State lawmaker and Trump-backed pastor head to House runoff in Oklahoma

A state representative and a right-wing pastor advanced to a runoff on Tuesday in the Republican primary to replace Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, according to The Associated Press, setting up a battle that will test the strength of President Donald Trump’s influence on the state’s GOP voters.

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The state representative, Mark Tedford, and the pastor, Jackson Lahmeyer, will face off in an Aug. 25 runoff in the state’s 1st Congressional District, a solidly red, Tulsa-area seat.

Trump endorsed Lahmeyer in early May, calling him a “MAGA Warrior” who had “been with me from the very beginning of our Movement.” The candidate helped mobilize evangelical support for the president before the 2024 election. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., also put his weight behind Lahmeyer.

Lahmeyer has deep ties to Trump’s longtime ally Roger Stone, who backed the pastor in his unsuccessful run to unseat Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma in the 2022 Republican primary.

This year’s race was rocked in its final days by a report in The Daily Mail that Lahmeyer had sent intimate messages to a former campaign fundraiser who was not his wife, calling her “cute” and floating an invitation to his hotel room. In a Facebook post Sunday night, the pastor acknowledged sending the messages but said they had been “carefully cherry-picked to create an impression that is not accurate.”

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“I own crossing a boundary line through text messaging,” Lahmeyer wrote in the post. “I also ended all communication.”

Tedford ran on his business bona fides and his experience as a state House representative, highlighting his endorsement from Kyle Hilbert, the Republican speaker of the Oklahoma House. Tedford lent more than $1 million to his campaign, significantly outraising Lahmeyer, according to campaign finance filings.

The winner of the race between Lahmeyer and Tedford will be the favorite to replace Hern, a Republican who has served in the U.S. House since 2018. Hern gave up his seat to run for the Senate after Trump selected Markwayne Mullin, then a senator, to lead the Department of Homeland Security.

The Republican nominee will face John Croisant, a Tulsa school board member and businessperson, in November. Croisant, who ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination, has centered his campaign on healthcare affordability, education and stopping “corruption and chaos,” he said in a recent interview with The New York Times.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.