support building storm shelters in public schools, citing the cost. It’s an issue that Dorman cites on his website.

There is also a feeling that Fallin has no “signature issue,” as one source put it, to point to. While she campaigned on tax cuts and did sign a major tax cut bill, the legislation may not survive a court challenge. She has also been criticized for her opposition to expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, aka, “Obamacare.”

Dorman, who is term-limited this year, has been in the legislature for 11 years and has a reputation for working across party lines. He has been the research director for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee in Washington and also worked with the collegiate mock legislature in Oklahoma, so he has a network of politically-minded young people who may be an asset for him. Despite being a Democrat, he is a member of the National Rifle Association and is pro-life. His most whimsical legislative achievement was to get the watermelon named the state’s official vegetable. It seems the state already had a state fruit, but he wanted to put the spotlight on watermelon, because the annual watermelon festival is held in his district.

The Democratic Party is working to undermine Fallin, filing an ethics complaint claiming that her spokesperson in the governor’s office is working on her campaign on government time, thus at taxpayers’ expense.

The economy is a major plus for Fallin; the state’s jobless rate was only 4.5% in June, compared with a national rate of 6.1%, and a full percentage point lower than the state’s 5.5% in June 2013. Moreover, Oklahoma moved from 31^st to 12^th among the states in job growth over the past year.

Moreover, Dorman’s party affiliation won’t help him in the nation’s reddest state (Romney received 67% and carried all 77 counties). In one poll, 55% of voters have a “very unfavorable” opinion of President Obama. McCarville says that Dorman “is a capable guy,” but that “throughout his career he has been so aligned with Obama and the East Coast wing of the Democratic Party.”

Despite the shaky poll numbers, Fallin is still the favorite. Said pollster Shapard in the Tulsa World, “I don’t see a scenario where Joe [Dorman] could win.”  Says commentator McCarville, Fallin “has plenty of room to recover, and I think she is recovering.”

In any case, there is a race. Stay tuned.