Saturday, April 18, 2009

2012 Primary on the Line in Oklahoma City at the OK GOP Convention

As FHQ discussed last weekend, the Oklahoma 2012 presidential primary may be in jeopardy depending upon the candidate selected as the state party's next chairman. Current chair, Gary Jones represents the status quo (and a presidential primary in 2012), while vice chair, Cheryl Williams, and her supporters are advocating a switch to a caucus. As we pointed out last week, though, that Oklahoma is lost in the shuffle primary season in and primary season out is not about the state having a primary as opposed to a caucus.

And the big names in the Oklahoma GOP seem to realize that. Sen. Tom Coburn, when addressing the convention, questioned the wisdom of taking up a caucus system and dropping the primary. The senator is also stressing the drawbacks of the potential division that could emerge between the two factions of the party. This chair vote today at the convention is seen as a proxy of the vote in the caucus/primary discussion.

Usually, I'd say let's just sit back and wait for the results to come in, but we don't have to do that. I'm not a big fan of Twitter (It seems silly to an often verbose person like myself.), but in real-time situations like this it can be useful. And believe it or not there are a couple of good Twitter feeds coming in from the Oklahoma GOP convention. BatesLine has the best numbers coming through right now, though. Here's a link to the feed.

It looks as if Jones (and the primary) is gaining a pretty good amount of support in Oklahoma's rural counties. If I have time later, I'll put up a county-by-county map of the results.


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